The Loss of Local News—News Deserts

Episode 76

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The Loss of Local News—News Deserts
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Stat: 2000: More than 2,000 of the 3,143 counties in the United States have no daily local newspaper.

Story: What is a news desert? We explore the definition—a community with limited access to credible and comprehensive news and information—by traveling to southeast Georgia where the Waycross Journal-Herald abruptly closed in September 2019. We also interview expert Penny Abernathy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has documented the spread of news deserts across the United States.

Related resources:

The Expanding News Desert

Newspapers Fact Sheet

State of the News Media

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Penny Abernathy Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics Professor, University of North Carolina’

The Loss of Local News

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The Loss of Local News

In this three-part series, we explore the decline in local news coverage across America.

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