For the past 15 years, Medill’s Penny Abernathy has tracked the spread of news deserts across the U.S. landscape.
During that time, the local news crisis has metastasized like a slow-moving cancer coursing through the bloodstream of enclaves from suburbia to rural America.
This State of Local News Project has served as an MRI of the health of local news, providing journalists, media leaders, policy makers, philanthropists and scholars with much-needed data, analysis and context.
But our ambition this year grew: What if this project could do more than diagnose a current condition? What if this research could be used as a sort of genetic test of local news, employing predictive modeling to help treat health risks in advance?
This 2023 State of Local News Report is an effort to do just that – not only identify current local news deserts but assess areas of the country at risk of becoming news deserts. And as we chronicle the loss of news, we also set out in this report to document local news startups and to highlight shining examples of news organizations that are showing promise for the future.
This forward-looking assessment of the state of local news is captured in the “Watch List” map developed by Medill data scientists, researchers and journalism faculty, including Abernathy. It’s further explored in the “Local News Ecosystem Barometer” map generated by Medill’s Spiegel Research Center.
This predictive modeling paints a sobering picture. There are 204 counties that currently are news deserts, with no newspapers, local digital sites, public radio newsrooms or ethnic publications. But in studying the characteristics of current news deserts, Medill experts have identified another 228 counties at substantial risk of becoming news deserts in coming years.
Why is that important? It gives community leaders, philanthropists, industry executives and journalists an opportunity to act before an area becomes a news desert.
This predictive modeling is one of the many additions to the 2023 State of Local News Report, an expansion that’s intended to meet this critical moment for local news in America and, indeed, our democracy.
In addition to tracking local newspapers and digital-only sites, we’ve expanded our databases this year to include public broadcasting news outlets and ethnic media, providing a more holistic perspective of local news organizations serving communities.
Amid the grim tallying of local news loss, the 2023 State of Local News Report also highlights hope.
Our “Bright Spots” map illuminates every local news startup in the U.S. over the past five years. In addition, we profile 17 of the most successful local news organizations — including several legacy outlets — that are transforming and finding new pathways to sustainability.
Most of those profiles include interviews with the leaders of those organizations, so you can be informed and inspired by their stories of what’s working. We know there are many other successful local news outlets, and we encourage you to write to us with those suggestions.
"Over the next few weeks, we’ll also be posting stories on this site that go in-depth on different facets of local news. We’ll explore public policy being considered to help local news both at the federal and state levels. We’ll take a look at how the local news crisis is affecting rural parts of the country. At the same time, we’ll examine how the collapse of the local news business model is hitting metro areas. While much attention has been focused on the loss of local news in rural communities, most shuttered local news outlets actually are in the suburbs. All of this work will be captured in a PDF report early next year."
In early 2024 we’ll also introduce a new quarterly newsletter which will highlight important developments in the field, share updates to the report data, and spotlight people who are moving local journalism forward. There are multiple places to subscribe on our website.
This is the most extensive State of Local News Report yet. It couldn’t be done without our dedicated team of faculty, staff, researchers, freelancers, contactors and students who’ve spent months painstakingly collecting, curating and analyzing local news data. The data science team at Deeta Analytics diligently worked with us to provide many of the visualizations and interactive maps.
Significantly, Medill School Dean Charles Whitaker has provided his unflinching support to growing the Medill Local News Initiative, which includes five other research and development-related projects at the school in addition to this critical State of Local News Project.
In addition to our annual State of Local News Reports, the Medill Local News Initiative team plans to begin regularly updating this database to keep pace with rapid changes in the local news industry.
We also could not have conducted this labor-intensive work without our generous financial supporters at the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Lilly Endowment, Microsoft, the Myrta J. Pulliam Charitable Trust, the Southern Newspapers Publishers Association Foundation and Medill alumnus Mark Ferguson. We’re especially grateful to Microsoft and its Enlighten design team for its creation and design of the “Bright Spots” map.
This 2023 report marks another significant milestone. This is the last report guided by Abernathy, who has authored five previous local news studies while at the University of North Carolina and now at Medill. Sarah Stonbely, formerly the research director at the Center for Cooperative Media, joined Medill in September as the new director of the State of Local News Project. We also were fortunate this year to have the expertise and editing skills of George Stanley, formerly the award-winning top editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and now the CEO of Wisconsin Watch.
Abernathy’s expertise, insight, counsel and passion are infused in this report. We’re grateful that she chose Medill in 2021 to continue this vital research that she began at UNC. Medill will continue to call on her for guidance, as well as continue to build on this foundation of work that’s so vital to an informed and healthy democracy.
