* Axios in 2023…
The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year — rather than in 2025, as originally predicted.
Most communities that lose a local newspaper in America usually do not get a replacement, even online.
There are roughly 6,000 newspapers left in America, down from 8,891 in 2005, according to a new report from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. […]
Of the papers that still survive, a majority (4,790) publish weekly, not daily.
* Medill released its 2024 State of Local News Report today…
Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 127 newspapers have shut their doors. In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether.
In our 2022 report, the State of Local News Project predicted that by the end of 2025, the United States would have lost one-third of its print newspapers over the past two decades. In this year’s report, we found that the country has already exceeded that mark. A little fewer than 5,600 newspapers remain, 80% of which are weeklies.
Beyond newspapers, this report also tracks more than 630 stand-alone digital news sites, 224 public broadcasters and more than 680 ethnic media outlets. Compared with last year, we saw a net increase of more than 80 stand-alone digital sites (including 30 newspapers moving online after ending their weekly print editions) and a decrease of a little over 40 ethnic media outlets. Our list of public broadcasters remained static. As part of this report, we also expanded our database to include more than 700 network news sites. These networks, such as Patch, Axios Local, States Newsroom and TAPinto, have grown rapidly over the past five years and provide local news content to millions of readers. But as with stand-alone digital news-sites, the coverage of these networks is heavily concentrated in urban and suburban areas, with more than 95% located in 179 metropolitan counties. […]
Newspaper employment has continued to decline. From 2022 to 2023, newsroom jobs – mostly reporters and editors – decreased by almost 2,000 positions while newspaper employment overall shrank by more than 7,000 jobs, compared to the few hundred lost in the previous year. There are now fewer than 100,000 people employed in the newspaper publishing industry overall, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 20 U.S. states, there are fewer than 1,000 newspaper employees remaining. While declining journalist employment attracts much attention, newsroom jobs account for only a third of newspaper positions. Many of the losses in the remaining positions occur largely unseen as newspapers reduce delivery schedules and consolidate printing operations.
* Related…
* VOA | In US, fake news websites now outnumber real local media sites: NewsGuard’s editor for AI and foreign influence, McKenzie Sadeghi, told VOA the numbers are a grim development that could pose a threat to press freedom and the U.S. presidential elections. It contributes to the already declining trust in online media, she said. “The number of these sites have increased in size and scope and sophistication,” Sadeghi said. “We now find that the number at 1,265 has surpassed the number of daily local newspapers in the U.S., which is a bit alarming.”
* The Atlantic | Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event’?: The decline of the legacy news media has been playing out for decades, exacerbated most recently by the advent of the internet and the explosion of digital platforms, especially the ad-revenue-gobbling tech giants Google and Meta. Even when the ad-supported model of journalism still worked, the history of American media was punctuated by periods of dramatic expansion and contraction, often coinciding with the arrival of new technologies. The latest round of cuts, however, represents a grim new milestone.
* Nieman Lab | This year’s Pulitzer Prizes were a coming-out party for online media — and a marker of local newspapers’ decline: In the years that have followed, non-newspaper outlets have made substantial gains in certain categories — Audio Reporting, obviously, but also Feature Writing, which magazines have come to dominate. But despite online-only news orgs having been eligible for 15 years now, their wins have been more sporadic. Newspapers were still the dominant force in the main reporting categories.
- Dirty Red - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 11:20 am:
Also related: Congratulations to Tracy Baim of Windy City Times fame on being named the next director of Press Forward Chicago.
- Proud Papa Bear - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 11:29 am:
I’ve been watching the terminal illness of the Northwest Herald for about a decade now as it keeps declining. I keep wondering which year will be their last.
- AlfondoGonz - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 11:45 am:
I’m 36 years old. As a boy, I would go downstairs before my mom and brother so that I could eat breakfast at the table with my dad. He would read the Tribune, and when I would arrive he would hand me the sports section. We would sit at the table, reading the paper together.
I doubt it will be the same going forward, everyone hunched over their phone.
- TJ - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 11:56 am:
We are absolutely going to enter, if we haven’t already entered, an era of widespread municipal corruption the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations due to the utter lack of oversight the vast majority of towns and counties are going to get from a dedicated, focused, and well-staffed loccal press.
