- The Medill School of Journalism released its 2025 "The State of Local News" report.
- In the past 20 years, 40% of all newspapers shut down, including 130 in the past year.
- An estimated 50 million Americans now have limited or no access to reliable local news.
Earlier this month, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism released its 2025 “The State of Local News Report.”
The writers presented the 2025 numbers within the context of the trends they’ve witnessed over the past two decades, as well as the specifics of what transpired since the 2024 report.
While there are some pockets of hope — there are more digital news sites, for example — the overall theme is that the nation’s access to local reporting continues to dwindle.
“It’s been a story of pretty dramatic transformation,” said Zach Metzger, the director of the State of Local News Project by Medill Journalism School at Northwestern. “The key element of that transformation is a widening gap between who has access to local news and who doesn’t.”
“In 2005, there were three newspapers for every 100,000 people in the U.S.,” he said. “Today that number’s been cut in half.”
Nearly 40% of all newspapers that operated 20 years ago have ceased to exist. Today, there are 50 million Americans — some 15% of the country — with limited or no access to reliable local news. In the last year alone, out of the 5,400 newspapers still in operation, more than 130 have shut down. That’s more than two news outlets closing every week.
This year, the U.S. has 213 news “deserts,” which are areas that have no local reporting at all. Those regions have, on average, lower median incomes, greater rates of poverty and lower percentage of people with college degrees. Five of those counties are in Utah, with another 13 in the state that only have one local news outlet.
“Smaller, independent local outlets are a key backbone of the American local news ecosystem, as they are often the most active and trustworthy sources for community audiences,” according to the report’s conclusion.
“Supporting community local news ... is essential to ensuring that people can continue to access reliable information and maintain a strong sense of local identity.”
What is the local news project?
The report is a granular accounting of the local news business across the country, tracking some 8,000 different outlets. It acts, in a way, as a catalogue of American local media.
While the report’s focus is on newspapers, the researchers include 700 stand-alone digital news sites, 840 network-operated digital sites, 650 ethnic or foreign language organizations and 340 public broadcasters. As the broader news business adapts and changes, so too does the report.
The research originated in 2005 at the University of North Carolina, which was where Penelope Muse Abernathy, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times executive, began writing the report in 2015.
The overall project then migrated to Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism where it’s published today.
The report breaks down its data in several tranches. There is a summary of the local news landscapes, a breakdown of news deserts, a review of 20 years worth of data, a closer look at public broadcasting, circulation considerations, details of ownership changes, how the employment has evaporated and then some insight on the world of news startups.
New deserts are not just in rural areas
One issue the researchers noticed that Metzger pointed out was that, while there have been a number of new news organizations that have opened over the past 20 years, those organizations mostly operate in urban centers.
Less affluent or more rural areas — where it is inherently harder to start a business — are the areas where it is most difficult to establish a replacement and, therefore, have not benefited from the increase in digital media.
But the noteworthy element was that it’s not as if urban areas are not subject to the same scale of reductions in local news.
While the data and the maps identify the many news deserts in the West and the Southeast, that’s not the full picture. There are many urban and suburban areas that no longer have a local outlet either.
“We think about the local news crisis as a rural problem, but in many ways — looking over the past 20 years — the majority of the losses have been in urban areas and in suburbs, in particular, because this is where all that consolidation took place," Metzger said.
When discussing America’s ample towns without local news, Metzger pointed out that, “No one’s thinking of Cook County, Illinois — where Chicago is — as a news desert, but there are certainly neighborhoods and suburbs of Chicago that are because all of those papers have been consolidated. There’s less local reporting in those specific locales."
Another issue that changed is why these businesses are closing.
Historically, closures were often a byproduct of consolidation. This last year, however, a different trend has emerged.
“Instead, what we saw a lot of was the smaller independent family-run papers or papers from small chains closed down,” Metzger said.
This was worrying for Metzger and his team as those outlets are often the most active and vibrant within their respective communities. He said that, “they have this really strong family connection and also they’re the archives of institutional memory of that place.”
As for why, it can be as simple as longtime owners passing away or retiring without a succession plan or something much more straightforward. It is a tough time to be a small business owner in America, and the returns may no longer cover the costs.
How can local news thrive?
Anecdotally, Metzger has heard that among the more successful local news outlets, there is an increase in demand for good, local reporting that is relevant for local readers.
Outlets that focus on homegrown stories and not just reprinting national or international stories or filling the pages with wire stories from the Associated Press or Reuters, are doing well. Those that deliver “actually local stories about their community,” Metzger said.
“There’s been some re-imagining at a lot of levels of local news organizations (who are) thinking, ‘How can we reconnect with our audiences and our communities, and give them content that actually is reflective of them and what’s happening in that community?”