Local journalism crisis may be more in quality than quantity

Map from Rebuild Local News Coalition shows the equivalent ranges of local journalists by county. 

Discussion of the crisis in local news has focused more on quantity than quality, perhaps because the number of newspapers is much easier to measure than the quality of coverage. But new research shows a serious quality problem when it comes to coverage of education, supposedly a staple of local news, and health, which is a bigger problem in rural areas than the rest of the nation.

The latest Local Journalist Index, an annual study by Rebuild Local News and the artifical-intelligence communications platform Muck Rack, and "finds a dramatic lack of education and health care coverage in most communities," reports RLN, which seeks public policies to strengthen community news. "There is shockingly little education and health coverage."

The research examined 4.2 million local-news articles, looking for education stories that mentioned a community by name, indicating a story was local. In 77% of counties in the first quarter of 2026, there were no such stories. The share without a local health story was virtually the same: 76%. The same pattern was seen in lack of stories about the environment (77%) and transportation (82%).

The number of local reporters continued to decline. "The national average now stands at 7.8 local journalist equivalents per 100,000 residents, an 81% decline from roughly 40 per 100,000 in 2002," RLN reports. "Last year, we found 8.2 LJEs per 100,000 residents. Approximately 70% of U.S. counties, home to an estimated 209 million people, fall below even the already-anemic national average. Only 33 counties match the average number of journalists from 2002."

Perhaps because covering crime is easier than education, health and some other topics, "When there are fewer journalists, the portion of coverage devoted to crime actually goes up," RLN reports. "In counties with fewer than five LJEs per 100,000 residents, nearly one in five local articles about crime and justice, roughly 50% more than in counties with higher journalist density."

The report also includes a ranking of reporting capacity by state; analysis of local news and loneliness levels, which can rise with a decline in local news; comparisons with the Civic Information Index; and an analysis of LJEs and municipal borrowing costs, which tend to rise when coverage of local governments decline. Muck Rack and RLN make the full dataset available to researchers and others interested in doing their own analyses.

“This report is difficult to stomach,” said Steven Waldman, founder and president of RLN. “The shortage of local reporters remains so severe that communities are being left in the dark as coverage of education, healthcare, and core civic issues thins out or disappears altogether.”

The Institute for Rural Journalism, which publishes The Rural Blog, is on the steering committee of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.