Communities lose when newspapers die

It is a story of corruption that will stay secret, politicians who will need fewer votes to win, even dangerous communicable diseases that will spread faster as our best scientists struggle to fight them.

The story is the slow and painful demise of local newspapers, a story whose ending is not yet written but which — without bold intervention and strong reader support — could bring catastrophic repercussions.

Whether you follow the news or not, whether you trust journalists or not, the financial challenges slaying local newspapers will affect your community, your wallet, your quality of life. In some cities, they already have.

We’ve watched local newspapers lose revenue to tech giants for the better part of the last quarter century. In recent years, the outcome has become dire, with nearly one in five — almost 1,800 newspapers — closed in the last 15 years, according to Penelope Muse Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Journalism and Media Economics at the University of North Carolina.

Even more prevalent than closures are what Abernathy calls “ghosts,” newspapers that are a shell of what they were. Tens of thousands of journalists left newsrooms in the decade ending 2017.

What happens when a community loses a newspaper? Or when the newspaper no longer has enough reporters to cover the news? The Federal Communications Commission as far back as 2011 had a bleak prognosis : “More government waste, more local corruption, less effective schools, and other serious community problems.” It was right:

• It costs you money: Higher wages for government employees, higher deficits and — perhaps a more esoteric example — higher costs for municipal borrowing. Last May, researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago found all three after looking at how local newspaper closures affected public finance.

• It might hurt your health: Scientists with the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization told the health news site STAT last year they use local newspaper reports to watch for the spread of infectious diseases and are handicapped in communities without newspapers.

• Fewer people hold power: When local newspapers go out of business, several recent studies show, we don’t vote as often or stay engaged with politics. That means fewer people elect our politicians. Think about the last time you voted. Did you vote in every race on the ballot? Or did you skip some because you couldn’t easily find verified information about the candidates?

Without local newspapers, who reveals injustices like the widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests reported by the Boston Globe in 2003? Or leads a community-wide discussion of race relations and the impact on housing, crime and education, as Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal did in 1993? Or exposes high death rates among Las Vegas construction workers as the Las Vegas Sun did in 2009? These are just three examples of public service so exemplary they received a Pulitzer Prize.

We can’t afford to lose this kind of journalism. You can help by subscribing to at least one local newspaper. The Knight Foundation last month announced a major effort to help, committing $300 million to organizations including those that pay for local journalism, like the American Journalism Project, Report for America and the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica. Philanthropists around the country are funding nonprofit startups to help fill the void.

We should pay attention to what other countries are doing, too, even though government intervention rightly raises some hackles.

Late last year, the Canadian government announced it would spend $600 million to protect public service journalism, using tools such as tax incentives. In January, we saw Facebook pledge to spend $300 million in the U.S. to help local newspapers, a year after Google promised the same amount.

It’s a good start, but not nearly enough: The duopoly controls most online advertising revenue, benefits from news content, yet doesn’t pay for the substantial cost of quality journalism.

Bold intervention is what we need.