U.S. newspapers continuing to die at rate of 2 each week

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/journalism-united-states-39ef84c1131267233768bbb4dcaa181b

U.S. newspapers continuing to die at rate of 2 each week
By DAVID BAUDER

...

Areas of the country that find themselves without a reliable source of local news tend to be poorer, older and less educated than those covered well, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications said.

The country had 6,377 newspapers at the end of May, down from 8,891 in 2005, the report said. While the pandemic didn’t quite cause the reckoning that some in the industry feared, 360 newspapers have shut down since the end of 2019, all but 24 of them weeklies serving small communities.

An estimated 75,000 journalists worked in newspapers in 2006, and now that’s down to 31,000, Northwestern said. Annual newspaper revenue slipped from $50 billion to $21 billion in the same period.

News “deserts” are growing: The report estimated that some 70 million Americans live in a county with either no local news organization or only one.

True “daily” newspapers that are printed and distributed seven days a week are also dwindling; The report said 40 of the largest 100 newspapers in the country publish only-digital versions at least once a week. Inflation is likely to hasten a switch away from printed editions, said Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative.

Much of the industry churn is driven by the growth in newspaper chains, including new regional chains that have bought hundreds of newspapers in small or mid-sized markets, the report said.

Less than a third of the country’s 5,147 weekly newspapers and a dozen of 150 city and regional daily papers are now locally-owned and operated, Medill said.

[Joinfortmill]

1. Good local news can be difficult to find.

I have no idea what the hell is going on in my town.

[Demovictory9]

3. I subscribe to my tiny local paper. I pay even though they drop them off at library etc.

[dalton99a]

4. No news is good news for corrupt politicians

[Demovictory9]

2. sad. I pay monthly for the NTY, LA times, and sacramento Bee

[summer_in_TX]

5. We subscribe to our local small town paper and the Austin daily.

It got bought out by USA today several months back. Since the pandemic, they've had great difficulty getting someone to deliver it reliably to their small town customers.

My husband has called a ridiculous number of times. They've persuaded him to hang on and we'll see an improvement for a few days before it gets bad again.

Then they cut the Saturday paper out and only deliver six days a week. That hasn't helped reliability.

They also decided to drop their op-ed writers and focus on local writers, letters to the editor, and "solutions."

I love good opinion writing and am really missing my weekly Leonard Pitts column in particular.

These newspaper and other media conglomerates buy, piling on debt. Then they start making cuts to make their profit. In the meantime they leave very little worth reading. I really want to ensure there's funding for local news and investigative reporting. But the nonlocal owners do not care about their communities in the same way and they do not have a decent business model.

Our small town paper doesn't do investigative reporting. It's too easy to be hurt by a boycott. City newspapers do still, at least to an extent.

I'd finally given in to my husband and said okay, we can cancel now. But he couldn't get through. Then we heard Ronan Farrow on Steven Colbert and his passionate reminder about the problem of news deserts and the death of newspapers. He hasn't said anything since then – and we've gotten those deliveries so it's subsided again.

[jimfields33]

7. Go online. It's tragic that paper from trees are still being used.

It 2022, not 1802. Save money and get rid of printing and shift to exclusively online.

[jmowreader]

8. The vast majority of newsprint is as close to 100-percent recycled as you can get

A printed newspaper democratizes information. The seriously poor would never have access to news if the only news available required a multi-hundred-dollar device to read it on.

There's also the issue that in some jurisdictions the legals are required to be printed on paper in a newspaper. Paper can't be hacked into and illegally edited.

[Kaleva]

9. Younger generations are going digital. Print news is becoming obsolete

[scarletlib]

10. All true.

I read all my news on line but still subscribe to the local newspaper.

[RobinA]

11. The Paper

in my closest city, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is doing its level best to make itself irrelevant. The paper is a shadow of its former self, and the online version is no different. They've cut everywhere, gotten rid of 3/4s of the paper, and have dumbed down to the point where the front page is generally sports or human interest. The digital argument doesn't cut it because the digital version is no better.

I prefer to get my news from the paper and I prefer to read it hard copy. I realize that isn't everybody, but what used to be provided by the paper is not really available anymore anywhere. It's not like I can go online and read an in-depth newspaper. I'm just thankful for the NYT, which still provides some hard news and decent opinion.