How to fill gaps in local news? Let's look at quality, not just quantity, to provide guidance for the capital infusion needed

By Al Cross

Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

In the last installment of the State of Local News 2022 report from Northwestern University, researcher Penny Abernathy tackles a big, broad subject: "How to fill the gaps in local news." Her 2,900-word essay has several points directly related to rural journalism, beginning with the lede:

Penelope Muse Abernathy

"News deserts are not a new phenomenon. Throughout the country’s history, there have been places so small or isolated that the community could not support a local newspaper or any other media outlet. Whether rural or urban, most were poor communities, often with large minority and ethnic populations. Residents in those communities were compelled to develop communication work-arounds to get the news and information that would affect them personally. But the 21st century is different. The internet and mobile phones today are so ubiquitous—85 percent of adults owned a smartphone in 2021—that even residents in traditionally underserved and isolated communities have easy access to a wealth of information, as well as misinformation and disinformation on politically charged topics that tear at the fabric of communities and country."

The flood of entertainment-driven national and political news, and the dominance of social media, have reduced demand for local news (which can be, well, boring); so have what Abernathy calls "the collapse of the print newspaper business model, and the failure of many news organizations to develop alternative revenue sources." Those changes have created more news deserts and reduced the staffing and content of many newspapers, creating "ghost newspapers" that are unable to get more revenue from readers who are unwilling to pay good money for bad journalism.

To all these problems, "There is no single solution," Abernathy writes. She calls for:

• Identifying areas within each state that are without local news, or in danger of losing it.
• Designing policies and incentives at the state and national levels to address the disparity and availability of news in these communities.
• Increasing and redirecting venture capital and philanthropy to organizations that seek to deliver reliable and comprehensive local news and information in news deserts.
• Rethinking journalistic practices to compensate for the dramatic loss of almost 60 percent of newspaper journalists in recent years.

Abernathy keeps a census of newspapers and digital-only local news outlets by county, and the number of journalists they employ. "Research by scholars at other universities has analyzed the quantity and quality of local news in specific communities," she writes, but that knowledge needs to be broadened. She cites the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, which the state legislature created this year to assess local news in Illinois and make policy recommendations to strengthen it.

This effort needs to work from the bottom up, not just the top down. Research about the quality of local news needs to serve citizens in those communities — and the news outlets, if they are willing to listen. Here's an idea: Let's develop a checklist to evaluate the quality of a local newspaper. It could include such data as the number of enterprise stories, the percentage of public-agency meetings covered, the way those meetings are covered (we see too many meeting stories that are chronologically based), the number of advance and follow-up stories about issues at the meetings, the prevalence of editorial pages and local editorials or columns from the editor or publisher, and the publication of public records, such as the sale prices of real estate.

The knowledge and analysis from such evaluations could also provide a sound basis for the infusion of capital that is needed to sustain local, independent journalism in rural communities. Citing Robert Picard, senior fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and author of The Economics and Financing of Media Companies, Abernathy writes that that most communities that have lost newspapers in the last 20 years "are not large enough to support either a for-profit newspaper or nonprofit digital start-up, and "The vast majority of the venture and philanthropic money has gone to outlets located in major urban areas."

On her fourth bullet point, Abernathy quotes Picard: “But even if we find the resources to add back all the journalists we’ve lost recently, we won’t have enough journalists to cover the government meetings and events in the thousands of small, incorporated communities in this country. How do we create a journalism model that supports communities that are not large enough to financially support a local news operation?” He suggests reviving and elevating the idea of community correspondents, once a staple of rural newspapers. They chronicled the granular goings and comings in a neighborhood, but Picard suggests, “We need to bring back those community correspondents and train them to be the eyes and ears of the professional journalists who can’t be there. The only way we are going to know what is going on in these communities – what is important to people living there – is to have someone in the community.”

Finally, Abernathy quotes this writer on the valuable connections that make community news outlets valuable: “The best local news organizations introduce us to people we don’t know, who share our concerns and aspirations,” and connect “people in a community to one another and to the outside world.” Abernathy concludes, "Reviving local news is not about reviving print newspapers. Rather it is about reviving the historic function of strong local journalism. At its best, as Cross suggests, local journalism in the 21st century will help us come together to solve our problems and achieve our dreams." For the full essay, click here.