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New Deserts and Non-Abridgment: Supporting Informational Democracy by Reviving Local News

-- By JohnClayton - 17 Apr 2021

Introduction

I spent my first three years out of undergrad working as a reporter in York, Pennsylvania, a small and fairly anonymous city whose affairs were nonetheless chronicled each day by not one, but two daily newspapers. I worked at the morning paper; our counterparts published in the afternoon. Given the modest scope of our coverage area—two mostly rural counties—our newsroom was well-stocked. Two dozen or so reporters, plus desk staff and photographers. Plenty to cover local politics and school board meetings and Friday night football games.

Today, less than a dozen reporters remain at my old paper. A news publishing conglomerate bought us and outsourced desk jobs to a hub far from southcentral Pennsylvania. As far as I know, our competitor is not doing much better. It is hard to imagine York will stay a two-newspaper town for much longer.

Still, York is lucky. In recent years, researchers have increasingly studied the phenomenon of “news deserts.” As the internet siphoned away audiences and ad dollars, print media shriveled; a quarter of newspapers and half of local journalism jobs have disappeared in the last 15 years. Large swaths of the country, particularly rural areas, now have no local print or digital news outlets.

For an informational democracy to thrive, we must resurrect local news. The government has an interest in creating a new and sustainable digital local news infrastructure. Indeed, under the First Amendment’s non-abridgement principle, it may even have an obligation to.

The Need for Local News in an Informational Democracy

The Case for a Non-Abridgement Obligation

Building Infrastructure for a New Local News

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