Rural-urban digital divide is major obstacle to sustaining local news in rural areas, Report for America chief says

The United States is "becoming a nation of local news haves and have nots," and the digital solutions being pursued mainly in urban areas "may be locking in this divide," to the detriment of rural areas, Steven Waldman writes for The Poynter Institute. He is president of Report for America, which funds local reporting positions, and chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition., which "advocates public policies that will strengthen communities by creating a more robust, more inclusive local news system, without endangering editorial independence."

Steven Waldman

Waldman cites the recent State of Local News 2022 report, which says "The economically struggling, traditionally underserved communities that need local journalism the most are the very places where it is most difficult to sustain either print or digital news organizations." It says the closure of newspapers is happening "more often in poorer and older communities," and "Among those especially hard hit are red-voting rural areas and blue-voting low-income urban areas," Waldman writes.

The report noted hundreds of new digital news sites, but most of them are in affluent areas with first-class internet service. "Wealthier communities always had more news choices. But at least moderate- and low-income communities had a baseline of solid local news providers. Now, increasingly, they don’t," Waldman writes. "That will make those communities sicker — literally and figuratively. We know that poorer communities are more likely to get their information from social media, which is more likely to provide misinformation. They will also become less healthy democracies. Studies have shown that communities with less local news have less competitive elections, more corruption, more pollution, higher taxes and less resident involvement in civic institutions."