In 2000, many Americans lived in a community with journalists — people whose job it was to cover school board decisions, announce small business openings and closures, root out corruption at city hall, warn commuters about road work and trumpet the exploits of the high school teams. Today, most of those journalists are gone. The evaporation of local news coverage has hit small towns and big cities, suburbs and rural areas. Even as the country has grown, we’ve lost journalists.
Using data that’s never been tapped before, we now know just how severe this local journalist shortage has become. Less than a quarter-century ago, the United States had about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Now, the equivalent number is 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents, about a 75% decline. (Local Journalist Equivalent is a new measure we’re introducing, akin to a Full Time Equivalent or FTE).
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We also cannot assume the local news crisis is largely a rural phenomenon. The new data shows the extent to which the layoffs of journalists over time have left acute reporting shortages in many urban and suburban areas. If you’re in a big city like Los Angeles, which has a mere 3.6 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people, your neighborhood might be covered if there’s a serious crime but not much else. You may get little reliable information on local candidates in many of L.A. County’s cities, whether the schools in your neighborhood are improving, whether the hospital nearby has a bad mortality rate, or how inspiring people might be working to repair your playground.
