Local news covers city councils, school boards, police accountability, local business, planning decisions, and community events — the journalism closest to where most people actually live. As local news organisations have declined dramatically over the past two decades, understanding what they provide and what disappears with them has become urgent.
What Local News Actually Does for Communities
Accountability journalism: The most irreplaceable function of local news is covering local government and institutions in sufficient depth to hold them accountable. National news organisations cover federal government; regional and local papers cover city halls, county commissioners, school boards, and local courts. When these are not covered, corruption and mismanagement go undetected.
Research by Penelope Muse Abernathy at the University of North Carolina documented that counties without local news coverage had significantly higher government costs, more municipal bond downgrades, and lower voter turnout than comparable counties with local news. The mechanism is straightforward: accountability requires an observer, and local journalism is the primary institutional observer of local government.
Civic infrastructure: Local news provides the shared information base that makes community decision-making possible. Residents who know what their local government is doing, what development is plan in their neighbourhood, what schools are performing well or poorly, and what public health issues are emerging can engage meaningfully in civic life. Without this information infrastructure, civic participation declines.
Community identity: Local coverage of local sports, local businesses, community events, and local people creates a shared narrative about a place that connects residents to each other and to their community. This social function is undervalued in purely economic analyses of local journalism but is deeply felt when it disappears. The crisis of local news dying is as much a cultural loss as an accountability one.
The Scale of Local News Decline
The United States has lost more than 2,500 newspapers since 2005 — approximately one-third of all papers that existed at the peak. The UK has lost more than 250 local newspaper titles since 2008. The primary driver is structural: digital advertising revenue that previously funded local journalism migrated to Google and Facebook, which aggregate local audiences without producing local journalism.
The result is an expanding geography of “news deserts” — communities with no meaningful local journalistic coverage. Abernathy’s research identified more than 200 counties in the United States with no local news source of any kind. In these areas, the accountability and civic functions described above are simply absent.
What Is Replacing Local News (And What Isn’t)
Several replacement models have emerged with partial success. Non-profit local news organisations (Texas Tribune, The City in New York, The Tyee in Canada) have demonstrated sustainable models in major urban markets. Hyperlocal digital startups covering specific neighbourhoods have succeeded in some cities. Public radio local desks have expanded in some markets.
What has not replaced traditional local news: routine coverage of local government meetings, court reporting, local sports, and community events across smaller and rural communities. The replacement journalism overwhelmingly concentrates in urban markets — the communities with the most acute news desert problem are the least likely to attract new digital journalism startups.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I support local journalism?
Subscribe to your local paper if one exists — even if it is imperfect. Donate to non-profit local news organisations in your area (many are listed at the Institute for Nonprofit News directory at inn.org). Share local journalism on social media with credit to the outlet. Write letters to the editor — publication engagement signals audience value to both outlets and potential funders. Contact local politicians and institutions and ask them to advertise in or support local news outlets. Individual readers significantly underestimate their collective influence on local journalism sustainability.
Is hyperlocal social media (Facebook groups, Nextdoor) a substitute for local news?
These platforms serve some of local journalism’s social and community functions — sharing information about neighbourhood events, local recommendations, and community news. do not serve the accountability function — are no professional journalists on Nextdoor to attend city council meetings, file public records requests, or investigate government misconduct. also produce significant misinformation about local events, crime, and politics that professional journalism would typically check. They are a complement to local news, not a substitute for its most important functions.
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