E99 - State of Local News Report

Join Rebecca Snyder as she sits down with Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. In this episode, they dive into the latest Medill State of Local News Report findings, explore the growing crisis of news deserts and discuss innovative solutions reshaping the local news landscape. From the challenges of ownership shifts to the rise of digital-only outlets and the role of universities in journalism, this conversation unpacks the urgent need for sustainable local journalism. Don't miss the insights and ideas for fostering vibrant local news communities!

Check out Medill's report at https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Tim Franklin and the Medill Local News Initiative
• 2:09 The State of Local News: News Deserts and Their Impact
• 12:06 Ownership Trends and Emerging Challenges
• 21:11 Opportunities in Digital-Only News and Journalism Education
• 30:46 Building Trust, Sustainability, and the Future of Local News

Transcript

0:01

Welcome. I'm delighted today to have Tim Franklin, is, drum roll please, the Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative and the John Mutz Chair in Local News at Northwestern University. So, whoa, take a deep breath there. Welcome to the program, Tim. Thank you, Rebecca. Thanks for having me. And you know, in higher ed, we love titles. So, yeah. and the one title that we don't have for you is former Baltimore Sun executive. So you have a lot of strong ties to to the mid-Atlantic region. so I'm especially excited to have you on the program to talk about local news and the report that has just recently, maybe two weeks now, come out. So tell us a little bit about the local news report that Northwestern pushes out. almost every year. Sure, Rebecca, happy to. So the Medill State and Local News Report is an annual report. This is our third edition of the report. And this really goes back to Penny Abernathy, who when she was a night chair at the University of North Carolina, started this research more than a decade ago. Penny moved to Medill back in January of 2021. So we've now been the home of this report. for the past four years or so. And this is the most expansive report that we've done. We now have what we believe to be the nation's largest database of local news outlets, including newspapers, digital only sites, ethnic media, and public radio. And why do we do that? We do it because we think it's important that everyone in the country understand what's happening with the state of local news, the implication for communities. of the loss of local news and also so that philanthropists and public policymakers and others can proactively do something to help. So that's why we're doing this research and why it's really a passion of ours, Eric Madill. And so what are you, I mean, 10 years is a long time. The news media industry has changed radically in the last 10 years and the 10 years prior to that. So if one sort of looks through the report, it seems a little gloomy. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing and how that compares to maybe when the project came over from the University of North Carolina with. Sure, so I have been accused of being a doctor of doom, but there are some green shoots in this report, which I'm happy to talk about. And we will definitely get to the green shoots. As a dream crusher myself, we all sometimes concentrate on the dim spots and there's a lot that's new and exciting. And I feel like sometimes the industry in a time of radical change, news needs to happen and news will always be here. It's just sometimes we get caught up in format and nostalgia for the good old days. but let's not discount that things are radically changing. So tell us a little bit about that and then we'll get to green shoots. Yeah, you know, so what we're all living through, and I think sometimes when we're in the middle of it, we don't realize it. But what we're living through is a dramatic transformation of how news is consumed and how it's produced and how it's distributed and how it's paid for. our report really illustrates all of those things. So to look at the raw data and I guess to start with the most troubling parts of the report. first, is that we, you know, in the past year, we saw a loss of 130 local newspapers. The nation has now lost more than a third of all of its newspapers since 2005, when these statistics started being kept. And that is a massive number. And that trend is unfortunately not slowing down. So we're basically losing two and a half newspapers a week in the US. And we could talk about where those are happening and how it's happening and so forth. But that is the most grim part of this. And I think, you know, we now see 206 counties in the US, entire counties with no local news source, no newspaper, no digital site, no ethnic media, no public radio. And when I'm looking and it's for those following along, it's the local news initiative dot Northwestern dot edu project state of local news forward slash twenty twenty four report. So there's a great map, interactive map here. And as I'm looking at it here, the you would think or I would think naively that, you know, maybe there's there's rhyme or reason to the no outlet. counties, but they're spread pretty evenly across the country. But I would assume that some of these, that many of these are more rural counties. Is that what you're seeing as well? Yes, so yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. So probably about two thirds of all the New Desert counties are rural counties. The reason we do counties is that we also overlay demographic data, which is by the Census Bureau, which is typically done at the county level. That's why we do counties. many of them are, the majority of them, the vast majority of them are in rural areas. But it's not exclusive to rural areas either. We see a number of news deserts in ex-urban and even in some suburban counties. Many of them are located in the Southeastern United States, but there also are a number in what I call the spine of the country, the plain states. So you could almost draw a straight line between the West Texas-Mexico border all the way up through the center of the country and up through the Dakotas. And almost all of those counties are either news deserts or one news source counties. So and then there are a number in the western part of the US, a number in the upper Midwest as well. But and news desert counties tend to be poorer. They tend to have higher poverty rates, lower household income. They also tend to have less educational attainment than non-news desert counties. and they tend to be older. So those are the demographics of news deserts. Now, in addition to news deserts, there are also about 1,561 counties that only have one news source remaining. And so here at Madill, we're blessed to have data scientists in addition to journalism faculty. So our data science faculty created a predictive model and looked at all of the demographic factors of current news deserts. and then applied those to all the counties in the US with only one news source. And so we created a Medill watch list. These are counties that are a high risk of becoming news deserts in the near future, probably over the next five years. And so we found a big increase in the number of watch list counties in the past year, which is not surprising because of closures and also because of all the ownership changes that happened last year. So there are now 279 counties that are on our watch list, which is a lot. and if I'm recalling correctly, about 10 of the counties on your watch list sort of flipped over into just in the past year. your, seems like your predictions are pretty apt. So, I mean, what is that, you talked a little bit about having a change in ownership groups and things like that. Like, are you, It used to be in times past that there was a lot of local ownership in publications and then, you know, there'd be small chains and then I felt like we went through this big phase of these massive media conglomerates. What are you seeing in terms of ownership changes and how does that play out into this idea of news outlets? Yeah, that's a great question. So in 2024, we saw a record number of transactions of local newspapers. And I think that's a reflection of the of the tough economics that are affecting everyone. And I think it's also a reflection of strategy by the chains. So what do I mean by that? So Gannett in 2024, divested about 80 of its local news organizations. And what Mike Reed, the CEO of Gannett has said publicly is that the vast majority of the revenue of Gannett, which is the largest chain, comes from its larger properties. So that would be Phoenix and Indianapolis and Detroit and some others. And so they are intentionally, it seems, unloading their smaller publications. And 80s a lot in a given year. He's also said that he doesn't want to create news deserts additional news deserts in the process of divesting some of those smaller outlets. So one of the things that are interesting last year is we've seen these smaller or medium chains snap up a lot of these publications. one of the most voracious acquirers last year was Carpenter Media Group. And Carpenter was part of the Boone. media organization and then spun off. But they kind of came out of nowhere to become the fourth largest owner of local news outlets in the US. Now they're privately held, so tell us a little bit more about where are they based and what's driving their passion for local news. Well, those are great questions as well, Rebecca, and we're trying to get the answer to those questions. We're in the process of doing some additional digging on Carpenter right now. They are privately held. They're based in the South, I believe, Alabama. And so we're trying to find out what the motive is in snapping up all these papers. And then Cherry Road has also been an aggressive acquirer. over the last couple of years, less so in 2024. But Cherry Road has also emerged as one of the larger holders of local news organizations. And in addition to Gannett divesting, we've also seen Lee Enterprises, which also owns a bunch of papers, including out here in the Midwest, also divest some of their smaller properties. So we're seeing a lot of movement among local newspapers these days. And I think that's only going to accelerate in 2025. Now, you see chains sort of shed publications and then either they get picked up or they don't, but are you also seeing like those large metros kind of absorbing coverage areas and maybe shuttering weeklies that might have been on their periphery and now saying, well, our metro is going to cover those areas. And we see that a little bit more in the mid-Atlantic area. And our coverage area is Maryland, Delaware, and DC. So how does that play in? Okay, they're just divesting, but what about absorption and what about straight