News deserts: Why the continuing decline in local journalism threatens democracy

While the modern decline in newspaper circulation arguably began with the explosion of television during the 1950s, mainstream journalism has suffered global catastrophic devastation in the wake of internet technology. Canada has not been immune. According to the “Local News Research Project” at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, 256 local newspapers and 32 local news broadcast outlets closed just between 2008 and 2020 in Canada.

A November 2019 report by the Brookings Institute, “Local journalism in crisis: Why America must revive its local newsrooms,” described the growth of “news deserts” across the United States between 2004 and 2019; saying, “over 65 million Americans live in counties with only one local newspaper — or none at all.”

Bookings research analyst Clara Hendrickson wrote, “Thousands of local newspapers have closed in recent years. Their disappearance has left millions of Americans without a vital source of local news and deprived communities of an institution essential for exposing wrongdoing and encouraging civic engagement.”

The internet and social media have created widespread economic devastation in print media, drawing billions of news consumers globally while pirating content from mainstream publications at no cost.

In 2020, Penelope Muse Abernathy, Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media wrote, “In only two decades, successive technological and economic assaults have destroyed the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in this country for two centuries. Hundreds of news organizations — century-old newspapers as well as nascent digital sites — have vanished. By early 2020, many survivors were hanging on by the slimmest of profit margins.”

“The traditional business model that once supported local newspapers — relying on print subscribers and advertising to generate revenue — has become difficult to sustain as the audience for local news continues to shrink and advertising dollars disappear,” Bookings stated.

According to Abernathy, “Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost 2,100 newspapers, leaving at least1,800 communities that had a local news outlet in 2004 without any at the beginning of 2020.”

Why is local news important, some may ask? Because, globalization notwithstanding, local is where we live.

“As newsrooms shut down across the country, good governance takes a hit and partisanship worsens. It’s more important than ever to find ways to preserve local journalism,” according to Michael Hendrix of the Manhattan Institute.

The prevailing crisis in local journalism negatively impacts democracy in a number of ways.

Firstly, the coverage of provincial (state) and municipal politics receives decreasing public attention. This is dangerous because when important stories are not uncovered by boots-on-the-ground journalists and then published, the public lacks the information necessary to participate in the political process and hold government accountable.

Also, the local-news crisis has precipitated a general disengagement from local democratic life. As the public shifts away from local news, turnout in state and local elections has fallen in the U.S., and communities that have lost reporters have seen fewer candidates run for office.

Then too, “the decline in local journalism is not just a local concern, it is a national one also. Voters in communities that have experienced a newspaper closure are less likely to split their vote between the two major political parties, contributing to national political polarization. With local news struggling to survive and compete with national news outlets for consumers’ attention, partisan reporting and coverage of national partisan conflict have come to dominate news consumers’ diets,” according to Bookings.

In May 2020 Prof. April Lindgren of Ryerson published an article, “Local news is being decimated during one of its most important moments,” — showing how Canadians turned away from social media in favour of traditional news media for COVID-19 news. “A Statistics Canada survey done in early April found that 51 per cent of respondents relied upon local, national and international news outlets as a main source of information about COVID-19. Just under 10 per cent cited social media. In a separate poll conducted around the same time, nearly three-quarters of respondents (74 per cent) said social media platforms like Facebook are less accurate than traditional media.”

The coincidence of public reliance on news media for factual pandemic information and the decrease in advertising revenue caused by that same pandemic should be a clarion-call to rescue journalism. Read a newspaper.