Penelope Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin, "The State of Local News 2022" (Northwestern Univerity, Medill School, October 4, 2022).
More than a fifth of the nation’s citizens
live in news deserts—with verylimited access to local news—or in
communities at risk of becoming newsdeserts. Seventy million people live in
the more than 200 counties without a
newspaper, or in the 1,630 counties with
only one paper—usually a weekly—
covering multiple communities spread
over a vast area. Increasingly, affluent
suburban communities are losing their
only newspapers as large chains merge
underperforming weeklies or shutter
them entirely.
However, most communities that
lose newspapers and do not have an
alternative source of local news are
poorer, older and lack affordable and
reliable high-speed digital service that
allows residents to access the important
and relevant journalism being produced
by the country’s surviving newspapers
and digital sites. Instead, they get their
local news—what little there is—mostly
from the social media apps on their
mobile phones.
