If there is an ur-source of data about the extent of the local news crisis, it is surely the map of news deserts compiled by journalism researcher Penelope Abernathy. First at the University of North Carolina and more recently at Northwestern University’s Medill School, Abernathy has produced perhaps the single most influential work on the local news crisis.
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The most recent Medill data is from November 2023. Alice Dreger, who writes the blog Local News Blues, has been pointing out flaws in the numbers all year. Among other things: The Baltimore Sun, a legacy for-profit newspaper, and The Baltimore Banner, a digital nonprofit, were originally excluded; East Lansing Info, a sizable nonprofit in Michigan that Dreger helped found, was not on the list; and several projects serving Black communities, such as AfroLA and Baltimore Witness, were missing.
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Now, Dreger reports, Medill is starting to make corrections after initially being unresponsive. That’s good. In fact, I would suggest that the Medill report and others like it should always be regarded as works in progress, subject to additions, deletions and other edits. I maintain a database of independent local news organizations and news-oriented public access stations in Massachusetts, and I’m always making changes to it.
