{"id":24802,"date":"2023-01-16T12:52:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T20:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24802"},"modified":"2023-01-16T12:52:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T20:52:41","slug":"local-news-is-the-oxygen-of-democracy-and-disappearing-when-its-needed-the-most-media-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/16\/local-news-is-the-oxygen-of-democracy-and-disappearing-when-its-needed-the-most-media-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018LOCAL NEWS IS THE OXYGEN OF DEMOCRACY\u2019 AND DISAPPEARING WHEN IT\u2019S NEEDED THE MOST: MEDIA EXPERT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"'Local<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Image via Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Alex Henderson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

December 27, 2022 (alternet.org)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the internet, many newspapers in major U.S. cities \u2014 the New York Times, the Washington Post \u2014 have become much easier for out-of-towners to access than they were in the past. The Times has plenty of online subscribers who don\u2019t live in the Big Apple; the Post has many readers outside of Washington, D.C. The internet has, in effect, made it easier for urban newspapers to become national publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the same time, many journalism professors and media analysts have been sounding the alarm about the shortage of local news in the United States \u2014 especially outside of major urban centers. Nancy Gibbs, who serves as director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, addresses that topic in an op-ed published by the Post<\/a> on December 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery couple of weeks,\u201d Gibbs explains, \u201cyou can read about another newspaper shutting its doors, or moving from daily to weekly, or hollowing out its newsroom until it\u2019s little more than a skeleton staff bulked up with j-school students. Study the maps made by Penny Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern University and an expert on dwindling sources of news, and you can see the dead zones \u2014 the 200 or so counties with no local paper. About 1600 other counties have only one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

READ MORE:<\/strong>How a \u2018local news crisis\u2019 is making American \u2018political and economic divisions\u2019 even worse: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gibbs elaborates, \u201cLocal news is the oxygen of democracy, the most trusted source for the most essential information. And we\u2019ve long known why dying newsrooms damage communities. But look at the maps again, and another alarming picture comes into focus: The very places where local news is disappearing are often the same places that wield disproportionate political power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2020, Poytner\u2019s Tom Stites<\/a> lamented that \u201cthe relentless spread of news deserts\u201d was \u201cspeeding up even before the coronavirus incapacitated local economies\u201d and that \u201csince then, the rate\u201d had \u201caccelerated some more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stites noted a report published that month<\/a> by Penelope Muse Abernathy and her colleagues at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The report was titled, \u201cNews Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stites lamented, \u201cSince the fall of 2018, the report says: 300 more newspapers have failed, bringing the death toll to 2100, almost 25 percent of the 9000 newspapers that were being published 15 years ago. The number of communities that had their own newspapers in 2004 and now have no original reporting whatsoever, in print or digitally, has grown to 1800 from 1300. These are news deserts, with no coverage of issues \u2018such as the quality of schools in that community or the spread of an infectious disease.\u2019 Many are in economically challenged rural places, but news deserts are now also invading wealthy suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

READ MORE: <\/strong>John Oliver rips local news stations that report whatever police tell them without investigating it<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stites\u2019 article and Abernathy\u2019s report were published two and one-half years ago. And the state of local news hasn\u2019t gotten any better since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gibbs, in her Washington Post op-ed, notes that in South Dakota, for example, \u201cabout half of\u201d the state\u2019s \u201c66 counties have only a single weekly newspaper,\u201d adding that \u201cseven counties\u201d in South Dakota \u201chave no newspaper at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could do the same math for residents of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont or Delaware, all states with similarly enhanced political clout,\u201d Gibbs observes. \u201cBut finding reliable local news sources is much harder in the first three \u2014 geographically larger, rural states with dispersed populations, which are much more likely to lack high-speed internet as well. In contrast, Delaware\u2019s three small counties have 13 newspapers; Vermont\u2019s 14 counties have 39. By now, we know quite a bit about why this matters. The citizens whose votes count the most might have the hardest time learning about the issues and candidates running in their communities \u2014 because there\u2019s no longer anyone reporting on them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gibbs argues that the shortage of local news encourages reflexive partisanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a Democrat hoping to stand a chance of winning in a red state, or a Republican in a blue one, it helps if voters get to know you personally, see you at ribbon cuttings and town halls, hear where your views depart from party orthodoxy,\u201d Gibbs warns. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot harder to do without local reporters providing reliable coverage, no matter how many targeted Facebook ads you buy. By the same logic, winning candidates are accountable to the voters who elevate them \u2014 unless no one knows what they ran on or what they are doing with their power, beyond whether they have an R or a D on their jersey. If you weaken the connection between voters and their representatives, you empower their donors, lobbyists and conflict entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image via Creative Commons. Alex Henderson December 27, 2022 (alternet.org) Thanks to the internet, many newspapers in major U.S. cities \u2014 the New York Times, the Washington Post \u2014 have become much easier for out-of-towners to access than they were in the past. The Times has plenty of online subscribers who… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24803,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24802\/revisions\/24803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}