This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1481569
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1481569
This is interesting, but is this really a problem of “lack of local news” or a consequence of the preference to be given only the “news” you want. Bigger communities can afford to keep multiple outlets in business, and even though they all want to be considered “news” they often repeat the storyline their target audience wants to hear.
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Correction: Tolland, CT, does have a news outlet, the Journal-Inquirer, published in Manchester, CT.
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If you answered yes, you are likely wealthier than the average American, and you live in or near a metro area.
Wealthier than average is the main requirement but it doesn’t have to be a metro area. There are small towns with wealthier than average populations like retiree enclaves or tourist towns that attract remote tech workers with money to spend on a small town paper.
My retiree-heavy tourist town in the PNW has a decent weekly newspaper that covers city council meetings and other local news. It’s been in business since 1889. Here’s the web site: https://ptleader.com/
One thing that has changed in recent years is that the paper used to do a fair amount of in-depth local investigative reporting. That has mostly disappeared, with the paper now covering just a surface skim of current local news. I guess this is because classified advertising dried up and moved online, so there is no money for an investigative reporter. I’ll bet this is happening with other small local papers that have to survive only on subscriptions now.
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I wonder how many towns without a newspaper have an informal website that discusses local issues. It can’t take the place of critical reporting, but might keep an eye on local government.
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In my limited experience the various formal and informal discussion groups may talk about local government, but they’re likely to become captured by the viewpoints of people who have more time on their hands and/or some personal incentive to post. The accuracy level is also not great.
So it’s similar to places that nominally have a local news source, but one run by interested parties.
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Well, there are the ubiquitous NextDoor neighborhood-specific sites that range from okay to horrible depending on location. I dip into my local NextDoor site now and then, and there are sometimes posts from civic activists about things the paper doesn’t cover.
Usually it’s small stuff like whining about street pot holes or dogs off leash, but there was some good coverage about a move to help a homeless encampment last year, with almost no coverage by the local paper.
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This is exactly as designed for by the Reagan era deregulation in media.
Sinclair is evangelical to the core - you know this for sure because the CEO was recently arrested for chasing prostitutes in Baltimore - and they have bought up all those remote places where the only money left, in truth, is peoples’ votes.
It started in radio, which was why Rush was so big despite being a barroom bloviator with no wit and less charm.
As much to do with what they don’t show you as what they do. But the message is in concert.
Own a media outlet and you own your own truth. We used to have rules for this, and now we’re finding out why.
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Some of these small town papers survive on Obits and the legal requirements for posting county information. That may be enough to layout the paper and operate the press, but that’s about it. I think it is a real issue, and one alternative would be to create a fund to sponsor local newspaper co-ops. I just wonder if say Prince of Wales, Hyder in SE Alaska is actually all that interested. Small communities like that have been driven by gossip for ages.
ETA I’ve been to Metlakatla, Craig and Point Baker. The borough itself is huge, but sparsely populated (<6000). The cost of distributing a paper for the borough would make doing so untenable.
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The $64 billion question is who is going to be the sponsors. Most of the chains I see buying up tiny local operations are, um, right of center. They can afford to support the money-losing or breakeven papers because it fits with their other plans, or because they can offer ad sales packages with much lower selling overhead.
If you were thinking of something focused on the public good, that’s a whole different ball of fish. One of the things a lot of local operations haven’t fully recognized is that they don’t really need to bother with national or international coverage – people can get that better elsewhere, and it’s an expense.
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Yep. How delicate, “right of center,” sure they don’t rename them Der Sturmer but they all all seem to drink from that well.
I think we’d have to create a charitable organization to fund them from small donors and find local or people willing to participate in more remote areas. But the right has deep pockets to fund it’s spin machine and they’re happy to lose money in exchange for political domination. Part of the problem there is that the same people who are willing to do that are needed to combat that same behavior in bigger markets.
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In my county, we are an impoverished county on average (20% is considered poverty level - we’re at 21%) We have 2 local papers - actual print - and 1 online paper of good repute - but all 3 broadcast stations except PBS are Sinclair owned and they push out their right-wing agenda in the blandest possible way.
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You have my sympathy.
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One development may partially offset the loss in local news coverage: town and city websites, which usually include calendars that register upcoming meetings of municipal committees and their agendas, election information, things like trick or treat hours and July 4 fireworks time and location, hydrant flushing schedules, and much more. Of course, people have to take the initiative to visit a municipality’s website. I wish that my town’s website included more information about town business – for instance, minutes of past meetings.
Also, an observation about local newspapers: they once (and not all that long ago) did the work that sites like NextDoor do today. Via Newspapers.com, I’ve had frequent occasion to visit newspapers from all over the country, from the early 1800’s on. It’s amazing how even newspapers from large cities used to be filled with local trivia. For instance, I was interested to learn that, in 1910 or so (I can’t remember the month or day), my great grandfather in Tazewell, VA got his potatoes in. (His wife, my great grandmother Daisy, constantly made sure that nearly every time someone in the family burped, The Clinch Valley News and sometimes the Tazewell Republican reported it. Both newspapers also frequently published her poetry. All this confirmed family lore about Daisy.) I had been puzzled why my nearly 90-year-old great great grandfather died in 1888 in Milwaukee, though he then resided in Mower County, MN. The Mower County News informed me that he died while visiting his daughter and her family in Milwaukee; one of his sons would be meeting the train returning his body to Austin. Local newspapers also picked up sensational stories from distant parts of the country. Another great great grandfather was murdered in NYC by “ruffians” in 1884 – quite a news story for a few weeks in NYC papers, which (to my amazement) got picked up (and was often distorted in the retelling) all over the country.
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We do subscribe to the local newspaper which is OK. I only watch the 11:00 PM news on a local affiliate of CBS. Murder, shootings, carjacking, smash&grab, are always the featured stories -one after another, after another and the gorier the better. I have seen few to none stories on upcoming primaries, candidates, or issues on the ballot.
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I live in Westchester county NY it is listed as having 18 news outlets. Recently the Record Review ceased to operate. As far as I know we have 2 remaining LoHud and the Katonah Bedford News (a right wing publication). Not 18 unless you count covering NYC the same as covering Westchester. So I’m skeptical about the data here.
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@Degree A list here of the five Westchester newspapers published (once each week) by Hometown Media Group. All in wealthy and/or populous communities, as far as I can tell. Probably only a slight variation in the reporting from town to town.
Another list that includes a few more weekly newspapers actually published (it appears) with Westchester communities in mind (and a lot of newspapers that are not but that the County has approved for the publication of legal notices): https://www.westchesterclerk.com/about/designated-newspapers
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The blandality of evil
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Being late of Hartford county and now of New London county, I found Tolland being a news desert as a surprise.
Good catch.
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Part of the problem is also the unwillingness of news organizations to embrace technological advances.
I know AI is a bad word in some parts, but used correctly, some of these “news deserts” could bloom. Don’t have time to site through tedious council or board meetings? Have AI comb through the meeting minutes, transcripts and agendas. Ditto with the mind-numbingly large data sets from police reports. If you can formulate the right questions, you might have discover that Houston Police simply stopped working on over 4000+ sexual assault cases over the last 3 years… or that Council spent hours discussing the expenditure of 50K but less than 15 minutes on a multi-million dollar deal for a project.
Similarly, public meeting notes from school boards and utility districts can now be mined for very little cost to find news of interest… and AI is very good at finding patterns that could lead to journalistic investigations that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred to anyone.
AI isn’t a panacea, but in a budget conscious newsroom, it could provide needed analytic power freeing reporters to do and write more news.
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