closures? Can you talk about that? Yeah, sure. first of all, a lot of the closures, we talk a lot about news deserts and understandably so, but a lot of the closures have happened in suburbia and in exurbia. And in fact, about half of all the closures just here in Illinois have happened in the suburbs outside Chicago. like Cook County or Baltimore County, they're never going to be in news deserts, but they also may not be as well served as they have been in the past. because of the closure of some of the publications and surrounding areas around major metros. So we've seen two things. We've seen a number of closures of chains who are shutting down those publications and just assuming that they'll pick up some of that coverage in the main metro daily. So that's issue number one. And then in this report, we also looked at this phenomenon of ghost newspapers. Ghost newspapers are basically newspapers in name only. They have very little original local content. And so we did a study of the five largest publishers in the US and the content on the home pages of all of their holdings. And basically what we found is that more than a third of all the content on their home pages was from sister publications elsewhere in the state or from syndicates. And so we're also seeing a diminution of local coverage in addition to closures. And so I think, you know, there's been a lot of focus on closures and I get it and we're focused on that too, but there's also been this other issue, which is loss of coverage among a lot of these publications. And that also has become a real problem. That is huge. so I want actually, I want to take a different tack for a second because you're part of an educational institution. And actually MDDC is just going through its internship interview cycle right now. We have a program where we place interns and host newsrooms. And I'm always blown away by the passion and dedication of student journalists. And so. preparing them for that, and I feel like there's more students who are interested in journalism and they're really committed and doing some excellent work. So how do you prepare students for an industry that is not always easy to navigate? No, obviously we think about this a lot. yes, I mean, the students who are coming through this journalism school and I'm sure the University of Maryland and the other journalism schools in your area, they're passionate, they're very mission driven, they're very focused, but they also by and in large part understand that their career path is gonna be different than mine was, for example, and that it's gonna be It's not gonna be a linear move necessarily from small to medium to large publication. And that they're gonna have to be much more multimedia centric and have more media skills, multimedia skills, social media skills than previous generations. And that they also may have to create their own brands and be entrepreneur journalists, be entrepreneurs and journalists, not just journalists. In both cases and and I think we can talk about this more but we are seeing growth in digital only news outlets. We're seeing growth in niche publications We're seeing growth in national networks that cover local news So, you know as grim as the newspaper stats are and they are grim There still are opportunities that are out there and the other thing we're seeing that's kind of interesting is is that I you know for J-school graduates 20, 30 years ago, it could have taken many years to get to a place like the Washington Post or the Baltimore Sun, for example. No, and so because of the economics and the state of the industry, we're seeing graduates that are going straight to the Washington Post, in some cases straight to the New York Times. And so there are opportunities now that didn't exist or wouldn't have existed years ago because of those changes. You know, another thing that's happening, I could talk about this a long time, I promise I won't, but we're seeing journalism schools step into the void of some of the loss of local news. So for example, the University of Maryland has had the Capitol News Service for many, many years. It's kind of a model. It's really a model for the nation. And when I was at the Sun, we were participated in the Capitol News Service. And at Medill, so for example, we just started last fall, the Medill Illinois News Bureau. And this winter, If Medill was a news organization, we would have the largest news outlet in the state house. And Springfield, because we have so many students who are part of the news bureau helping with state house coverage. We've also seen examples of universities that are running news organizations in and around their cities. University of Kansas being one of them. University of Georgia is also doing that. They're basically producing a local newspaper near their campus. And so there are these opportunities that are being created that not only help students with their personal growth, but they also help fill the void of the loss of local news in some ways. I wanted to get back to, you know, we can talk about ownership and publications and whatnot, but really the heart of the matter is news is there and people want local news. think if you, you, whatever survey you want to scratch the surface of, residents want to know what's happening in their communities. They want truthful reporting. They want accurate reporting. and there are lots of journalists who want to supply that. So sort of that push