If you’re reading this, you’re participating in a small miracle in the modern age — a local newspaper.
Since 2005, the U.S. has lost a quarter of all its newspapers — print and digital. And since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 360 newspapers have closed, according to a June report from Northwestern University’s school of journalism.
This, author Erin Karter said, puts the U.S. on track to lose one-third of all its papers by 2025.
The newspapers that remain have been dealt their own set of blows.
Just in the last several months, Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., has executed a nationwide hiring freeze, mandated universal holiday furloughs and laid off over 600 employees across its over 1,000 newspapers.
The factors playing into this trend are varied, complex and nuanced. Even national outlets have been hit.
Last week, CNN announced it would also be laying off several hundred employees. The same day, NPR said it would freeze all hiring as the company discussed how to slash its budget by $10 million.
That said, one thing is clear — more and more people are now living in areas without access to local news.
Karter writes: “Most of the communities that have lost newspapers do not get a print or digital replacement, leaving 70 million residents — or a fifth of the country’s population — either living in an area with no local news organizations, or one at risk, with only one local news outlet and very limited access to critical news and information that can inform their everyday decisions and sustain grassroots democracy. About 7 percent of the nation’s counties, or 211, now have no local newspaper.”
In the wake of more recent announcements, journalists on Twitter — sometimes with decades-long careers — publicly grappled with layoffs, while others organized fundraisers to support those affected.
As a young journalist, these nationwide shifts stir a lot of emotions, and I went back and forth on whether it was worth writing all of this down. Obviously, a journalist is going to stress the importance of journalism. Obviously, someone reading this far into the newspaper (or its website) values what it contains on some level.
But newspapers don’t close overnight, and corporations don’t lay off hundreds on a whim.
During the spring of my senior year of college, a philosophy professor of mine made a random joke in the middle of his lecture — “Or wherever news comes from — newspapers don’t exist anymore.”
With, admittedly, a bit too much gall, I pinned a copy of our campus newspaper (which I was the editor-in-chief of) to his office door with the quote written at the top.
He responded with an email to our class: “In light of a pointed and very funny note left on my office door after class, I repent of my hasty words and officially retract my obviously false assertion that newspapers don’t exist anymore.”
He also bought me coffee to apologize. In short, he told me his comment was made absentmindedly but that he recognized its roots — it’s easy to take for granted or invalidate ‘news’ as a faceless, seemingly perpetual entity.
It’s not wrong to be critical of news (though “media” shouldn’t be a political scapegoat). However, culturally, there’s apathy and disrespect toward its importance. And that, in part, suffocates the work being done.
According to a Duke University study, local newspapers represent 25 percent of people’s daily news but produce nearly half of all original reporting. From this, we get stories of both critical local importance, and oftentimes of national significance.
Fundamentally, a newspaper is a public service, not a product.
I won’t be ignorant of the fact that journalism as an industry has gone through many shifts, trials and changes beginning far before I was even born. The nature of news will always be changing, even if its tenets remain the same. Recent developments have just been on my mind (and Twitter feed) a lot.
But for whatever it’s worth, it’s a special and unique thing to have a strong, local (and daily!) newspaper. It’s worth thoughtfully engaging with articles, subscribing to varied outlets and sharing stories with those around you.
Just because a miracle prints every day doesn’t make it any less magical.
holly@news-banner.com
