Medill's State of Local News 2024 report expands on what it qualifies as local news — and asks readers to point out what he missed

The third annual State of Local News report, released Wednesday by Medill's Local News Initiative, documents the decline of local news in the United States in substantially all key metrics: number of newspapers; publication frequency; Employment; Circulation and readership.

The bleak numbers on these fronts should come as no surprise to anyone, but it is noticeable that some declines are even more drastic than expected. “In our 2022 report, the State of Local News Project predicted that by the end of 2025, the United States would have lost a third of its print newspapers over the past two decades,” writes Zach Metzger, director of the State of Local News Project. “In this year’s report we found that the country has already exceeded this mark. There are just under 5,600 newspapers left, 80% of which are weekly newspapers.” According to the report, more than 3,200 printed newspapers have disappeared since 2005.

Medill's annual report has become a de facto reference point for the state of local news across the country. However, it should be read in light of the difficulty of creating a definitive map of all local news outlets across the country. The Local News Impact Consortium (a national collaboration of local news researchers) notes that “local information ecosystems are changing faster than we can study them.” Last year, Medill's local news mapping work was examined for errors, duplicates and omissions found in the Local News newsletter Blues have been documented in detail. The Medill team made its data more transparent this spring and agreed to accept updates and corrections in June. Notably, the introduction to this year's report acknowledges possible omissions (“In updating a database of more than 9,000 local outlets, we will miss some”) and encourages readers to report any suggestions for changes (the methodology page has yet to be updated not displayed). be online at the time of publication).

Still, this year's report aims to provide “a more holistic view of local news in the United States.” For the first time this year, the report documents “network-based local news sites” such as Patch and Axios Local. There are more than 700 of these locations and they are predominantly concentrated in metropolitan areas.

Some other tidbits from the report:

: Last year, “500 of the largest daily and weekly newspapers in the United States lost an estimated two million print and digital readers,” the report said, citing the Alliance for Audited Media. Most so-called “daily newspapers” are daily in name only; Medill notes that “more than 180 former daily newspapers now print less than three days a week” and categorizes more than 30 newspapers that print less than once a week or not at all as digital websites. All in all, “only a third of the more than 1,000 daily newspapers are printed seven days a week” this year.

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From 2022 to 2023, jobs in newsrooms — mostly reporters and editors — fell by nearly 2,000 positions, while employment at newspapers overall shrank by more than 7,000 jobs, compared to the few hundred lost the previous year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the newspaper publishing industry currently employs fewer than 100,000 people overall. There are fewer than 1,000 newspaper employees in 20 states. While the decline in journalism employment has garnered widespread attention, newsroom jobs account for only a third of newspaper positions. Many of the losses in remaining positions are occurring largely unnoticed as newspapers shorten delivery schedules and consolidate printing operations.

…In this context, this is one of the most significant declines in employment across any sector in the last two decades. In sheer numbers, newspaper job losses are the largest single decline across all industries covered in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Survey of Occupational Employment and Wages Statistics. In percentage terms, the newspaper industry's losses are the fourth largest among the OEWS sectors, on a par with cassette and DVD manufacturers.

: This year's report identified 208 counties without a single news source – four more counties than last year. According to Medill, 1,563 counties now only have one documented news source – one more than last year. “In total, this means that nearly 55 million people in the United States have limited or no access to local news,” the report said — about the same as last year.

: Medill documented an increase in newspaper changes this year. “We tracked 258 securities that changed hands in 75 separate transactions with 59 individual buyers” – compare that to last year, when 180 securities were acquired in 55 transactions. Ten companies control a quarter of all U.S. newspapers and more than half of all daily newspapers, and four of them (Gannett, Alden, Lee Enterprises and CNHI) are majority owned by private equity or hedge funds. (“In Gannett’s case, the largest chain of U.S. newspapers is owned by Fortress Investment Group, which was purchased by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, in May this year.”)

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Beyond newspapers, this report also covers more than 630 standalone digital news sites, 224 public broadcasters and more than 680 ethnic media outlets. Compared to last year, we saw a net increase of more than 80 standalone digital websites (including 30 newspapers that went online after ceasing their weekly print editions) and a decrease of just over 40 ethnic media outlets. Our list of public broadcasters remained unchanged.

The vast majority of publications listed in Medill's database are print newspapers, and of these, more than 80% are weekly newspapers.

: In the last six years, it has focused predominantly on urban areas. “In a review of the 7,500 largest journalism grants awarded over the past six years,” the report says, “we found that they were distributed among just 1,100 recipients and that more than 95% of the dollars donated to Organizations in urban areas went.”

: Medill's 12 “bright spots” this year include The Salt Lake Tribune (the first legacy news organization to become a nonprofit); the WhatsApp-first Conecta Arizona; nonprofit news organizations such as Cityside in California and PublicSource in Pittsburgh; and for-profit organizations like Lagniappe in Mobile, Alabama. What these otherwise different outlets all have in common: They are locally controlled; Everyone is looking for philanthropic support, recognizing the challenge that “tens of millions of Americans are unwilling to pay for journalism, especially online”; Executives emphasize listening to the community and “providing outstanding customer service to advertisers, donors and news consumers.”

You can read the full report here. (Additional features on local news startups, ownership changes, ghost newspapers and “All the News Missing in Cairo, IL” will be published later.)