Why local US newspapers are sounding the alarm

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44688274

by prostoalex • 8 years ago

109 110 8 years ago

User23• 8 years ago

It’s not surprising that a business based on providing printouts of yesterday’s wire stories plus classified ads isn’t doing well.

presidente20• 8 years ago

It's surprising that the BBC think it's surprising.

fludlight• 8 years ago

I wonder what the local news situation is in the UK.

chrisseaton• 8 years ago

Do many local stories appear on the news wires?

shanecleveland• 8 years ago

No. The point being made is that many smaller papers, which are mostly owned by large publishers, have some original, local content with the rest being non-local wire stories.

ghaff3• 8 years ago

My town had a local newspaper for a while which went away. Now I have basically no source of information about local planning, zoning, etc. board meetings. I suppose I could more regularly attend town meetings and so forth but that often isn't really an option.

ianmcgowan• 8 years ago

nextdoor.com? Though mine seems to be filled with people complaining about things, and lost dogs...

qubax• 8 years ago

Your town/municipality doesn't have a website with all that info? Granted, most town websites are horrid to navigate, but the information should be there.

dominotw• 8 years ago

I used to read dnainfo in chicago everday but they shut it down last year. It was the only news i really cared about.

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/

beamatronic• 8 years ago

Nextdoor can fulfill that role to some extent. As long as someone cares enough to post.

dahdum• 8 years ago

Civic engagement dropped by ~5%, with p<.05, per the study linked the article. The way it was written I expected a drastic drop.

I didn't see any other years compared to see if that kind of variance is typical.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/10584609.2012...

1996• 8 years ago

Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

msie• 8 years ago

In my town both the major newspapers are owned by one company. That one company also laid off a lot of reporting staff and saved money by using syndicated content in both papers.

It's sad to see how less diverse the opinions are. We are just being told what to think now.

Accioni• 8 years ago

Yeah, similar here. It really sucks.

russellbeattie• 8 years ago

I started my career as a journalist at a small daily paper before moving into tech in the 1990s. As a young reporter - still in college - I got horrible assignments like having to attend local budget meetings, going down to the police station to copy the blotter, sitting in on school board meetings, updating the local calendar and reporting on the high school sports teams, among other tasks. This stuff was boring, tedious and rarely ever generated "news" of anything beyond an informational synopses of the goings on around town.

It didn't matter - the paper was picked up and read daily by thousands of readers. Many read it cover to cover. It's truly an important service to any community. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all. Newspapers traditionally bring people together and provide a sense of belonging and regional awareness and even pride.

This stuff isn't sexy, nor particularly profitable, but it has to be done! Someone needs to keep track of these events, summarize and disseminate this information. Even the most boring, mundane happenings need to be recorded and publicized for well-functioning society. Without that effort, the things happening around us become opaque, and being informed relies literally on word of mouth.

Sadly, pretty much every effort to digitally replicate the services provided by local papers has failed to my knowledge. As a result, I know more about what's happening in London than I do about my home city.

No idea what the solution is, and a lot of people much smarter than myself have tried for years. But what I do know is the long term consequences of small newspapers closing is a lot more dire than I think most people realize.

sjg0073• 8 years ago

The future is probably an AI aggregator that takes meeting minutes and summarizes them. Then every public event / happening gets posted to Facebook. The one journalist turns into the content creators themselves themselves. Maybe someone like Facebook could geofence sites and aggregate them into something like My Town.

freehunter• 8 years ago

I'm actually working on a project similar to this, using an AI to generate local news articles. The problem with this is every town does it differently, and some do it so awfully that getting anything of value from the minutes takes a lot of work for a human who was actually at the meeting itself.

For example, my town doesn't publish its meeting minutes online for three months. I can get the minutes in person the week after, but by then the once-weekly newspaper has "scooped" my AI because they had a human there. And even after I get the minutes, oftentimes the note will say "approved PUD conversion from C-2 for [Business X]. Motion from [Councilmember Y] seconded by [Councilmember Z]". Without knowing the discussion surrounding that decision, the minutes are dry and would produce an even drier news article.

