The number of local journalists per capita in the United States has declined by about 75% on average since 2002, according to a new report by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, an aggregator of journalism bylines.
That includes more than 1,000 counties — about one in three — that do not have the equivalent of a full-time journalist, said the report, which attempts to quantify the scale of America’s local news shortage.
Fewer local journalists translates to fewer watchful eyes on school boards, local sports, businesses, town and city government, and other important local institutions, the report said, calling the issue “more severe and widespread than previously thought.”
“The loss of local news relates to so many other problems plaguing the US: Polarization, radicalization, loneliness, lack of trust in everyone and everything,” wrote Brian Stelter, CNN’s media reporter, on social media.
Previous reports have attempted to chronicle the loss of local newspapers as longtime owners sell and more and more outlets are bought up by regional or national chains. The report from Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, however, may be the first of its kind to attempt to count reporters, not outlets.
The report attempts to do so by using data from Muckrack, which it collects from articles published online. Researchers created a process to identify profiles that represented local journalists, and then adjusted for the volume of articles published, freelance work and other factors.
The assessment found a sweeping loss of local journalists in counties across the country.
“Thousands of rural, urban and suburban communities are being left without the basic reporting they need to stay informed, connected and civically engaged,” Steven Waldman, the president of Rebuild Local News, told CNN’s Stelter.
That includes many major metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, which have fewer local journalist equivalents per capita than the national average, the report said. That means that some neighborhoods “might be covered if there’s a serious crime but not much else.”
“You may get little reliable information on local candidates in many of L.A. County’s cities, whether the schools in your neighborhood are improving, whether the hospital nearby has a bad mortality rate, or how inspiring people might be working to repair your playground,” it said.
The report highlighted New York City, San Francisco, and Suffolk County, Mass., which covers Boston, as major metropolitan areas with high counts of local journalists.
Some states are also doing significantly better than others, the report said. Vermont, for instance, has 27.5 local journalist equivalents per 100,000 people, a similar density to New York City. This is due to a combination of existing legacy media and new nonprofit papers that have risen to prominence, the report said.
New nonprofit newsrooms have sprung up in cities around the country in recent years, especially as venture capital firms and major publishing companies have looked to acquire legacy metro newspapers.
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