Media critic Margaret Sullivan outlines the mounting crisis for local journalism

In a year that has already included an impeachment hearing, a global pandemic, an economic crisis worse than any other in modern history, and a U.S. presidential election still on the horizon, there is no shortage of news.

But there is a shortage of resources to report on these events, especially at a local level, according to Margaret Sullivan, media columnist at the Washington Post and the former public editor of the New York Times.

In her new book, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy (Columbia Global Reports), Sullivan aims to amplify the long-running alarm that local news media—entities core to local and national democracy—are in more trouble than ever. The greatest risk, she writes, is that local newspapers especially are on the verge of disappearing forever, which could have severe ramifications during a time when fact-based reporting is under siege.

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