I've tried to work with other area towns as well, and many of them don't put their meeting minutes online at all. The most reliable council meeting notes come from bigger cities, which don't need an AI to write their news for them.

a3n2• 8 years ago

I think the future is just as likely civic disengagement.

grahamburger2• 8 years ago

I know I'm kind of dreaming here, but I think this would be a cool application for ActivityPub / Fediverse. Every town gets an instance with some official accounts (govt, school board, etc) and a dedicated reporting staff to gather tidbits to publish. Because of federation I could follow the news of other places I care about but my identity would be on my own city's instance.

Anon1096• 8 years ago

One of the most important parts of any newspaper is that it is independent from the government though. I know in my town officials have openly accused the local paper of slander, and everyone is the better for seeing both sides. Having official accounts is just asking for coverups.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.

And that’d be silly. Communities existed long before newspapers, and they exist for nnplaces too small to support their own newspapers now. And even communities that would have had a newspaper a couple decades ago make do with, e.g., one or mor Facebook groups today, with the boring bits you refer to informally crowdsourced.

kuschku2• 8 years ago

This is also one of the largest issues with EU politics and elections right now – there’s few EU-wide media, as result, there’s little EU-wide debates, and no real community.

philwelch• 8 years ago

Is it even possible to have all of that without a shared language?

willio58• 8 years ago

In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.

As a young (21yr) person in my community, I have to say I have never read through a full local newspaper and don't know a single friend my age or younger who has. The local news channels have websites these days and I would say those, in combination with local public radio, television channels, and even social media are the main source for local news in my town (for my demographic at least).

I personally don't feel a lack of community due to the fact that this news comes from my computer monitor instead of ink on some rolled up paper, but then again I never really lived in an era when I got to experience that.

zasz• 8 years ago

It's not that the information comes digitally versus in deadtree format. The problem is the destruction of local news, period, which means that you're going to get less of it even in digital formats.

ethbro5• 8 years ago

As someone from the last generation born without ubiquitous web, the biggest difference for me is the definition of community.

Now, a community is whoever you want it to be. Folks who play the same game you do. People who hate rocks. People who think purple hair is awesome. People who think purple hair is stupid and red hair is awesome.

The people may live next to you, or they may live in another country.

Previously, all these people who made up your community were in your town, by necessity. Because of that, you pretty much rolled the random dice and that's who you interacted with.

Gain (present vs past) -- being able to find a community that's similar to you. Especially if you don't identify with the norm (imagine being the only person you knew who thought computers were cool). Much more rapid dissemination of ideas and social mores.

Loss -- forced mixing of and interaction with different groups. Exposure to new ideas and different perspectives. Identification with people who aren't like you (but are still "one of us", i.e. from the same town)

erfgh• 8 years ago

It doesn't make that much of a difference whether you read it on screen or on paper. Still, someone has to write it.

pimmen• 8 years ago

I used to consume news the same way you do when I was your age, but now that I'm entering my 30s I consume a lot more local news. I want to feel updated about what happens in the local schools (by far most of that is regulated and budgeted on the local level) not only to know about whether or not this is a good community for raising kids but I also want to feel informed if my colleagues who have kids are affected by something. Same thing with elderly care, public transportation, local business news, and real estate projects. This stuff affects me more profoundly when I'm trying to build a career, raise kids, find a permanent home, and worry about my parents being taken care of as they get noticeably older and weaker. And, of course, as the people I socialize with also worry about this stuff now to varying degrees I want to feel as informed as my peers about the usual topics of discussion.

2038AD• 8 years ago

I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all I would say the opposite. If members of a community aren't aware of the goings on, they don't have that 'regional awareness', it's not much of a community. A daily newspaper is only needed if people aren't informed. Daily is too often for the news to simply be a supplement for word-of-mouth that is the medium of a genuine community.

protomyth2• 8 years ago

In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.

In the US, it was the churches that made an area a community not the newspapers. As the churches have faded nothing has replaced them. Newspapers supplemented what was discussed informally in gatherings.

Frankly, local newspapers that didn’t remember that they served locals and either tried to preach or kept republishing national news outlets when it became obvious national news was available elsewhere doomed themselves.

maxerickson• 8 years ago

My small town had a Catholic church for like every 4,000 people (and many other churches too). I think other poster is talking about communities of tens of thousands. I don't think you are talking about the same meaning of community.

snarf21• 8 years ago

I think what you describe used to be true. I think that as the boomers die off, local papers will have almost 0 readers. It is a time and era that is dying off at least in the US. Most of this local journalism now is barely more than a tweet even though it is an "article" online. No facts, no research, little more than a headline.

