Do you read a local newspaper? Bravo for you!
Do you even have a decent paper in your community? You’re lucky if you do.
A growing portion of our country lives in news deserts. Forbes reports that “of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., 200 of them no longer have a daily or weekly newspaper, impacting 3.2 million people.”
It means there’s no easy way for people to find out what’s happening in their community. People might hear about national economic trends, but not how local businesses are faring. No one reports on what’s happening at the school board meeting, or how the police department handles arrests, or who is running for local office. All things important for democracy.
The Montpelier-Barre Times Argus, my local paper, is a hollowed-out shell of its former self, but I still subscribe. Roughly once a week there’s an article reporting something of local significance. It might be an issue at a planning commission meeting, a budget discussion about road repairs at city council, or a local organization’s hiring of a new director.
I also read two weekly newspapers. One (The Bridge) is hyper-local and the other (Seven Days) covers the whole state, but often scoops the Times Argus on local stories.
Why do local papers matter? Because local papers provide a baseline of information for the community. They connect, inform, and foster discussion. This all helps keep government accountable. A recent article in the online media source VTDigger about the likely cause of numerous water main breaks in Montpelier raised lots of questions about city council and city staff decision-making process.
Local papers can uncover scandals, official abuse, or deception. The story of George Santos, the apparently pathological liar who falsified everything about his past and the sources of his campaign money, was broken by the North Shore Leader months before he was elected to Congress. The Leader is a small local paper on Long Island. Only later was it reported by the New York Times.
Local newspapers have been declining for the past couple decades. Weekday newspaper circulation (both print and digital) in the U.S. was 63.2 million in 1990 but declined to 24.3 million in 2020. That’s before the pandemic and economic slowdown reduced it even further. Even when papers don’t close, they have seen shrinking newsrooms and takeovers by investment companies that are not actually interested in journalism that serves the community.
The good news is that we can help preserve and bolster local newspapers by subscribing to the local paper. We can support other high quality local journalism by contributing to “free” paper and online sources, so that they can keep up their work.
If you read an illuminating article about local government or community issues in your paper, give a shout out to local journalism. And support it with a subscription or donation.