Local journalism is on its knees – endangering democracy. Who will save it?

One of the worst affected industries during the coronavirus outbreak has been, ironically, a profession that should have been reporting on it.

Scores of newspapers have laid off staff, or closed entirely, in the past four months, in what one expert has predicted will be an “extinction-level” event for the industry.

The more recent cuts come to an industry which has long been in decline, robbing large swathes of the US of news coverage, and it’s the state of journalism that is examined in Ghosting the News, a book by the Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, which lays out the state of journalism in America, and the desperate need for its revival.

Sullivan writes that while the disinformation spread by Donald Trump and his supporters, and their subsequent cries of “fake news” at anything unfavorable about the president or his administration covered by mainstream news organizations, is well documented, something just as important – and equally depressing – in journalism is happening.

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