In the US, the papers won't totally go away because certain things must (by law) be reported in a public data source. I think the thing that the journalism totally missed the boat on was being the source for local entertainment. People always want to know what fun things they can do this week/end with their kids and friends. Having local knowledge is something the Yelps of the world will never be able to do right.

davidw• 8 years ago

In my town, there's still a local paper, and they send out that one person, who is reasonably neutral, to report on what happens during, say, city council meetings. Without that person, you just have what the councilors say, what Angry Neighbors report (the parking! won't someone think of the parking!), or maybe a long, long, tedious recording that no sane person can sit through to make heads or tails of what happened.

That's super important stuff and has a lot more impact on my life than many things in DC.

From the article:

Susan's a Daily Camera subscriber, but she mentions Boulder's local paper recently raised the subscription price by 25%.

This is, in part, a result of tariffs by the Trump administration:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-publishers-worry-ab...

vkou2• 8 years ago

For a few years, I was that person in my village.

At least, I like to think I was neutral in my writing. There were two political cliques, and one of them occasionally behaved in incredibly jerkish ways (And would regularly have between 0 and 40% of the council seats).

lurquer• 8 years ago

How much is due to the tariff?

shoguning• 8 years ago

But nationwide, there's been no mass replacement of local newspapers. Non-profit online sites are largely based in major metro areas.

Is this really true? I've heard of at least a couple of non-profit newspapers opening in small towns including the one I'm from, and I don't really pay that close of attention to this stuff. For enterprising journalists there are a lot of people willing to pay/donate to these causes. Optimistically, the funding can move from ad/subscription more to donations/grants and the local reporting can continue.

exotree• 8 years ago

It is very true. And a journalist can’t do the job of being a journalist if they have to spend hours in city council meetings in addition to wooing subscribers. This business is tough.

corysama• 8 years ago

There have been studies showing that without local papers acting as watchdogs, local government costs go up.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280712

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance-loc...

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...

dsfyu404ed• 8 years ago

When nobody guards the guards the guards screw off and waste resources.

Shivetya• 8 years ago

this must only really work in small communities as most larger cities are pretty much immune to monitoring except corruption.

anecdotal, in Atlanta we tend to see the local TV news doing a lot of investigation with one partnered with the local paper (AJC). They tend to focus on corruption more than costs of city programs. However the one expense they never ever will touch is how cities are getting buried by pension costs to where even the pension systems are threatened. (Chicago's system will be out of money by 2021) too rich of benefits and more retirees than active is to much of a burden

freddie_mercury• 8 years ago

this must only really work in small communities as most larger cities are pretty much immune to monitoring except corruption

You are wrong, didn't read the link, don't make any arguments about its findings, and don't offer any evidence for your claims.

"To further account for within-state cross county variation, we control for county-level differences in population, population growth, per capita income, and employment growth."

Was it really so important that you say "this study is wrong" and share your personal anecdote that you couldn't have spent a few minutes reading it first? Commenting on HackerNews isn't a race and the level of discourse usually goes up when people aren't in a rush to comment.

Is sharing a personal anecdote on HackerNews with strangers more valuable than learning something new?

simplecomplex6• 8 years ago

News is no longer what a local paper publishes. It's the latest Instagram story from your friends. It's the Facebook post from a local school informing parents of a PTA meeting. It's the Twitter status update from the President. It's a Reddit post discussing problems with the latest MacBook keyboards.

Why is the newspaper dying? Because updates about what is happening in people's world is no longer constrained by what is published in the local paper! And everyone involved in the old industry still can't wrap their minds around it.

The newspaper was a medium for communication. The World Wide Web is a medium for communication. News didn't die, but what constitutes news is no longer defined by what the local paper decides to publish.

pretendscholar• 8 years ago

  A Facebook post doesn't cover the PTA meeting and compile what occurred. A twitter update from the president is national news and just a snippet where an article about the tweet would provide a larger context about what he's talking about.  Reddit is so likely to be astroturfed by big companies that it is becoming increasingly misinformation.

nerdponx• 8 years ago

This is simply not true. There is a huge demand, perhaps now moreso than ever, for trustworthy sources of consolidated information about current events. I don't follow Trump or the White House on Twitter. I don't follow Apple news on Reddit. I don't attend PTA meetings and I don't follow them on Facebook. Do you expect me to start doing all those things to replace reading the paper?

simplecomplex6• 8 years ago

I don't expect you to do anything. I was explaining why the newspaper is dying: Because people (in general, in aggregate) are preferring other forms of communication. It's obvious that in a world where the newspaper is your only option for "updates on things happening that are relevant to you", that it would do better than in a world where there are many more options to fill that need.