- OutHereInTheMiddle - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:01 pm:
Wish they could tell us how many of those 5600 exist only as a pitiful shell of a former news organization. (I’m looking at you SJ-R!)
- Give Us Barabbas - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:01 pm:
I’m curious about how the public relations industry is doing compared to newspapers; because there is some skills overlap, I would imagine some number of reporters go over to the dark side as the papers decline. But does someone have the hard numbers about PR jobs?
- Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:11 pm:
Remembering the smoke filled diners, eating and reading the newspaper, having coffee. Times always change. Nowadays people can get their own siloed news and stay in their bubbles. With newspapers, readers had political opinion writers and others they despised or would not read, but at least they saw their faces or names next to the stories they read.
- TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:13 pm:
“terminal illness of the Northwest Herald”
And that’s the best one out of the Shaw Media group.
The Shaw paper around here, is nothing more than an unofficial place for local governments to put their desired press releases disguised as news. With zero fact checking of what they are printing.
It doesn’t cost any extra for the same reporter slapping their name on the copy/paste press release to actually do a follow up on something they are printing, much less to ask a question or clarification regarding the often less than accurate info they are obsequiously passing along to the public.
Some of these papers are quickly helping themselves along to the extinction pile in how they are operating.
- Anotherretiree - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:13 pm:
The print versions of WSJ and NYT have disappeared locally. Its over.
- levivotedforjudy - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:17 pm:
There is a lyric from an old Earth Wind & Fire song that rings true, “you can’t miss what you never had” on this. If you have never followed a local newspaper beat reporter and got to experience what depth they bring to a story or how they could take a national story and make it local or show how a story has evolved through knowledge of the subject, you can’t miss it. That is a shame but looks like it is where we are at and will continue to be. The train has left the station.
- Just Me 2 - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:19 pm:
Give Us Barabbas - the lack of news outlets has surprisingly led to an increase in public relations roles, although now they are often called content creators. They create articles, stories, visuals, and social media posts to share directly with their intended audience through a variety of channels instead of relying on a reporter to cover (and filter) it before publishing to the masses.
Everyone is now a “reporter.”
Welcome to my Ted talk.
- sewer thoughts - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:25 pm:
Where can I get an auction for the presses from these closed newspapers that will fit in my garage and start printing local broadsides a la American troublemakers wearing wigs?
Or was the first culprit the printing operation consolidations of the 1990s?
- Back to the Future - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:33 pm:
The SunTimes has figured out an interesting new model.
Hope that it continues to work for the Times and other newspapers think about using their model.
- DuPage Saint - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:37 pm:
Many of papers I read have very little local reporting. Lots of stories are reprinted from other major newspapers
And I guess ominously I was trying to check out a story on grandkids upcoming football game. Was on line but at end of article it said story generated by an A I thing by putting in stats of the two teams. So not only no local reporter no reporter wrote story
- TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:42 pm:
Oh I forgot to mention, a few years ago a local paper was caught getting paid by the local diocese to run favorable stories placed into the news category -written entirely by the diocese- without disclosing that it was paid for.
Since that time, they now stamp “SPONSORED” on the thumbnails of favorable diocese stories they continue to take money to run.
There’s one on their site right now.
Calling it a newspaper seems inaccurate.
- Alton Sinkhole - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 12:44 pm:
Interesting book on the PR world called “All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians”
Author, a sort of rehabilitating PR pro, goes through how much easier it has become to (for lack of better word) manipulate media on behalf of clients in the era of large PR firms and small newsroom staffs.
- Cool Papa Bell - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 1:31 pm:
=It doesn’t cost any extra for the same reporter slapping their name on the copy/paste press release to actually do a follow up on something they are printing, much less to ask a question or clarification regarding the often less than accurate info they are obsequiously passing along to the public.=
While it might not “cost” extra. There is simply no time for many of those reporters. So many are tasked with any number of additional duties its impossible to chase down an extra interview for each story. The SJR has run their daily news operation with one reporter. ONE.
- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 1:35 pm:
===There is simply no time for many of those reporters===
I don’t buy that. It’s an excuse.
- TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 1:51 pm:
“There is simply no time for many of those reporters. ”
Then they aren’t reporters.
We keep calling them newspapers, but they really aren’t anymore.
We keep calling them reporters, but make excuses why they can’t do the absolute bare minimum to meet the definition of the word reporter.
There’s a perfect example of this in todays paper, where the local paper is reprinting a press release from a nearby city about where election signs can be placed and that the city will remove anything not meeting those requirements. A SINGLE picture could be taken right across the street from city hall, showing dozens of signs which do not meet the requirements of where they can be placed. It doesn’t even take the writing of any words - simply a picture which de facto contradicts the messaging the city is putting out in a press release to be copy pasted then slapped with a byline and called news. If noticing reality is too much work for them, then lets stop calling them a newspaper and lets stop calling them reporters.
I don’t fault you for trying to make lemonade out of lemons, but it seems to be a consistent theme across many institutions right now. The momentum of calling them what they were called in the past is all that is left. Much like the ‘voicemail’ symbol on your phone is a cassette tape, despite having long since not been a part of how that system works.
- btowntruth from forgottonia - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 2:16 pm:
Some of them did it to themselves.
Instead of more and better local coverage they reduce content and cut staff.
Then they wonder why subscriptions and sales keep dropping.
- btowntruth from forgottonia - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 2:21 pm:
True story:
My local “weekly” put on their front page stuff that was written word for word by the county board.
Didn’t say it was written by them,didn’t say it was an editorial,printed it like it was a news story.
And when I pointed it out to some people who read it,not a single one of them cared.
- Gravitas - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 2:31 pm:
For many persons, there first job was delivering papers. While I rode a bicycle with a canvass newspaper pouch on the handlebars, some boys with larger routes used pushcarts.
Sad to see the papers vanishing.
- Bruce Rushton - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 2:35 pm:
“I don’t buy that. It’s an excuse.”
It’s reality. Gannett, SJ-R owner, has a cookie-cutter formula based on lots of stories/ads, not reviews, on restaurants and coverage of high school sports. A few papers, the Milwaukee fish wrap and Arizona Republic being examples, do get sufficient resources, but for other towns…
With regard to the time issue, a reporter willing to work 60 hours a week, without overtime, would be redirected, at many papers, to writing drivel instead of hard news that could make a difference.
In a not long ago call with analysts, Mike Reed, Gannett CEO, told analysts that Gannett expects to sell some assets to “vanity” purchasers. It would seem he’s referring to papers like the SJ-R that have been gutted–we can sell the name and get out.
From what I’ve seen, the nonprofit model is a mixed bag. CNI and the Sun Times do fine work. In Philadelphia, the Lenfest Institute is intriguing. But far too many nonprofits are ideologically based, as are too many independent for profits. It feeds into the leftist biased media scenario.
I saw a lot during 35-plua years in the industry, from an editor who asked me “Who’s Jim Crow?” (she’s still an editor0 to folks who were the smartest people I’ve ever met. The smart people, mostly, have gotten out.
Cool Papa Bell isn’t wrong. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Or something like that.
Apologies for length.
- Back to the Future - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 2:55 pm:
Hat tip to Gravitas.
Thanks for the note.
One of my first jobs was also delivering newspapers.
Used a pushcart. Tribune and Times in the morning before school and Daily News and the American after school. Got to read about the Sox every day and made decent money particularly at Christmas when everyone gave a tip.
Still subscript to the Tribune, Times, Crain’s, and NYTimes.
Great memories!
- Annonin' - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 3:47 pm:
Papers in Peoria and Springfield are restaurant openings or says late crime stuff. Wonder if these are in the count
- Former weekly Newspaper owner - Wednesday, Oct 23, 24 @ 7:06 pm:
Many of the remaining weekly have the name only. The Gannnet owned Monmouth paper has a circulation of 56.
There are some good ones left Brown Pike The Henderson and Hancok Quills and the Rushville Times
I have also found the print New York Times again. Outside Chicago.
The Tribune does not exist outside metro Chicago.