The State of Local News 2024

Expanding Deserts, Shifts in Ownership, and Expanded Digital Coverage

Medill’s 2024 Report: A More Holistic Snapshot of a Rapidly Changing Local News Industry

An introduction to the 2024 State of Local News Report by Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative

Welcome to the third installment of Medill’s annual State of Local News Report, a research project designed to provide new insights and to identify trends in the nation’s fast-changing local news ecosystem.

Our research this year unearthed major changes with significant implications for the news industry, our communities and our democracy.

The loss of local newspapers is continuing at an alarming pace, deepening the local news crisis and further depriving people of information they need to make informed decisions. Local news deserts are spreading. A furious pace of mergers and acquisitions is underway, as many longtime newspaper owners bail, and regional chains capitalize on opportunities. Meanwhile, the number of standalone digital local news sites has continued to grow.

With this year’s report, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University is continuing to expand its research to provide a more holistic view of local news in the U.S. For the first time, this report includes a new dataset showing the growing number of network local news sites, such as those operated by Patch, Axios and others. Medill also conducted an extensive survey to get a handle on the growing number of “ghost newspapers”: those that operate in name only and that have virtually no original local reporting. The local news crisis isn’t just about the loss of local outlets; it’s also about the diminution of community coverage.

Medill recognizes that this database constantly needs to change and to reflect the rapid reshaping of the local news landscape. We also understand that in updating a database of more than 9,000 local outlets, we’re going to miss some. If you have suggested changes, please let us know here. We routinely get questions about our methodology for this report. You can find more information here.

Since this research began more than a decade ago, it has been led by Penny Abernathy, first at the University of North Carolina and since 2021 at the Medill School at Northwestern University. Abernathy retired in April after a long, distinguished career.

This is the first State of Local News Project spearheaded by Dr. Zachary Metzger, who has been working on this research project for more than four years with Abernathy. Metzger now heads a team of two full-time research associates and a half-dozen part-time student researchers.

Medill is grateful to the philanthropists who make this critical research possible. They include the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Lilly Endowment, Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation, Microsoft, Myrta J. Pulliam Charitable Trust and Medill alumnus Mark Ferguson.

Tim Franklin, Director of the Medill Local News Initiative, and Zach Metzger, Director of the State of Local News Project discuss the 2024 edition of the report.

Contents

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Research Faculty and Staff

This research was overseen by Senior Associate Dean Tim Franklin, John M. Mutz Chair in Local News and director of the Local News Initiative, and Zach Metzger, project director and primary author of the report.

Tim Franklin

Professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News

Franklin was the founding director of the Medill Local News initiative, a research and development project designed to bolster the sustainability of local news. Before joining Medill, Franklin was President of The Poynter Institute. He's been the top editor of The Indianapolis Star, Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun. He was a Washington Managing Editor of Bloomberg News. He was an associate managing editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He was appointed to the bipartisan Illinois Local Journalism Task Force. He’s been named a distinguished alumnus of the Indiana University Media School.

Zach Metzger

Director – State of Local News Project

Metzger leads the State of Local News Project at Medill, overseeing the data collection, analysis and reporting on the landscape of local news. He previously researched local news at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where he completed his PhD in 2024. Before joining the State of Local News Project, Metzger worked as a data analyst in the environmental industry.

Srishti Bose

Research Associate

Bose is responsible for the data analysis and design portion of the State of Local News Report, coordinating the management, updating, and analysis of the newspaper, bright spots, and ethnic media databases. She is a Medill School of Journalism graduate with a degree in Media Innovation and Content Strategy. Before her current role, Bose worked as a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) lawyer in India, specializing in the Fin-Tech and Retail sectors.

John Volk

Research Associate

Volk manages, updates and analyzes the Medill Local News Initiative’s database of news organizations. A two-time Northwestern graduate (MS and BS in journalism, double major in statistics), he has previously worked at the Star Tribune, the Local News Accelerator and Northwestern Athletics.