The number of Americans reading print newspapers has been declining since the web became popular. The average age of a newspaper reader is somewhere north of 55.

PeterisP2• 8 years ago

There is a desire for "trustworthy sources of consolidated information about current events" and they are important, however, the economic demand for them is low and falling as clearly shown by the fact that people are becoming less willing to pay for that. If you look at what the majority of people do, instead of what some people say, then it's obvious that the willingness to pay for such information is definitely not huge, and now moreso than ever the demand for this is falling - the people choose to do without trustworthy information and prefer free news tidbits that match what they want to hear.

LocalPCGuy• 8 years ago

The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news. They did a fantastic job (in most cases) of making sure they had their facts straight, and local news broke most of the big stories you eventually heard about on national news sources. Even today, a LOT of the national news starts at local news sources, either papers or local channels, but that is getting worse all the time due to the cuts.

Instead, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. you get a flood of "news", but you have to vet it all yourself to see what is true and what isn't. And many many people don't do that - if they trust the person sharing, they trust the "news". Or if it agrees with their world view, they trust the "news". Sometimes amazing things are covered - live Reddit threads have broken some amazing stories, with details from local residents. Same with Twitter, etc. But for every one of those stories there are 100s that are fake, or actually pushing alternative narratives that are not based in reality for their own ends. And that flood is just too much for the average person to actually separate the fact from the fiction.

Social media does not equal journalism. That isn't "old industry" thinking. That is just a sad fact.

simplecomplex6• 8 years ago

It turns out, many people find curating their own updates that are relevant to them from the web more valuable than spending money on a newspaper.

Retric• 8 years ago

Every time I have known what was going on and read a local newspaper covering it there has been a host of errors. Local news is ok for having a vague idea what's going on, and little else.

So sure, there is some value there. But, less than many people seem to think.

PS: OK, local movie showtimes where generally correct.

EGreg2• 8 years ago

Have you seen wikinews? Their selection of topics and reporting may be much broader than what you are used to on your local news channel. If you even watch that.

Animats• 8 years ago

"The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news."

Not write. Gather. The whole point of reporting is someone going out and collecting news. Not someone who already has it issuing a press release. “Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." (Attributed to many, but seen as a desk sign on some newspaper editors desks.)

r00fus2• 8 years ago

Aside from the obvious "fake news" dilemma (i.e. How do you trust your aggregated news sources), the unsexy but important data (i.e. Data supporting Quadrant 2 activities ) is not being collected.

This leads to a less informed public, at least locally. Any of the "local" social sites (i.e. Patch/etc) seem to wither or get consumed by politics (national/international) spam (commercials) and propaganda.

The internet of today lacks trustworthiness (probably an engineered outcome).

simplecomplex6• 8 years ago

I disagree. Speaking for myself, I am far more informed because of the Web than I was before the Web where my only option was the newspaper.

Yes, a lot of people prefer to read updates on the Kardashians, just like people prefer to do the crosswords and read the funnies.

a3n2• 8 years ago

It's odd that newspapers are dying because their old business model, ad support, has gone away, but Facebook and Google thrive on ads.

megaman22• 8 years ago

Facebook and Google have the eyeballs, so their ad space is perceived to be valuable. Newspapers... don't. In the Boston area, the Herald just went under this year, and apparently the Globe has less than a million daily readers. And the Globe is a major, flagship paper. But, as with the Globe's ownership's other major concern (The Red Sox), they're catering to a graying, aging, dying audience.

mudil• 8 years ago

GoogleFB thrive on ads because they violate privacy. Say I am from Springfield. Normally, the newspaper would show the ads for Springfield businesses. Now Google shows the ads for Springfield businesses on Candy Crush Saga. The same effect happens to specialty, niche publications. I am running a medical technologies site aimed at doctors for 15 years, and we can barely stay afloat. Google violates privacy and thrives on ads, but people that actually create the content are suffering. I call it the Google's War on Journalism.

