The findings in this report are based on information in a comprehensive proprietary database that is created and maintained by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. Over the past year, researchers at the Medill School of Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communications have collected data on close to 5,500 local newspapers, 350 public broadcasting outlets, more than 675 commercial television newsrooms and more than 1,900 standalone and network digital sites. The information is derived from a variety of industry and government sources and supplemented with extensive research and reporting, fact-checking and multiple layers of verification.
- Newspapers: Information on individual newspapers in the database was derived from a number of industry sources. Membership lists provided by state press associations were cross-referenced with news industry stories, as well as data available from Editor & Publisher and the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Researchers then conducted extensive independent online research, ascertaining the status and content of newspapers by checking websites and print versions as well as consulting press association directors, editors, publishers and local libraries when appropriate.
- Independent Digital-Only News Sites: The list of local digital news sites was compiled by merging lists published online by the Local Independent Online News Organization (LION) and the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN). As with newspapers, researchers visited all of the websites to verify that the content was updated regularly and the domain was still active.
- Network Digital-Only News Sites: We defined a digital network as a chain of two or more digital-only local news websites providing local or statewide reporting. This list is built primarily from the largest networks in the country such as Patch, TAPinto and States Newsroom, as well as smaller networks found in industry lists like INN and LION. As with the rest of our database, Medill researchers reviewed each local network site to verify that it produced consistent and original local news content.
- Public Broadcasting: The list of public radio and television stations came from data supplied by National Public Radio and gathered from Public Broadcasting Service sources. To determine whether a station produced original content, we reviewed individual stations’ schedules and staffing, as well as content posted on the station’s website.
- Commercial TV newsrooms: Our report counts television news at the newsroom level to identify the sources of local news. Newsrooms consist of one or more full-power or Class A broadcast stations consistently producing local news. Stations were identified through the Federal Communications Commission’s Licensing and Management System database. News content was assessed via the most recent quarterly issues and programs files submitted to the FCC and further verified on stations’ websites. Stations were grouped into newsrooms based on the similarity of their filings, shared website content, ownership and newsroom location. For consistency with the other media types tracked in the report, newsrooms are placed in a single county based on the location of their main studios.
In addition, we used media information contained in numerous surveys and reports by, among others, the Pew Research Center, the Poynter Institute and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, as well as scholars and researchers at the nation’s universities, including the foundational data compiled between 2012 and 2020 by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Demographic and economic data from both state and national government sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also were incorporated and analyzed.
Building and Refining the Newspaper Database
Our 2026 report identifies 5,476 local newspapers in the country that were still being published at the beginning of September 2026. With each newspaper in the database we include the following variables: name, city, state, parent media company, frequency (daily/weekly), number of days published per week and (when available) total circulation and website URL. Our research is concerned with identifying local newspapers that provide public-service journalism. Therefore, in addition to using industry and press association lists, we add an additional layer of verification. When possible, we consult both online and print editions of newspapers, analyzing the content of several editions, to ascertain whether the paper covers local government meetings, such as school board and county commissioner meetings. The outlets included in our database cover, at minimum, the critical information needs outlined by the Federal Communications Commission. Intentionally excluded from our proprietary database are shoppers, community newsletters (which focus on people and events, instead of news), specialty publications (such as business journals and lifestyle magazines), monthly and biweekly publications, advertising inserts, TMCs (Total Market Coverage publications) and some zoned editions that feature minimal local journalism relevant to the county where the zoned edition circulates.
Many states and municipalities have different thresholds for determining whether a newspaper is a “paper of record” and therefore eligible to carry legal notices. Often that threshold is based on circulation and distribution. We recognize that the income from legal advertising is critical to small dailies and weeklies. Therefore, we can work with the executive directors and general counsels at individual press associations if there are questions or concerns about the difference in our methodology (which is focused on news coverage) from the threshold used by government officials to determine whether a publication is eligible to receive legal advertising.
Building and Refining the Digital Sites Database
Our 2026 report identifies 895 standalone digital-only news operations that focus on producing either local, regional or statewide coverage of events and issues. Excluded are those sites associated with existing or legacy media – such as sites for public and commercial broadcasting stations, newspapers and magazines – as well as national digital operations, such as ProPublica and Inside Climate News. We also exclude sites that are focused primarily on entertainment or event coverage, government and commercial sites (such as those operated by real-estate companies) and those that have been inactive for the past six months. Each site in the digital database has the following variables: name, city, state, nonprofit or for-profit designation, news focus (local or state focus), specialties (i.e., specific focus on topics such as politics, business or education), year established and founder or publisher/owner. As with newspapers, we add an additional layer of verification, analyzing the content of the sites, seeking to ascertain whether each site provides coverage on the eight topics identified by the Federal Communications Commission as being “critical information needs.”
Building and Refining the Digital Networks Database
Our report tracks 1,007 digital-only network sites. We defined a digital network as a chain of two or more digital-only websites providing local or statewide reporting. Intentionally excluded are news aggregators, community message boards and AI-generated content farms. When possible, we manually reviewed each site to verify whether it regularly published original, reported news stories. In cases where networks were too large for that manual process to be feasible, we built web scrapers to perform that review based on the same criteria. For each of Patch’s 16,000 local domains, for example, we programmed a scraper to pull the headline, byline, publication date and URL for the 10 most recent stories. Based on that information, we then determined a site to be active if at least two of its stories were originally reported and published within the last month.
Building and Refining the Public Broadcasting Database
There are more than 1,000 public radio stations in the United States yet many of these are repeater or affiliate stations that carry content originating from a primary station nearby. In this update, we reviewed programming schedules and homepage content for primary NPR and PBS broadcast stations in the U.S. to identify 342 that produce original local news. This forms the core of our public broadcasting database.
