News deserts are more rampant than ever
Local news is vital to informing people about issues and events occurring within their communities. Hearing about how their local governments are combating certain issues can help people form an opinion on their leaders and inspire people to vote. But for people in news deserts, access to local news is impossible to obtain.
News deserts are counties without a locally based source of local news. While the majority of these news deserts are in high poverty areas, wealthier counties are also prone to become news deserts. Montgomery County, located in Maryland and ranked one of the top twenty wealthiest counties in the United States, lost their last local newspaper, The Sentinel, in 2020, leaving one million residents without a source of local news.
Newspapers’ transition of digital platforms is a major factor that has forced companies to shut down. In order to attract a larger audience and increase readership, newspapers have transitioned to online platforms. In traditional publishing, newspapers were able to obtain profits from advertisements. But on online platforms, as much as 80% of advertisement revenue goes to platforms such as Google and FaceBook, causing newspaper companies to receive less profit.
Hallie Matter, a housing reporter for The Baltimore Banner, explains that increasing dependence on technology has altered the reading behaviors and attention spans of audiences. She states that readers for The Baltimore Banner spend an average of 30 seconds reading one story. In an age where short-form content is thriving, longer media like articles in local newspapers is less appealing to readers.
Because of declining readership and a loss of profits, newspaper companies have struggled to afford the costs to produce physical newspapers. Printed newspapers require expensive machinery and mobile deliverers, which has become increasingly difficult for local newspapers to obtain. Because of the expensive prices, many newspaper companies have been forced to reduce their distribution area in order to cut delivery costs, leaving large numbers of people with no access to local news. Digital newspapers remove the production and distribution costs required for physical papers, making digital platforms more appealing to newspaper companies.
Newspaper companies’ funding has also been cut by the government. On May 1, President Trump signed an executive order cutting taxpayer funding of PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for “biased and bipartisan news coverage”. Taxpayer funding has been essential for helping these newspaper companies thrive. Less than 1% of NPR’s funding comes from non-taxpayer funding. PBS’ Chief Executive Paula Kreger states that news stations in smaller communities could lose 40%-50% of their funding. If funding continues to be cut from these newspapers, less people will have access to news and more people will be living in news deserts.
“News is an ecosystem,” Matter states, “Every outlet has a place on the food chain: the hyperlocal outlet helps informs communities and neighborhoods; the local outlets help inform and engage entire regions; statewide outlets cover whole states; and national outlets use local reporting, characters and scenes to further their work”. The increase of news deserts has decimated many local news outlets. Without these local newspapers, the “ecosystem” becomes unbalanced and news fails to spread to all communities.
The rise of news deserts has become an increasingly dire issue. More than half of the United States’ counties have very limited access to local news. Of these counties, 204 of them are news deserts, and another 228 counties are at high risk of becoming news deserts within the next 5 years. Without immediate action, the field of journalism could become a desert itself.
John Nichols, a writer for The Nation, states local media “has been torn so violently that it no longer functions”. Despite the visible collapse of local newspapers, many people are unaware of how much news organizations are suffering. In a Pew Research Center study asking if news outlets are doing well financially, 71% of respondents say that news outlets are doing very well or somewhat well. The respondents’ perceptions of news outlets do not reflect reality, as since 2005, more than 2,500 newspapers have shut down. It is vital to make the public aware of the collapse of local news outlets and the devastating impact they have on news deserts.
Federal funding is vital to keeping news organizations alive. The federal government should reinstate taxpayer funding to CPB to help support organizations like NPR and PBS. A larger portion of this funding to the CPB should be dedicated to supporting local news programs. Only a small amount of CPB funding goes to supporting local news reporting, and more money is required in order to keep local news outlets alive. Free Press, a media reform advocacy organization, argues that Congress should create a $1.5 billion emergency fund CBS can distribute to struggling news organizations.
State governments should also set aside a portion of money to aid local news outlets. More state funding has been essential to aiding local news companies and preventing the spread of news deserts. When New Jersey recognized that many of their local news outlets were collapsing, their government allocated between $1 million and $2 million to distribute to news outlets in lower-income New Jersey communities. New Jersey is the first state to provide local funds to news outlets outside of the funding for PBS and NPR. With states like New Jersey dedicating portions of funding to local news outlets, more local newspaper companies can continue to function.
Matter also highlights that more people need “to accept that news is worth paying for”. She goes on to say that, “The internet has conditioned us all to believe that high-quality information can be accessed anytime for free, but it always has to come from somewhere and someone”. Free news has become standard and subscriptions to newspapers are seen as inconvenient. In reality, subscriptions are vital to local news outlets to achieve a stable income. Even a subscription that is a few dollars a month can be the catalyst that keeps local news outlets alive.