The State of Local News 2023 Vanishing Newspapers, Digital Divides, and Reaching Underserved Communities
The local news crisis in the U.S. is deepening, with profound implications for communities, their inhabitants and ultimately the health of our democracy. Through data, maps, charts, analysis and predictive modeling, this report provides a detailed look at the state of local news today, both the risks that lie ahead and causes for optimism.
State of Local News 2023
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policy |
‘The Most Ambitious Package of Local Journalism Policy’ New Illinois bills propose incentives to fund news organizations, repopulate newsrooms
The ailing local news industry in Illinois would receive compensation from Big Tech companies and benefit from state tax incentives and a new journalism scholarship ...
Q&A |
Finding ‘What Works’ Veteran journalists Clegg, Kennedy spotlight local news outlets that chart path forward
Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy brought much hands-on experience and perspective to their quest to find, as their new book puts it, “What Works in ...
policy |
Applying Breaks to a Crisis Illinois task force suggests tax credits, incentives, other steps to boost local journalism
The bipartisan Illinois Local Journalism Task Force has announced a series of possible legislative steps, including tax credits, exemptions, grants and other measures, to address a local news crisis ...
research |
Churning Toward Disaster Subscriber Engagement Index data shows ominous drop in reader retention
Having determined that reader regularity is the most important factor in getting people to pay for news, Medill Spiegel Research Center Director Edward Malthouse sees ...
Research
Understanding audiences and exploring new approaches
The State of Local News Project
Research Insights: Nikki Usher Focusing on goals and solutions, rather than threats and dangers, may be the key to saving local journalism
Nikki Usher, an associate professor of Communication at the University of San Diego, focuses their research on news in the changing digital environment. They blend insights ...
The State of Local News Project
Saving Community Journalism: The Path Ahead
A good newspaper is an anchor in a community. It reminds a community every day of its collective identity, the stake we have in one another, ...
The State of Local News Project
Research Insights: Danilo Yanich New study shows media ownership consolidation leading to duplicated content across local TV news
Danilo Yanich is seeing double in his research into the impact of media ownership and consolidation on local television news. Given that local TV news ...
The State of Local News Project
Tipping Point for Public Support? As local reporters vanish and news deserts expand, more leaders from both parties see why America’s founders ‘understood that the press was central to the foundation of a self-governing system’
When Identidad Latina launched in 2001, it was a free biweekly newspaper with a circulation of about 10,000 that covered Hartford and the surrounding areas ...
The State of Local News Project
Connecting the unserved Massive, federally funded BEAD Program could change the game for populations lacking reliable broadband internet service
Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. His research interests include ...
The State of Local News Project
How Local News Fares in the Cities More than half of all newspapers lost since 2005 were located in and around major metro areas. Some of the nation’s largest cities have been able to counter the trend, relying on digital-only news outlets to fill the gap
The nation’s cities and its suburbs are home to 287 million people, more than 85% of our population, representing a myriad of cultures, affiliations, concerns ...
The State of Local News Project
Rural Mirages: Shattered papers and ‘ghosts’ without local news Hundreds of weeklies have been shuttered, and many of the survivors have become ‘ghost papers’ with no staff reporters. But in some small and mid-sized communities, promising new business models are emerging.
The Hutchinson News in central Kansas greeted its subscribers Sept. 5 with a front-page feature about the Hutchinson Senior Center that included a big photo ...
The State of Local News Project
The State of Local News The 2023 Report
Executive Summary Introduction Newspapers Digital Public Broadcasting Ethnic Media The Possibilities for Reviving Local News Executive Summary There was both good news and bad news ...
The State of Local News Project
Research Insights: Joshua Darr
“If it's easier to locate information about the indictments of former President Trump than to find out what's happening in your local school board meetings ...
The State of Local News Project
A Path Forward How to fill the gaps in local news
News deserts are not a new phenomenon. Throughout the country’s history, there have been places so small or isolated that the community could not support ...
The State of Local News Project
Local-News Business Models Emerge Financial wreckage gives way to new approaches
Richland County is nestled smack dab in the middle of north central Ohio. It’s a mostly rural enclave in the center of a state in ...
The State of Local News Project
A Tale of Two Digital Sites The advantages of fund-raising in urban areas
Two local news sites – one a senior citizen in digital years, the other a relative youngster – represent both the opportunities and challenges confronting ...
The State of Local News Project
Lessons for Digital News Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs looking to establish, buy or invest in a local news outlet must tackle a number of strategic obstacles. At the top of the agenda ...
The State of Local News Project
The Future of the Daily Newspaper As newspapers cut print editions, lines blur between dailies and weeklies
Phillip Reid and his wife Jeanne Ann publish 10 printed newspapers across Oklahoma and operate two printing plants in the state. When a transportation crunch ...
