More than half of the counties across America have limited access to reliable news and information, according to researchers at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The State of Local News 2023 report, produced by Northwestern's Local News Initiative, paints a dim outlook with 204 counties that have no local media and a trending pattern of an average of 2.5 local news media lost every week, up from an average of two per week a year ago.
But Andrew DeVigal, Director of the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon, and Maya Chupkov, who manages the Media and Democracy program at Common Cause California, remain undaunted by the task of saving local media. We'll explore the future of local media and learn why they are optimistic.
