Two-thirds of U.S. counties now have no daily newspaper, study finds. Interactive map shows local data - Entrepreneur Generations

Aqua-colored counties have more than one local newspaper. (UNC map; click here to view the interactive version)

More than 1,300 U.S. communities have completely lost local news coverage since 2004, according to a new study by the University of North Carolina's School of Media and Journalism. About 9,000 newspapers were being published in the United States in 2004. Since that time, about 1,800 community and metro papers -- about 20 percent -- have gone out of business or merged since then. About 70 percent of the papers that died were in suburban areas with multiple news sources, but counties with no news coverage at all tend to be rural and in the South.

"Of the 3,143 counties in the United States, more than 2,000 now have no daily newspaper, 1,449 have but one newspaper of any kind, and 171 counties, with 3.2 million residents in aggregate, have no newspaper at all," Tom Stites reports for Poynter.

Of the communities that still have news coverage, hundreds of newspapers have scaled back operations so much that they're providing very little local coverage. An interactive map shows how many newspapers every county in the country has; 171 have no local newspaper, and 1,449 counties (nearly half) have only one newspaper, usually a weekly, the researchers say.

The study paints a grim portrait of the future, noting that hedge funds and private equity firms, which are concerned with profits more than journalism, own many newspapers. "And newspapers have been withering at an alarming rate during the longest economic expansion in our nation’s history. What will happen when the next recession breaks?" Stites writes.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2NI5XOY Two-thirds of U.S. counties now have no daily newspaper, study finds. Interactive map shows local data - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet