Americans need local news. Though the supply is dwindling, the demand is there. Without a strong local newspaper, news website, or television station, people will turn to less-regulated forums for information, like Facebook groups and NextDoor threads, full of partisan hate and misinformation.
There are few things that have a better effect on governance than a healthy, locally focused news environment: representatives bring back more money and vote the party line less often, businesses behave better, polarization decreases, turnout is higher, municipal finances are better, and pollution is reduced. In other words, reliable original news about a community improves that community.
So naturally, today’s local newspapers are filled with the opposite: Wire content about national politics. Not to be outdone, their websites are full of syndicated local stories from other areas, which can be confusing to readers. They endure as ghosts of their former selves.
In 2023, I predict that a major metropolitan daily will sever its ties with the major wire services and go local-only.
There is an enduring belief that a newspaper should inform its readers about the news of the world: a broad sweep of local and national politics, sports, entertainment, and culture, all arriving in a bundle on the doorstep before dawn. (It’s a romantic image for me too!) But there’s simply too much national news available today.
Local newspapers should stop filling their published product with non-local news and focus on what makes them unique, even if this breaks from the tradition of what many expect from a local newspaper or televised newscast. I recognize that these struggling local news sources will need more resources to do this, but they are not going to attract or retain subscribers by republishing stories about non-local topics.
The glut of national wire stories in today’s local newspapers is mostly explained by the economic crisis facing local news. As staffs are repeatedly cut, there are not enough reporters to fill a newspaper with original local content. Given that print advertising remains more profitable than digital for most newspapers, there is still plenty of incentive to publish a print edition. As subscription and per-issue prices increase, however, the remaining consumers open their local newspaper to see mostly national stories that are free to read online on other sites.
In ongoing research with Trusting News, my collaborators and I show that readers hold newsrooms accountable for perceived bias in the wire stories they run. The oversimplified headlines and snarky language common to national political opinion and analysis sticks out in many local newspapers, and readers often assume editors are running wire stories because they agree with them. It’s not clear enough to readers which stories are original and which come from the wires, and there is little evidence that the wire stories provide any value except increasing the page count.
Local media outlets’ remaining advantage in the information marketplace comes from reporting about their geographic area, and by filling their pages with national news, they are making the decision to unsubscribe easier for their remaining customers. A local news source cannot merely be a pale imitation of national news, or it will have no reason to exist.
Joshua P. Darr is an associate professor of political communication in the Manship School of Mass Communication and the department of political science at Louisiana State University.
Americans need local news. Though the supply is dwindling, the demand is there. Without a strong local newspaper, news website, or television station, people will turn to less-regulated forums for information, like Facebook groups and NextDoor threads, full of partisan hate and misinformation.
There are few things that have a better effect on governance than a healthy, locally focused news environment: representatives bring back more money and vote the party line less often, businesses behave better, polarization decreases, turnout is higher, municipal finances are better, and pollution is reduced. In other words, reliable original news about a community improves that community.
So naturally, today’s local newspapers are filled with the opposite: Wire content about national politics. Not to be outdone, their websites are full of syndicated local stories from other areas, which can be confusing to readers. They endure as ghosts of their former selves.
In 2023, I predict that a major metropolitan daily will sever its ties with the major wire services and go local-only.
There is an enduring belief that a newspaper should inform its readers about the news of the world: a broad sweep of local and national politics, sports, entertainment, and culture, all arriving in a bundle on the doorstep before dawn. (It’s a romantic image for me too!) But there’s simply too much national news available today.
Local newspapers should stop filling their published product with non-local news and focus on what makes them unique, even if this breaks from the tradition of what many expect from a local newspaper or televised newscast. I recognize that these struggling local news sources will need more resources to do this, but they are not going to attract or retain subscribers by republishing stories about non-local topics.
The glut of national wire stories in today’s local newspapers is mostly explained by the economic crisis facing local news. As staffs are repeatedly cut, there are not enough reporters to fill a newspaper with original local content. Given that print advertising remains more profitable than digital for most newspapers, there is still plenty of incentive to publish a print edition. As subscription and per-issue prices increase, however, the remaining consumers open their local newspaper to see mostly national stories that are free to read online on other sites.
In ongoing research with Trusting News, my collaborators and I show that readers hold newsrooms accountable for perceived bias in the wire stories they run. The oversimplified headlines and snarky language common to national political opinion and analysis sticks out in many local newspapers, and readers often assume editors are running wire stories because they agree with them. It’s not clear enough to readers which stories are original and which come from the wires, and there is little evidence that the wire stories provide any value except increasing the page count.
Local media outlets’ remaining advantage in the information marketplace comes from reporting about their geographic area, and by filling their pages with national news, they are making the decision to unsubscribe easier for their remaining customers. A local news source cannot merely be a pale imitation of national news, or it will have no reason to exist.
Joshua P. Darr is an associate professor of political communication in the Manship School of Mass Communication and the department of political science at Louisiana State University.
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step