Paul Farhi

Project Contributor

Farhi is the Washington Post's former media reporter. He left the paper at the end of 2023 after nearly 36 years as a staff writer, during which he also covered business, politics and general assignment features. He has also been a senior contributing editor to the American Journalism Review and now contributes to the Atlantic, the Athletic, the Daily Beast, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has been a frequent commentator on TV and radio about the media industry.

Autumn Brewington

Project Editor

Brewington is a contributing editor to the State of Local News report, overseeing Bright Spots. She was an editor at The Washington Post from 2001 to 2014 and from 2020 to 2024. She worked in The Post’s national and business news sections before joining the opinion department, where she was editor of the op-ed page from 2007 to 2014. She edited for The Wall Street Journal and the national security affairs website Lawfare before rejoining The Post in 2020. In addition to editing, Brewington launched and wrote The Post’s royal newsletter in 2022 and 2023. She was a spring 2024 media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Mark Caro

Editor

Caro is an author (The Foie Gras Wars, The Special Counsel: The Mueller Report Retold) and former longtime Chicago Tribune culture reporter, columnist and critic. He talks with prominent creative people on his weekly Caropop podcast and writes for Chicago magazine and other outlets. He was a journalism Cherub at Northwestern’s National High School Institute a long time ago.

Ed Malthouse

Research Director

Malthouse is the Erastus Otis Haven Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications at Medill. He also has an appointment in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences' Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences. Malthouse is an expert in applied statistics, market research and media marketing.

Felicity Huang

Research Assistant

Felicity worked on the State of Local News Project throughout 2023 and the beginning of 2024, while completing her dual degrees in journalism and data science. She brings a deep background in data, including experience with both investigative journalism and major financial institutions.

Maya Ikenberry

Research Assistant

Maya is a junior journalism major at Medill, and has been an integral part of the past year’s research. She contributed extensively to a story profiling a news desert in southern Illinois, and took the initiative to travel there to conduct reporting and photograph the area. Maya possesses a deep attention to detail and a strong skillset in graphic design that have allowed her to create clear and informative graphics and reports.

Chloe Nicola-Mintz

Research Assistant

Chloe is a sophomore journalism student at Medill. She brings extensive research experience and a strong passion for local news to the team, and has worked diligently on a content analysis survey, digital sites analysis, and news deserts due diligence. Outside of her work at the State of Local News Project, Chloe has taken on several leadership roles across campus, and is deeply involved in campus life and student affairs.

Mitra Nourbakhsh

Research Assistant

Mitra is in her junior year at Northwestern and is pursuing a double major in journalism and international studies, with a minor in data science. Mitra’s skills in data analysis and technical knowledge of research methods have been invaluable to the team, and she has been integrally involved in a content analysis survey as well as our updates of digital news sites. Mitra has also been extensively involved with nonprofit fundraising work.

Anavi Prakash

Research Assistant

Anavi is a sophomore at Northwestern studying journalism and social policy.  Along with the State of Local News Project, she conducts education research for the Institute for Youth in Policy and is an editor at The Daily Northwestern. For the State of Local News Project, her work focuses on the newspaper and digital sites database.

Mary Randolph

Research Assistant

Mary is a junior journalism major that joined the State of Local News team following her work on a bipartisan Illinois local news task force. She brings strong writing skills, data analysis knowledge, and a collaborative mindset to the project. In the past year, she has led a survey of major news organizations to analyze their content.

Leah Schroeder

Research Assistant

Leah is a junior at Northwestern with experience in journalism and policy research. Before joining the State of Local News Project, she previously worked for the Institute for Policy Research and has written for The Daily Northwestern and several Chicago publications. With the State of Local News Project, she has been instrumental in tracking newspaper closures and transactions.

The web presentation was designed by Medill Associate Professor Zach Wise and Knight Lab Executive Director Joe Germuska.