Building and Refining the Commercial Television Database
To identify local newsrooms broadcasting on commercial television, we started with more than 1,700 licensed full-power and low-power Class A stations that we identified through the Federal Communications Commission’s Licensing and Management System database. We then pulled and analyzed the latest issues and programs files, quarterly reports to the FCC documenting programming relevant to significant community needs, for each of those stations to identify the presence of local news. To verify this assessment, we relied on station websites and local reports. Live streamed government affairs, like city council meetings or committee hearings, without transformative news reporting were not considered local news. Public affairs programming, which usually appears in a talk show format spotlighting local businesses and nonprofits, was also intentionally excluded.
Stations were grouped into newsrooms based on the similarity of their filings, shared website content, ownership and newsroom location. This was done to keep the focus on the sources of local news and to avoid double counting news reports simulcast on multiple stations.
Newsroom ownership was determined based on FCC LMS data for the primary station in the group. Researchers relied on four separate tables in the FCC’s database to construct directed network graphs that placed parent and subsidiary companies in relation to each other for each station. The owner of each station was systematically pulled from the top of each network graph. In some cases, researchers cleaned the results of the network graphing procedure to provide more clarity for the reader. For example, stations laddering up to the company Habor Lights Entertainment, Inc. were instead designated as holdings of Paramount Skydance Corporation, which sat one spot below Harbor Lights in the ownership network graph.
Researchers located newsrooms on our county-by-county map based on the street address of the main studio for each group’s primary station. In rare cases, the FCC’s studio data appeared to be in error. To rectify those outliers, researchers relied on the mailing addresses that those stations used on their websites. For example, the Online Public Inspection File for WRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Washington DC, appears to mistakenly list the studio address for the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia and links to NBC10 Philadelphia’s website. Researchers chose to use the Washington address listed on WRC-TV's own website.
Cable-only stations were not included since they do have broadcast licenses. Non-Class A low-power stations that do not rebroadcast over a full-power or low-power Class A station were also excluded. These stations are overwhelmingly used as translators to rebroadcast a signal originating elsewhere, and they are subject to looser federal reporting requirements, making systematic assessment for original local news content challenging.
Ethnic Media in the 2026 Report
In previous years, we maintained a separate list of ethnic media that included foreign language news outlets as well as outlets publishing in English but serving a specific demographic, including African American newspapers. As part of our 2026, we discontinued ethnic media as a separate database and incorporated the outlets into their respective media types. This change was conducted to better reflect the importance of these outlets within their local media ecosystems, as well as streamline our updating process to ensure these outlets are counted correctly.
As an example, the Spanish language newspaper La Raza, in Chicago, was previously included as an ethnic media outlet, and did not appear in either our newspaper database or newspaper maps of Chicago. Under this revision, La Raza is now included in the primary list of newspapers and will be shown on our maps accordingly. Additionally, we now include an ethnic media indicator variable across all our databases, so that these outlets can be filtered for research purposes or historical consistency.
In making this change, we also updated our ethnic media list to account for outlets that are no longer publishing or which don’t include local content. In our 2025 report, we listed 672 ethnic media outlets; after updating and categorizing these outlets by media type, 220 were combined into newspapers, 222 into digital sites and networks, and 71 into television newsrooms.
Dealing with Circulation Limitations
The circulation figures in our 2026 report come with a number of limitations. Some circulation figures are audited and verified; others are self-reported. Therefore, we have incorporated additional verification steps and information in an attempt to be as transparent as possible about where we are getting the numbers. When possible, we use circulation numbers for paid weekday circulation from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). AAM is the industry leader in media verification and specializes in verifying circulation metrics for publishers. However, less than 10% of papers in the database – mostly dailies – currently subscribe to AAM audits, which count both paid print and digital subscriptions in the total number. Additionally, the reported AAM numbers for the large dailies often lag behind the audit by a year or more. Because news organizations must pay AAM to verify their circulation statistics, many small papers do not use the service and instead self-report. In addition to AAM, we have consulted SRDS and E&P datasets. When available, we used circulation figures provided by state press associations. There is currently no widely accepted and easily accessible tracking system for online readership data, especially for the thousands of local papers in small and mid-sized markets.
Tracking Sales, Changes in Ownership, Mergers and Closures
Throughout the year, the Local News Initiative tracks changes in ownership of newspapers and digital-only news outlets, as well as closures and mergers, through news accounts and press releases, as well as extensive online research. We consulted a number of industry sources as well as local libraries and, when possible, the outlets themselves. We define a closure as a newspaper or news outlet that ceased publishing and a merger as a newspaper that has been combined with another publication. We classify digital sites as closed (with a date listed for closure) if the site has not published any content for more than six months. We consult:
- Publicly available corporate documents, including quarterly and annual reports released by the individual media companies, and press releases by Dirks, Van Essen, & April; Cribb & Associates; and Grimes, McGovern and Associates – three of the most active firms in the U.S. handling sales of newspapers and digital sites.
- News articles about individual purchases and business decisions.
- Statements made by executives in press releases, news articles or industry presentations.
- Reports and interviews with industry representatives and analysts.
There are limitations to all of the above sources. Press releases, news articles, statements made by news executives and reports from industry analysts often list by title only the sales of the largest and most prominent newspapers in a chain, usually dailies. The weeklies involved in the sale, as well as specialty publications (including shoppers and business journals) and digital sites, are often grouped together and reported as a single number. That is why we try to check all announcements of sales against publicly available documents and corporate websites.
The local news ecosystem is rapidly changing, and we make every effort to adjust our database accordingly. We take all suggestions and corrections seriously; if you would like to reach us, please use our contact form here.
This research was overseen by Tim Franklin, professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News; and Zach Metzger, project director. Inquiries about the findings or insights in this report can be addressed to: stateoflocalnews@northwestern.edu.