towards independent journalism. towards sort of writing your own path is there. I wanted to ask you about the role of sort of all these, kind of think of them as upstart newsrooms, but there are, I'm seeing in our area, many more sort of pop-up newsrooms. Like we just had the 51st State Newsroom, which is a. worker operated collective, I think is so interesting. We've gotten, you know, certainly some of the networks that you talked about, like the State House News Service, of which Maryland Matters is a part of now. So as you're kind of analyzing the local news report, are you tracking that shift in terms of like, you put things into buckets of like, here's nonprofit media, here's collaborative, here's independent? and what are you seeing shifting? Yeah, and we do track that. this year, and one of the green shoots that we see is that this is the first year since stats have been kept that we've seen a net increase of digital only local news sites. And there was a net increase of 105 in 2024. And typically what has happened in the past is we'd see about the same number go out of business as startup. because most startups and most industries don't succeed. It's very difficult. mean, one of the hardest things you can do is build audience from scratch. It's really, really hard to do. So I think it's really encouraging that we've seen this very substantial net increase and did it only sites in 2024. Now I'm not ready to declare that a trend yet. I think we need to see it over two or three more years before we do that, but that's encouraging. The other thing we've seen is the explosion of these national networks that have that cover local news. So there's Patch, which has been around for a while, but it has a number of these Axios Local, which is now and I think 30 plus markets are planning to be in 100 markets in the next year or two. It's a daily newsletter. It's a whole local news platform built on newsletters basically and states. Newsrooms, which you referenced earlier, is another one of them. There's also Open Campus, which covers higher education, or Chalk Beat, which covers secondary education. we're seeing more and more of these develop. They're largely topically driven, and they're helping fill a void in the market that has existed in education coverage or climate coverage, in the case of Inside Climate News, which also has reporters around the country. I think that's an encouraging sign as well. And then we're also seeing some successful examples, and I'd be happy to talk more about this, of digital-only startups that are really taking off and showing promise in areas. And of course, the Baltimore banner in your area is one of the prime examples. Stuart Banham, who made an effort to acquire the Baltimore Sun and Tribune Publishing for that matter, it wasn't successful, but started up the Baltimore banner. But they've been growing digital subscribers, a digital subscriber-based kind of business model. They've been hiring like crazy, hiring very good journalists, many of them my former colleagues at the Baltimore Sun. And so we've seen a lot of growth in startups like that. In Chicago, there's an outlet Block Club Chicago, which is only six years old now. I think they just turned six recently. And they're providing hyper local coverage in 18 neighborhoods in Chicago that were basically uncovered by the Tribune and the Sun Times because of their cutbacks. And they have a diversified business model and they've also been hiring a lot of journalists. And they're doing tremendous work and serving a market that was frankly pretty underserved. And there are other examples of that around the country. there are definitely reasons for optimism even amid gloom of the newspaper closures. And news, people want news. And so it's just a matter of figuring out how it's going to how it's all going to come together. Nobody really nobody has a crystal ball on that. I do feel like it's very difficult, though, for for residents and sort of just general people when when you're Metro daily or when your local news outlet, your traditional local news outlet falls and you have to piece together your news. I mean, and that, think gets to how people read online versus how they read in print. know, the glory of serendipity when you read a newspaper where you're interacting with things you wouldn't necessarily have thought to look at or be interested in reading, it captures you in print, whereas online you really have to focus on like, I want to learn about climate change now, or I want to learn about this. So I think it's a challenge for, you know, on one hand, all those small news outlets that are starting up, you know, you can only cover what you can cover. But then how do you get that serendipity in terms of like, I think of it as civics education in some ways, you know, just from your perch, you've been in the business for a really long time. I mean, not so long, you're still vibrant. Never still vibrant, still vibrant. But from your seasoned perspective, like, how do you feel? Like, do you disagree that that it's it's an issue in like exposing people to all the news they should be getting and how can those small startups kind of get over that hump of being so single focus. Yeah, you know, you're 100 % right. And, you know, whereas 20 years ago, you could go to just the Baltimore Sun, or just the Washington Post and basically get all the new you need all the news you needed, plus a lot of news that