The State of Local News Project
The Rise of the Large Regional Newspaper Barons Medill’s ‘State of Local News’ series continues
During the heyday of print newspapers, big-shot media moguls were practically kingmakers, using their resources to shape public opinion about everything from elections to wars. ...
The State of Local News Project
The State of Local News The 2022 Report
See new findings on where news deserts are occurring, how business models are shifting and what needs to be done to rebuild and sustain local ...
The State of Local News Project
Saving Local News A Call to Action
As technology and economic change continue to undermine the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism for decades, the need is ongoing to invest, innovate, ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
Nearly Half of Digital Subscribers Are ‘Zombies,’ Medill Analysis Finds
Nearly half of local news outlets’ digital subscribers are “zombie” readers who visit the website less than once a month, according to a data analysis ...
How Is Boise Like a Suburb of Nashville When It Comes to News? Professors Call for Deeper Thinking About Media Markets and Innovation
In a project launched at Northwestern University, researchers are working on sophisticated ways to identify news media markets that are similar to each other. The ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
What We’ve Learned About News Consumer Behavior: 5 Videos
Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center is conducting groundbreaking research using large data sets on consumer behavior. Spiegel’s study of 13 terabytes of data from the ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
Readers With Ad Blockers More Likely to Keep Subscriptions, Medill Study Finds Research on ‘Advertising Disengagement’ Suggests News Websites May Need to Change Ad Strategy to Keep Readers Paying
An analysis of subscriber behavior data by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center has found that a news organization’s customers who use an ad blocker are ...
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Revenue Models Print is not dead, even though it’s seriously wounded. There is a growing trend to cut down on frequency, with more newspapers abandoning daily publication.
We focus on the theoretical promise, and the actual difficulty, of embracing a financial model built around direct payments from readers and users. Can thinking of these people as members or subscribers lead to real, ongoing engagement, or the sort of lifetime habit that formerly characterized profitable mass media in America?
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Rise of the Nonprofits ‘Stop Thinking About Competition’
The increasingly familiar models adopted by public radio and the Texas Tribune are juxtaposed with interviewees’ increasing interest in philanthropic investment and a focus on specific niches where supply and demand can be carefully calibrated.
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Innovation Not ‘just chasing flashy, shiny objects’
The interviews reveal a certain tension that has been created by perceived overuse of the word “innovation” without attention to context. No one denies that new ideas are central to navigating the present and the future, but how about creatively applying concepts that may have been around for more than a few months?
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Local TV ‘Disruption Is Coming’
To fail to look past the obvious current struggles of local print organizations is to fail to understand what’s next for the medium where most Americans still say they get their local news. Sufficient money is still flowing in many local broadcast operations, but the slow pace of digital adoption in some places may augur poorly for the industry as pressure increases on revenue sources like retransmission fees.
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
The Future of Local News ‘To Do Different With Less’
This section’s title conveys a fundamental optimism that there still can be a future — in the right circumstances, with the right set of actions based on local-market discernment and careful attention to broader trends. Looking for simple answers? Don’t look here. Looking for a clear-eyed analysis of what still needs to be done? That crops up throughout.
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Focusing: Why the Chicago Defender Went Digital-Only
The Chicago Defender, a highly influential black newspaper founded in 1905, announced in July 2019 that it would go online-only because of dwindling print circulation. ...
Medill News Leaders Project 2019
Diversifying: How a Newspaper Publisher Branched Out
Penny Muse Abernathy, a professor and the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina, has done groundbreaking work ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
Medill’s Small-Markets Study Reinforces Importance of Creating Reader Habit
A Northwestern University data analysis last year on three big-city news outlets showed that a regular reader habit and strong coverage of local news were ...
Human-Centered Design for Local News Products
Knight Lab’s Class Brings Design Principles to Local News
A new Northwestern University class called Design for Local News isn’t trying to make minor tweaks in the current media environment. It’s going straight to ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
Medill Study Identifies ‘Paradigm Shift’ in How Local News Serves Readers Building Habit—Not Page Views—Matters Most For Keeping Subscribers, Data Analysis Finds
As online advertising lags, many local news organizations are shifting their strategy to focus on reader-based revenue models, especially digital subscriptions, as a path to ...
Human-Centered Design for Local News Products
Field Research
To set the stage for our product development classes, we conducted field research to develop a qualitative understanding of local news audiences and potential audiences. ...
What Drives People to Pay for Local Journalism
3 Leading News Organizations Serve as ‘Learning Labs’ for Local News Initiative Projects Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Indianapolis Star aim for insights and digital subscribers
Three leading U.S. news organizations are serving as “learning labs” for Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative, a project to harness data and other research tools ...