• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Big Picture>
  3. big picture>

The crisis facing local papers — and why it matters to democracy

Geoff West
November 14, 2019
The crisis facing local papers — and why it matters to democracy
simonkr/Getty Images

Is local journalism a public good worth saving?

If so, public funding could go a long way in addressing a decade-long trend of declining revenue that has forced local newspapers to cut staff, reduce coverage and sometimes close their doors.

An array of ambitious recommendations on how the federal government could save local papers are out this week from the Brookings Institution, one of Washington's best-regarded think tanks, which outlines the crisis facing the industry and why it matters to the health of American democracy.


In the decade ending last year, newspaper advertising revenue plummeted by two-thirds (68 percent) while the industry's workforce was cut almost in half (47 percent). But the near-collapse of the old business model, which relied on print advertising and paid subscribers for revenue, has largely affected local news rather than the most prominent national papers — The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post — whose revenue has increased in recent years.

For local news, the reality is different: One in five local papers have closed since 2004, creating so-called "news deserts," or areas of the country without a daily or weekly newspaper, in more than 200 counties, affecting over 5 million people.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The report describes how the problems facing local newspapers has affected the health of democracy.

Newsroom closings and layoffs, for instance, have resulted in fewer reporters in statehouses or in Washington scrutinizing the actions of elected officials and providing information to readers that could influence their voting behavior.

The report also cites research correlating the loss of local newspapers with decreased turnout in state and local elections as well as fewer candidates choosing to run for local office and "a general disengagement from local politics."

Other studies suggest news deserts increase polarization in a community because people are left with only national news outlets. Those "tend to report on partisan conflict, focusing on the polarization of national political elites," in Brookings' summation. "With local news struggling to survive and compete with national news outlets for consumers' attention, partisan reporting and coverage of national partisan conflict has come to dominate news consumers' diets."

Viewing local news as a public good critical to a healthy democracy, rather than simply a product suffering from market forces, puts the onus on lawmakers to do something to save it.

"In other words, when those who read, listen, and watch the news are thought of purely as consumers, the economic challenges confronting today's local newsrooms are not particularly troubling," the report says. "But when news consumers are also seen as citizens and participants in civic life, threats to the commercial viability of the local news industry greatly diminishes the ability to meet the demands of living in a democracy."

The report recommends that Congress extend the personal tax deduction for local news subscriptions, offer tax breaks for newspaper expenses and allow papers to claim tax exemptions on advertising and subscription revenue.

The report also suggests lawmakers address how large online platforms, such as Google and Facebook, generate advertising revenue by aggregating and distributing content from local news without that revenue circling back to the news outlet.

Recommendations for lawmakers include taxing platforms that display a news publisher's content, providing an exemption to antitrust laws to allow publishers to collectively negotiate with Facebook and Google, and opening an antitrust investigation into the two companies' dominance of digital advertising revenue and whether any of their practices have unfairly disadvantaged news publishers.

Related Articles Around the Web
  • The crisis in local journalism has become a crisis of democracy ... ›
  • Local journalism in crisis: Why America must revive its local ... ›
  • Why Losing Our Newspapers Is Breaking Our Politics - Scientific ... ›
  • Why Local Newspapers Are the Basis of Democracy | HuffPost ›
big picture
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Paige Chan

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

David Thornburgh
John Opdycke

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Dave Anderson

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux
latest News

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

David Meyers
8h

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Our Staff
13h

Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

David Meyers
24 May

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Our Staff
24 May

The state of voting: May 23, 2022

Our Staff
23 May

Trump looms large over Tuesday’s primaries

Richard Perrins
23 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

Congress
Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Big Picture
First-ever majority-female New York city council

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Campaign Finance
Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

Voting
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg

Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

State
Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Elections