The reliable flow of information is arguably one of the most essential battlegrounds in the fight to stabilize democracies around the world. The decline in local journalism, both in the United States and around the world, represents one of the three most important obstacles to that reliable flow. (The other two are authoritarian crackdowns on press freedoms and the rise of disinformation campaigns.)
Margaret Sullivan, media critic for the Washington Post, takes on this issue in Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy. A former Buffalo News executive editor, Sullivan contends that “democracy loses its foundation” with the decline in local news. Citizens know less about the work of local leaders, their governments, and their institutions.
Make no mistake. We are losing local news organizations — or seeing their diminution — at an alarming rate. Sullivan notes that more than 2,000 U.S. newspapers have closed down since 2004. As she writes, “These days, there are hundreds of counties in America with no newspaper or meaningful news outlet at all, creating ‘news deserts,’ as they’ve become known. And many of those that do remain are ‘ghost newspapers’ — phantoms of the publications they once were, and not much good to the communities they purport to serve.”
This shift has led to fewer journalists reporting on local and state governments, which, after all, is one of their most important roles. Between 2008 and 2018, newsroom employment fell 47 percent, from 71,000 workers to 38,000.
Read Full Article »