Nieman Foundation at Harvard
The U.S. has lost a quarter of its newspapers since 2005 and is losing two a week (almost all weekly papers) on average, according to a new report from Northwestern University’s Medill School. In all, 2,500 American papers have disappeared since 2005.
Penny Abernathy, the author of the report and a Medill School visiting professor, writes:
Even though the pandemic was not the catastrophic “extinction-level event” some feared, the country lost more than 360 newspapers between the waning pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022. All but 24 of those papers were weeklies, serving communities ranging in size from a few hundred people to tens of thousands. Most communities that lose a newspaper do not get a digital or print replacement. The country has 6,377 surviving papers: 1,230 dailies and 5,147 weeklies.
The daily newspaper — printed and delivered seven days a week — has already disappeared in many markets. Forty of the largest 100 papers in the country now deliver a print edition six or fewer times a week; 11 publish a print edition only one or two or times a week and e-editions on the other days.
The report counts 545 digital-only state and local news sites in existence in 2022, a figure that includes “more than 170 local business and special interest sites, community newsletters, and a growing number of ‘networked’ local outlets, some of which span multiple states.”1
Digital-only news sites remain “predominantly a big-city phenomenon,” Abernathy writes. Meanwhile, most communities that have lost local papers and don’t have a digital site to read in their place “are poorer, older and lack affordable and reliable high-speed digital service.”
You can read the full report here.