PS To be sure, Google learned that our readers are doctors from our site and related sites. Now, Google shows them doctor-related ads on Candy Crush Saga. How's that for fairness?!

mrweasel• 8 years ago

Facebook and Google are outliers. Your average website (if there is such a thing anymore) with 10.000 - 100.000 aren't thriving on ads, they struggle to survive as well, at least the for profit sites.

alienreborn• 8 years ago

"Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model," says Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

-- David Simon (Creator of The Wire) on the necessity of local newspapers which are quickly disappearing.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/27/david-simon-wi...

jackfoxy• 8 years ago

There may be hope for automating the dissemination of local and state government information and news when agencies use services like opengov.com. The problem is still getting this information to venues people will notice and pay attention to. This will still probably come down to social media. In many ways social media is taking the place of local newspapers.

moorhosj• 8 years ago

Pew found a 35% decline in reporters covering statehouses from 2003 to 2014. This is a scary lack of information for voters and watchdogs.

http://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting-state...

==Less than a third of U.S. newspapers assign any kind of reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, only 30% of the 801 daily papers it monitor send a staffer to the statehouse for any period of time. In Massachusetts, whose capital is the largest city (Boston), just 6% of the state’s newspapers have any reporting presence at the statehouse—the lowest percentage of newspaper representation of any state.==

katzgrau3• 8 years ago

A number of comments here are along the lines of "I'm more informed today than I was before the web, no problem here."

You're probably more informed on the whole, but there are fewer and fewer eyes watching our elected officials and shining lights into dark places.

A strong and free press is critical in maintaining a healthy democracy. Support your local papers or hyperlocal bloggers if you see them doing good work - you and your community will benefit in the long term.

wmeredith• 8 years ago

People are more informed about sensationalist clickbait bullshit and national news that depresses and enrages us because that’s what gets “shared”. But people don’t know their neighbors. It’s sad.

kingofhdds5• 8 years ago

"Press" is just a technical method of information dissemination which certainly can become outdated. Democracy needs freedom of speech and expression.

katzgrau3• 8 years ago

Kind of a weird nitpick there. Democracy needs someone working to uncover things that the public needs to know to make informed voting decisions.

kalleboo2• 8 years ago

Sweden had the same problem of local newspapers shutting down in the 50's and 60's, and introduced a system of press support where the government directly subsidizes newspapers to keep competition available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support

ravenstine• 8 years ago

Doesn't that create a conflict of interest?

kingofhdds5• 8 years ago

Of course it does.

kalleboo2• 8 years ago

It's a bit more complicated than that.

Rather than try or pretend to be neutral, Swedish newspapers tend to outright state their political affiliations/biases. (e.g. "Skånska Dagbladet is close to the Centre Party"[0] "Aftonbladet describes itself as an independent social-democratic newspaper"[1]). This results in the newspapers having protection of the parties they support, rather than the legislature-du-jour, and an attempt by the government to influence an opposing newspaper would quickly gain political attention.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skånska_Dagbladet

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftonbladet

EGreg2• 8 years ago

I wrote an extensive comment as to why I consider the capitalist funding model for news to be suboptimal and not resilient in the face of the Internet. I described an alternative in terms of collaborative efforts like wikinews, user-submitted content, and fact checking and analysis as a community effort. It tried to be as detailed and helpful as possible in a reasonable space.

It was downvoted (fine) and then flagged and killed. Also replies to it that agreed with it were flagged even more and killed.

My question is - why was it flagged? Can anyone explain? Is it because it suggested a non-capitalist approach to news? Or because it made a broader point? I really think the “flag” feature should require an explanation.

kingofhdds5• 8 years ago

If taxi drivers were in the same way connected to social studies people as journos are, we would be reading laments about oldschool taxi services as a cornerstone of society now.

ramblerman• 8 years ago

The biggest loss to newspapers imo is the fact that they got just 1 chance every day to publish their articles.

It was harder to spy on what the other was doing, unless you wanted to be a day behind them. This allowed people to come up with more original opinions, and less hivemind behavior that you see with the constantly updating/mutating articles online.

Why local US newspapers are sounding the alarm

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