surprised you and that you weren't expecting when you turn the page or scroll down on the homepage. Now you have to go to five or six different news sites to get that same information. It's out there, but you have to go hunting for it sometimes, or you have to know how to curate your newsfeed so that you're getting it. yes, I mean, in some ways there may be more news and information that's available, but you really got to know, you have to be a discerning news consumer and know how to find it. The one thing that we actually produced a study on this last year is the impact of AI on local news. And so, AI could provide a number of incredibly helpful, economizing resources for local newsrooms, help with back office functions, like accounting and business things, with scheduling, with marketing and target marketing of news consumers, and AI also, we're already seeing it as being used in the delivery of content to news consumers. could be a good thing in increasing the supply. The one thing I worry about with AI, which is coming fast and it's going to be big, is that it further puts us into silos, into our own kind of news cocoons, because the algorithm knows that you're interested in local politics or local sports or local business. And so you're just going to get a constant feed of those stories and you're not going to get You know these serendipitous stories that you might have gotten in a previous generation And you also may be fed news and information that reinforces your own belief set So I fear that it's also been a further kind of a You know divide us into our partisan camps Absolutely. I think it's a real worry. And also sort of when we think about the delivery mechanisms, I think people don't know what to trust any longer. And when you're not familiar with all these new little startups and you're thinking, OK, is this a partisan thing that's just trying to feed me what they want to know? Like, how can I know what what to trust? And I think that's a real issue. And this kind of gets beyond the state of local news. in some senses, because I'm not sure that journalism or news media has done a great job of saying what it is and what it stands for and the professional standards of journalism that we adhere to. so some of it, working with the press association for as long as I have, in some ways it's like, man, we just are not, we're not good at PR. We're great at talking about other people, not so much about ourselves. So are you seeing some of those issues come up and what do you think can be done to combat that? Yeah, for sure. mean, you know, as storytellers, we've not done a great job telling our own story, I'm afraid. But I also think that we're now in this era where you have to tell your own story and where you have to be in constant communication with your audience. So just to give you a couple of examples, there's a news organization in Arizona, Connecta Arizona, that started on WhatsApp during COVID. This woman, a journalist, said, you know what? I'm going to try to communicate with people credible, accurate, news and information about COVID on WhatsApp. so this thing really took off. And now from a WhatsApp group, she has basically created a radio station, a digital only site, a regular newsletter, but she's still using WhatsApp. And every single week she invites people in. So WhatsApp, so they can ask questions. She can connect them with experts and their community on various issues. But that's kind of a non-traditional way to start a news organization. But as an example of how you can use it to communicate with people. And then there's a digital site in Detroit, Outlier Media, that got started on text messaging. And so they bought, acquired a a list of cell phone numbers. And they basically said, you know, we want to know what news you're interested in and how we can help you solve your problems and help you better understand your community. And so from that, they've now created what is a very successful news organization in Detroit, and that it's still using text messaging as a way to regularly communicate and have that two way conversation. So I think I think we're going to see more of that and I think it's a way to help build loyalty with audience, build trust for sure. absolutely. that one-on-one connection. Now, are those examples, are they economically viable? They feel like they could be passion projects as so many of the new startups really are. They're either funded by philanthropy or funded by passion, none of which is a great recipe for long-term success. Talk to me about economic viability. Yeah, well, passion goes a long way, but it's not a business model. So both of them for sure have philanthropic funding, which is helping out. But I think there also are examples around the country of digital news organizations that have built diversified revenue models that are working. I can quickly tell you about a couple. So one of my favorite is the Richland Source, which is in North Central Ohio, by every measure, it should not be successful. It's in an area that is, you know, has less educational attainment, less household income. All the demographics work against it. There's also a Gannett publication in the county. But the Richland source has a diversified revenue that includes subscription, dental subscriptions, memberships. They created an in-house marketing service for local businesses to build advertising. digitally in their community and then they