DO WE HAVE A "GHOST" NEWSPAPER IN BROWNTOWN?

                                                        

By Penelope Muse Abernathy

Knight Chair of Journalism and Digital Media Economics

As hundreds of small weeklies and dozens of dailies vanished from the U.S. news landscape in recent years, thousands of other dailies and weeklies became shells, or “ghosts,” of their former selves. 

Many of these papers are still published – sometimes under the same name as in the past – but the quality, quantity and scope of their editorial content are significantly diminished. Routine government meetings are not covered, for example, leaving citizens with little information about proposed tax hikes, local candidates for office or important policy issues that must be decided.

Research by Duke University attempted to quantify the diminishment of local news by analyzing over 16,000 news stories provided to 100 randomly selected communities in one week. The study found that fewer than half of news stories provided to a typical community were produced by the local media outlet, and only 17 percent were about the community or events that took place there. 

The local news ecosystem seemed to be least robust in communities that had significant portions of Hispanic/Latino populations or in neighborhoods and suburbs that were either in, or adjacent to, large metro markets. The study also found that even when a local newspaper was located in a county seat, there was no increase in “journalistic production . . . [which] would seem to reinforce contemporary concerns about the decline in local government reporting.”

There are two paths to becoming a ghost newspaper:

In one scenario, a weekly or small daily, often in a metro or suburban daily, often in a metro or suburban area, is purchased by a larger daily and slowly fades away as its news-gathering operations are merged with the larger paper's.

In its final stages of life, the once stand-alone weekly transitions to a free-distribution shopper or an upbeat lifestyle and entertainment publication. There is no breaking news or public service journalism. Between 2004 and 2018, almost 600 once-stand-alone newspapers – or one-third of the 1,800 papers that the country lost — became advertising supplements, free-distribution shoppers or lifestyle specialty publications.

In the second scenario, newspapers became "ghosts" when their newsroom staffing is so dramatically pared back that the remaining journalists cannot adequately cover their communities. 

In general, this has occurred among the nation’s dailies and larger weeklies. Although the exact number is hard to pin down, we estimate, based on news accounts and industry data, at least 1,000 of the 7,200 newspapers still published in this country – and perhaps as many as 1,500 – have lost significantly more than half of their newsroom staffs since 2004. As a result, they have become ghosts, with drastically curtailed reach and journalistic missions.

Unlike the 600 weeklies that evolved into advertising supplements and were removed from the UNC database, the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 large dailies with drastically reduced editorial missions are counted in the overall total of 7,100 surviving newspapers. However, the sheer size of this contingent – and the fact that most are dailies – speaks to the magnitude of the diminishment of local news at the local, state and regional levels in recent years.

GOING, GOING GONE…

A third of the 1,800 papers – 600 – that were lost over the past decade slowly faded away. Most were suburban weeklies. Like the frog in slowly boiling water, few people in the community noticed anything different at first. There was no abrupt closure that grabbed headlines. Often there was merely an announcement that the paper had been purchased by the owner of a nearby, larger daily.

To read rest of story, click on link: https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/loss-of-local-news/the-rise-of-the-ghost-newspaper/