Margaret Sullivan on the Death of Local News

You paint a pretty dire picture of massive news closures, even pre-pandemic. How has COVID-19 shaped this landscape now?

Well, local journalism, especially local newspapers, have been in free fall for at least 15 years. That got worse when we had the Great Recession in 2008, because it had such a devastating effect on advertising. Things were pretty bad and 2,000 American newspapers folded by 2019. But when the pandemic began, followed by the economic shutdown, it really exacerbated the trends that were very severe before. Thousands of journalists have lost jobs since the pandemic. (Roughly 36,000 workers at news companies in the U.S. have been laid off, been furloughed or had their pay reduced since the pandemic struck, estimates The New York Times.)

But this is happening at a time when local journalism is even more important than ever. People are depending on local news outlets — not just to tell them what is going on in the country, but their region, town and village. That could be about hospitalization rates or the local rules on reopening. All these things are of great interest, literally matters of life and death. And the fact that there are less and less local news outlets to do this is really troubling.

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