Some 'ghost' newspapers owned by large companies no longer have even one local reporter

The Gleaner in Henderson, Ky., used to have a newsroom
staff of about 20. (Photo by Donna Stinnett via WSJ)

With the severe cutbacks at some news organizations, your local newspaper may not have any reporters, writes Alexandra Bruell of The Wall Street Journal. "The Gleaner, the local newspaper in Henderson, Ky., has sections focused on features, sports, news and opinion. What it doesn't have: a single reporter on staff."

How could a once-bustling, energetic community newspaper like The Gleaner, which employed about 20 staffers, now have zero reporters? "The publication is one of the 'ghost newsrooms' that increasingly dot the American media landscape — newspapers that have little to no on-the-ground presence in the localities whose name they bear," Bruell writes. "It is a sobering development in an industry that has been brought to its knees by the rise of digital media and large technology companies."

Penny Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University and lead author of a recent report on the state of local news in the United States, told Bruell: [Many newspapers] "are so depleted in staff, or maybe have no staff, that they're not able to provide the sort of communication the residents in that community need to make wise decisions."

The surge of free internet news alongside online advertising behemoths such as Google and Facebook have continued to "hollow out local newsrooms as waves of consolidation and layoffs significantly changed the country's news landscape," Bruell reports. "Smaller outlets were hit particularly hard by sharp declines in circulation and incursions into their online advertising businesses."

Northwestern's study about "the state of local news cited research showing that about half of the 70 smallest papers owned by Gannett and Lee Enterprises — two of the nation's largest local news publishers — had no listing of any local journalists on staff," Bruell writes. "Abernathy said the study only looked at extremely small publications and that there are likely to be ghost newsrooms among larger local papers."

Roughly 2½ newspapers close each week, according to the study, and "the country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005," Bruell reports. "The decline of local news is having an outsize impact on the entire media industry because the study said that until recently, as much as 85% of the news that ultimately made national headlines was first published in a local newspaper."