Image: DC Comics
Statistics about the decline of local news are alarming, and the implications are dire. Corruption goes up, and voter turnout goes down in communities without a local newspaper. Health, financial growth, education, and crime rates are all affected negatively when a community loses its eyes, ears, and voice.
I have written about this before, in the throes of a new relationship with local journalism, all butterflies in the stomach and weak in the knees. Most writers go through that in high school or college. I came late to the game, making me more of a fortysomething Jimmy Olsen than Lois Lane. But the seeds of a great love were planted early, and when I search my memories for newspapers, more is unearthed than I expected.
My Grandma Gert would save the Green Sheet for me when I was a kid, and I would read a week’s worth at a stretch. An idiosyncratic, four page insert in the now-defunct daily Milwaukee Journal, the Green Sheet contained comics, advice, local ephemera, profiles, and tidbits, all printed on green paper. It humanized, and further localized a big metro daily like the Journal.
My dad bought the Sunday Journal faithfully, and with it came crullers, hot ham and rolls, church clothes, and patches of sunlight on the carpet, where I pored over Garfield, and later, Calvin and Hobbes.
My first college roommate, Sue, subscribed to the Chicago Tribune. We would tag team the daily crossword. Sue had rules: it must remain in our dorm room, be done in black ink, and preferably while chain smoking and drinking coffee. I would return from morning class to Sue sprawled on the futon in a T-shirt and underwear, buzzing on caffeine and nicotine, greeting me with “what’s a five letter city on the Nile?”. Finishing a whole puzzle was our Mount Everest, and we scaled the peak once in our brief semester of cohabitation.
I am surprised how deeply nostalgia bit once I went through my newspaper memories. As a child who would read anything she could get her hands on, the Sunday paper was a bounty of material. By the time I was 11 or 12 I was reading it cover to cover.
Local newspapers are in trouble, and if the Wisconsin Newspaper Association convention I attended in Madison in March is any indication, the industry itself has been glacially slow in its attendance to this fact. The sharpest slope of the decline started twenty years ago, with over a quarter of local weekly and daily newspapers disappearing since 2005.
WNA conference sessions included topics surrounding making your paper relevant in the digital age, and how a newsroom can pursue creative funding streams. The keynote speaker spoke about government subsidies and funding as one possible way to bring local newspapers solvency. While there are people working hard to revitalize the industry, news deserts abound, especially in the Deep South.
More than 70 million people in the U.S. are without local, affordable, accessible news coverage that impacts their daily lives, according to the Poynter Institute, a non-profit research school and journalism organization. Newspaper closures and sellouts are increasing, and lots of column space has been dedicated to dissecting the causes. Two recessions, a pandemic, and a rapidly changing information landscape seems to be the primary reasons behind the decline.
Why do I care? Print journalism is old school, right? I mean, just about everyone has a smartphone now. Until pretty recently, I thought you could get all of your news online, and I don’t think I was alone in that misconception. National, corporate media-driven news is plentiful online, but reliable, independent, local digital news sites are few and far between. (Don’t get me started on social media “news”.)
Wisconsin only has about 15 local digital news outlets according to a Northwestern University State of Local News report in 2022. Even in an industry deemed in crisis, local print journalism comes out way on top of digital in the state. Wisconsin only has two counties with no print newspaper. More than half of the counties in the state have at least two or more.
It does not mean those newspapers are good. One of the industry trends is corporate media groups and national conglomerates buying up small papers and cutting staff, creating “ghost papers”. These shells of their former selves often only have one local employee, with regional reporters covering a bevy of beats, and generic national stories that have little to no bearing on local readership.
Already-underrepresented communities are hardest hit by disappearing local journalism. The people that are the most vulnerable are the least informed. These communities include neglected urban areas, the deeply rural, the less educated, the worst internet access, indigenous and tribal communities, immigrant, and non-English speaking. The more urbane, educated, and deep-pocketed have the most options and accessibility to information that will improve and support their daily lives.
Door County is doing all right in this regard. Washington Island is really lucky. Not only do Islanders have the county-wide weekly Peninsula Pulse, Gannett Media-owned Door County Advocate, and the online non-profit Door County Knock; we also have the Observer.
Not bad for a small island.
What would a news desert look like in this community? Imagine Washington Island without the Observer. No photos of your kids or grandkids peering at critters at the Art and Nature Center, no one writing about town board or school board meetings, zoning and planning decisions, breaking down the nitty gritty of budgets, percentages, and expenditures. No events covered, no local obituaries, no birth announcements, no affordable advertising for local businesses. No Bucks Bulletin. No features on notable achievements or ideas from community members. No letters to the editor.
Yikes. One of the best things about true local journalism is the voice part. As with local government, one person can make a difference. We live in a world where insurmountable problems are reported all the time. Where big, systemic issues churn on, seemingly impervious to our individual rage against the machine. But like collective action, local action can make a real impact.
You can write a letter, write a story, take a picture, submit an idea, talk to your local reporter at the grocery store, run for a board, volunteer on a committee, and actually be the change you want to see.
For a time there were 2 local papers in my hometown of 7,000. The original one eventually was sold to a big holding company, the other was started by a couple of local brothers. My dad didn't always agree with the brothers' editorials, but he wanted local news reporting and good writing, and that's what he got with the Storm Lake Times. The film "Storm Lake" addresses the problem of news deserts. It made the rounds of film festivals and small theaters, then larger ones, and eventually even overseas. It recently has been shown in Eastern Europe. The brothers gained attention by being awarded a Pulitzer Prize, the film was shown on PBS, subscriptions rose, and their locally owned paper bought out the other. I have been a subscriber for most of 50 years, and I still learn a lot from it.
Great article Emily! I remember picking up the Chicago Tribune for the first time and reading Mike Royko’s column. I was probably about 8 years old. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about but loved his wit, and poured over his work any time I could get my hands on it (midway through your piece I stopped and bought a book of his collected work).
I miss newspapers, ads don’t flash at you out of every corner or your eye like the paper I subscribe through with an app; it isn’t a local paper either and even in Madison I find it hard to get the local news I WANT and often have to find it on Reddit.
It will be interesting to see if local reporters like your self use Substack as an outlet, or maybe local entrepreneurs start small papers like observer in coming years. Some Madison neighborhoods have local papers, including the suburb I live in, which I appreciate.