In the past year alone, 127 newspapers have shut their doors, leaving counties all over the United States with no local new outlet in their area. (Medill Local News Initiative)
Just when dark evenings and misleading political ads were making me glum, along comes Northwestern University’s annual report, “The State of Local News.” It made me feel even worse.
I recognized the trends spotlighted by the report, which is compiled by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. I’ll try to summarize some of the important parts and talk about how they are playing out at The Columbian.
The report, which focused on print newspapers and online news websites, finds that all of the recent bad trends continued or even accelerated last year. For example, the 2022 Medill report predicted that a third of all U.S. newspapers would disappear by 2025; the 2023 report showed that we had already exceeded that mark. About 5,600 newspapers are left; 80 percent of which are published once per week. Besides The Columbian, which is published five days a week in print and six days online, Clark County has two weekly newspapers: The Camas-Washougal Post-Record and The Reflector.
Luckily, that means we are not one of the 208 — and growing — U.S. counties without any local news source, which are commonly referred to as “news deserts.” Washington has one news desert, Asotin County. Located in the lower right-hand corner of Washington, across the Snake River from Lewiston, Idaho, it is fortunate to be served by the Lewiston newspaper and a Lewiston TV station.
Counties lucky enough to still have local sources of news are getting less of it. Medill said newspapers shed more than 7,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023, almost 2,000 of which were in the newsroom. The percentage decline in newspaper employment was similar to that of manufacturers of cassette tapes and DVDs.
Frequency of publication has been reduced, too. This year’s report found 180 formerly daily newspapers that now print fewer than three days a week. A lot of these are in small towns, but the report also noted that some cities, such as Salt Lake City, have newspapers that print only once per week. In other words, not only are there fewer journalists, but there are fewer print opportunities for their journalism.
It’s all because of money, of course. Another think tank, Pew Research Group, estimated the total advertising revenue of U.S. newspapers was $9.8 billion in 2023, compared with $49.4 billion in 2005. Circulation revenue has declined, too, albeit more slowly. Print customers are leaving, but the prices charged to remaining customers are increasing, which softens the blow. And digital subscriptions have increased, although the overall pace of the increase slowed last year, according to Medill. We see those trends reflected at The Columbian.
Our strategy
In this challenging environment, this is what we’ve been doing to try to maintain a strong local news report.
First, our owners, Ben and Will Campbell, prioritize funding newsroom positions. We have almost 30 newsroom employees, which these days is considered quite a few. For example, The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., lists 12 people in its newsroom directory. The News Tribune in Tacoma lists 24.
Our Community Funded Journalism initiative has been a lifeline. Local donations, big and small, support the salaries of Alexis Weisend and Mia Ryder-Marks, who cover homelessness and affordable housing; Chrissy Booker, who covers health and nonprofits; and Shari Phiel, who covers environment and land use policy.
We recently welcomed Henry Brannan, our Murrow News Fellow, who covers the Columbia River and its myriad issues. Although he works as a reporter in our newsroom, he is an employee of Washington State University.
Medill’s annual report was sobering and concerning. But we’re committed to Clark County and will do our best to bring you its stories.
Courtesy of Northwest Medill Local News Initiative
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