Faith Boirard (middle) and Jen Clancey (right) of Denison University talk with Amy Kent (left), a small business owner who is concerned about how life will change when chip-manufacturer Intel starts operating a factory in the area. Denison students are helping fill gaps in local news coverage through The Reporting Project. Read the article in The Reporting Project. (Photo submitted)

The most recent annual report of the State of Local News Project by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism revealed an alarming uptick in news deserts across the country. Since 2005, the country has lost almost 2,900 newspapers and 43,000 journalists.

Of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., more than half, or 1,766, have either no local news source or only one remaining outlet, according to the report. Most of the counties at the greatest risk of losing a local source of news and information are in high-poverty areas in the South and Midwest. 

The problem is especially prevalent in rural areas, the data shows. Two-thirds of nonmetropolitan counties have only one news outlet or none at all, versus 40% in metropolitan counties.

To complicate the issue, according to Medill, the information vacuum in rural counties can be especially difficult to measure because, while some communities still have an operating newspaper, that remaining outlet may be a “ghost paper” with no local reporters and no meaningful coverage of local life. 

The impact of this trend has profound implications for the success of our communities and the functioning of our democracy. Local news coverage is correlated with higher levels of civic engagement and voter turnout, better economic outcomes for residents, and it can be a bulwark against misinformation. In short, our democracy relies upon the presence of a thriving ecosystem of reliable local news. 

One bright spot in the report is the potential for university reporting programs to be part of the solution by partnering with local news outlets. Colleges and universities in rural areas can engage their students and resources to support local news.

There are 627 colleges and universities located in rural areas, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). About 95% of these – 598 – are located in a news desert or in a county adjacent to a news desert.

At the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, we’ve documented the critical role that college reporting programs can play in addressing news deserts. These partnerships are a win-win for everyone: Students get key hands-on learning experiences, universities can meet their public service mission in their state, and local news outlets can achieve sustainability with the help of student reporting. 

The Center for Community News works with dozens of university-led reporting programs – from large to very small – that have successful collaborations with local news outlets to serve their communities. We are especially hopeful about the solutions that are emerging in counties that the Medill report identified as having no reliable news source. Many enterprising schools in regions at risk of becoming news deserts are now exploring the potential for news-academic partnerships to help fill this critical information gap and, as CCN’s mapping illustrates, the potential for more is huge.

There are promising examples of colleges stepping up to meet this need across the country. In New York, there are more than 12 colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) system that are in or adjacent to news deserts, and SUNY recently announced the Institute for Local News to bring students and faculty to address the local news crisis. At Claflin University, a historically Black university in South Carolina, Professor Luis Camillo Almeida, Ph.D., is leading a group of students who work with the local paper, The Times and Democrat, to publish professionally edited stories about their region. And at the University of Georgia, students staff a rural community paper, The Oglethorpe Echo. In rural Ohio, Denison University students are providing local news. These are just some of many examples from around the country of colleges in rural areas meeting local news needs.

As increasingly more (often rural) communities lose their trusted sources of local information, university-led partnerships like these are helping to reimagine a sustainable future for local news.

Richard Watts is director of the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont.

Meg Little Reilly is managing director of the Center for Community News and a columnist with Forbes Magazine.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story mistakenly referred to Denison University as Denison College.

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