Without local newspapers, corruption flourishes and communities die
Across the country, newspapers are struggling. Many, in fact, are closing.
It’s a critical loss for our democracy. Without local newspapers we risk losing community institutions that hold our elected officials accountable and bring our communities to life.
In 2018, a comprehensive study from the University of North Carolina, Hussman School of Journalism and Media, found that more than 1,800 newspapers (about a quarter of newspapers across the country) have shut down in the past decade. This leaves some 200 counties in the U. S. without access to an outlet for the news in their own backyard.
Think about it for a minute. What would you do if there was no one to tell you why traffic was backing up on your commute home? That happened recently in Versailles. Traffic backed up for hours on U.S. 60 due to railroad crossing repairs. Posted signs said the project would be done by the weekend, but when construction continued into the next week, drivers saw their 20-minute commutes stretch into hours. People took to Facebook groups to complain, but it wasn’t until John McGary at the Woodford Sun got to the bottom of what was going on that anyone got real answers.
That’s not a story you’re going to see on the evening news. And you’re not going to hear about it on NPR. But for those who live, work and drive through Versailles that was a real issue. People wanted to know how their tax dollars were being spent to fix something, why it was taking so long and who thought it was okay to shut down a popular route from Lexington to Frankfort.
Reporters and editors at local papers bring you the information that you need to make informed decisions. And they make careful, qualified judgments about which stories get published, what impact those stories are going to have and whether or not it’s ethical to publish something.
You can’t get that from a Facebook page or a community blog.
This week, the report “Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions” found that newspapers serve another purpose as well — increased voter turn-out. Research indicates that just reading a newspaper encourages as much as 13 percent of non-voters to vote.
Newspapers even impact who runs for office. When the Cincinnati Post closed in 2007, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the number of candidates running for office fell while the likelihood an incumbent would win re-election rose.
Without newspapers not only do bad politicians stay in office, they can do what they want.
Take Bell, California. When California’s legislature passed a law capping council member salaries in certain types of cities, council members in Bell, a city of 37,000, proposed a ballot measure to change what type of city Bell was. Because the city had no newspaper to cover the issue, the measure passed with less than 1 percent of the city’s residents voting.
Once passed, the city no longer fell under salary cap law, so council members adjusted their salaries. Within five years, council members were making an average of $100,000 a year. The city manager was making nearly $800,000, and the police chief was making over $450,000 – nearly four times as much as the police chief of Los Angeles.
Activists finally got nearby media to notice. L. A. Times investigative reporter Jeff Gottlieb’s Pulitzer-prize winning story found that not only had the council members helped themselves to tax payer money, but that they had done it by illegally raising taxes and fees. And they were able to do it because there was no local newspaper to hold them accountable. In the end, seven officials were found guilty of stealing more than $5.5 million in tax payer funds.
Not every local paper is going to point out the water is tainted like the Flint Journal did in Flint, MI; or find a local lawyer involved in a nationwide scam to bilk veterans out of their pensions, like the Anderson Independent-Mail did. But even without breaking news, local newspapers do a lot for communities. They tell stories about high school athletes breaking records. They publish pieces on school boards changing high school dress codes. They show the world what’s going on in their towns. And they do that by covering their community like it’s the center of the universe, because to their readers, it is.
But they can’t do it without support. Get a subscription to your local paper. Buy advertising in your paper. Tell a store that you bought something there because you saw their ad in the newspaper.
Do it because it’s imperative we support our newspapers. Without support, newspapers die off. And without newspapers, we’ll all be left vulnerable and in the dark.
Liz Carey is a writer and author in Versailles. Find her blog at hellsfunnybelle.com, follow her on Twitter at @lizardsc or email her at lizcarey@charter.net.