Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative released the latest State of Local News. It highlights the dire state of print journalism with maps to illustrate the problems. This one highlights counties that are on the watch list to become news deserts.
News deserts are defined as counties with no local news outlet. Counties on the watch list have only one news outlet and a high poverty rate putting them at an elevated risk of losing that outlet. You can hover over each county for specifics on this map.
The six largest newspaper chains own about 20% of the country’s daily and weekly papers with a presence in every state except for West Virginia.
Digital local news sites are also concentrated among a few major players while geographically concentrated in metropolitan areas.
For some levity, a few bright spots are also highlighted. These are startup news organizations”creatively working toward sustainable business models” - the white dots on the map below as well as some featured spots (the blue stars). The counties are colored by number of news outlets from 0 (very dark) to 10 or more (the brightest colors).
The full report can be seen here.
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