help with placement of those ads and events. And so they've been able to build, I think they're now 10, maybe 11 years old. They also have some philanthropy, but it's not by any means the majority of their income. They've built a very successful news organization in an area where by all accounts it really shouldn't work. And they're also focused editorially on solutions journalism. You know, this is a craft, a growing craft that looks at not just problems, but looks at potential ways to solve those problems. And I think that's resonated with the audience in North Central Ohio as well. And then I also liked the example of the Shawnee Mission Post, which is a county outside of Kansas City. It's on the other side of the river from Kansas City. McClatchy owned, still does own the Kansas City Star. They shut down a zoned edition. And we talked about loss of suburban news and so forth earlier. But a husband and wife team said, you know what? In Johnson County, there's a need for local news and people still want it. So they very smartly and very incrementally grew a digital local news site in Johnson County, Kansas, that is now doing about a million dollars a year in revenue. think they have a staff of 10 reporters or somewhere in that range. And they're providing coverage that would not exist but not for their entrepreneurship. And it's also a digital subscription-based news outlet, but that also has ad revenue and other revenue streams. And there are some other examples as well that are working. yeah, mean, look, philanthropy has really stepped up in a big way, especially in the last year or two with the Press Forward campaign, and it's injecting millions and millions of dollars. Right. into local news. you know, you can't sustain yourself for the long term just on philanthropic dollars in most cases. You you've got to figure out a sustainable revenue stream aside from philanthropy. And it sounds like that sustainable revenue stream really is diversified revenue because the, you know, the dollars of print will never equal the dimes of digital advertising. So you need other things to kind of weave in. So, and, as we wind up, you know, you, you got your start here in, Maryland and the mid Atlantic is, is important to you. What advice would you give to publications in our area? There's There's a lot of diversity in terms of our news outlets, we're, you know, we're a small area. What would you advise our members to look at? Well, first of all, Rebecca, I wanted to say that I had our research team look up the stats on Maryland, Delaware, and DC. So Maryland and DC have seen the two largest decreases in local newspapers in the country on a percent basis. Yes. So, and Delaware is eighth in the nation in loss of local newspapers. And when you look at loss of journalists, Maryland has lost more than 50 % of its newspaper journalists just in the last decade. So Maryland and Delaware and DC have been particularly hard hit by this local news crisis. Even if it doesn't manifest in news deserts, it does show itself in loss of newspapers and other areas as well as in coverage. So I would love to see Maryland, Delaware and DC be an incubator for innovation that could help kind of turn that around. I think one of the most important things now is as we move into this, and we're in this world of niche audiences, is you got to really know who you're reporting for, who your audience is, and you have to know if there's a market that is willing to pay for it. It's kind of as old as capitalism itself. Can you produce a product that people are willing to pay for? or if not pay for at least support through advertising or maybe as a start philanthropy. you know, I, in this position, I talked to a lot of would be entrepreneurs about local news. And, and sometimes you don't hear that clarity of this is specifically who my audience is and why they, and why they need me, why I'm going to help them solve their problems. so. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And You know, and I see it here in Chicago too. We're blessed with a number of digital startups that are doing some terrific work. Many of them are journalists who are mission driven, which is great, but they also don't have a lot of business side experience. And so I also see some digital startups that maybe are okay for a year or two. And then it's like, my God, you know, how am I going to sustain this thing for the longterm? And you got to think about that from the jump. And and not just hire journalists but higher up chief revenue officer or a development officer or you You've got to start with that right away or you're gonna get behind and have trouble catching up There's so many that I see that have the content but don't have any way to monetize that content. And you're right, then it really is just, then it's a passion project that you're just funding and fueling. yeah, yeah, absolutely. And look, I think passion will take people a long way, but it's not going to pay the bills over the long term. So you need to have that clarity of audience and clarity of business plan right from the start. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I feel like we'll have you back sometime again soon and certainly when next year's news report comes about. But I really appreciate you sharing your insights with us. And in our show notes, we'll have a link to the local news report. So thanks again. Great, Rebecca, thanks for having me. Pleasure.