The pandemic has been bad for the country’s local newspapers. But maybe not as bad as some people have feared.
More than 360 newspapers in the United States have gone bankrupt since just before the start of the pandemic, according to a new report from the journalism school at Northwestern University.
That same pace — about two closures a week — happened before the pandemic. Many newspaper analysts had thought that the economic conditions created by the coronavirus, especially a drop in advertising, would push the rate up significantly.
“The good news is there was a lot of fear when the pandemic broke out and we had a very severe economic constraint that it would be kind of a death knell for a lot of papers,” said Penelope Muse Abernathy, the report’s author and a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. “The good news is that it didn’t happen. The bad news, or the worrying news, is that we continue to lose newspapers at the same rate as we have been losing them since 2005.”
The closures have perpetuated the problem of so-called news deserts — places with limited access to local news, the report said. More than a fifth of Americans now live in such a place, or in a place at risk of becoming one.
A total of 2,500 newspapers in the United States — a quarter of those — have been closed since 2005. The country is set to lose a third of its newspapers by 2025. And in many places, the remaining local media outlets have made major cuts in staffing and circulation.
Investments in local journalism are mainly aimed at larger markets, the report shows. That has led to an inequality between communities with access to high-quality news organizations and those without.
“What that does is it feeds a nation that is journalism divided, and when you have a nation that is journalism divided, it exacerbates our political, cultural and economic divisions,” Ms Abernathy said.
Major media companies, such as Gannett, which are seen as a solution to the threat facing local journalism, are quick to sell or shut down failed newspapers, according to the report. In addition, private regional media companies that “have no obligation to explain their strategic and financial decisions, identify their largest shareholders and report annual revenues,” have bought many of the floundering newspapers, the report said.
“The truth is, who I choose on the school board affects me much more than who I vote for president,” Ms Abernathy said. “That’s why we need to get back to rebuilding local news in these struggling communities.”
