Local news and COVID-19 in North Carolina (page 3)

The Problem: COVID-19 and the shrinking local newsroom

During a crisis like COVID-19, accurate, local information can literally be a matter of life and death. But the last 20 years have witnessed the collapse of legacy newspapers that constituted the backbone of the nation’s news ecosystem, driven largely by the collapse of print advertising, the rise of digital players that sucked up online revenue, the disappearance of classified ads and shrinking print subscriber bases.

Smaller papers in many communities have closed entirely; others have merged with or been acquired by competitors. Hedge funds like Alden Global and Chatham Asset Management have descended on once-powerful newspaper chains. Lee Enterprises, Gannett, Berkshire Hathaway Media Group and McClatchy have all gone through bankruptcy or acquisitions (in some cases, both).

Thousands of jobs have disappeared; more and more communities turn into “news deserts.” Local broadcast news has also been under increasing financial pressure, though not to the catastrophic degree of newspapers. Local newspapers have historically been larger than local TV stations, but by 2017 the number of people employed by local TV stations surpassed those employed by local newspapers for the first time.

Many regional newspapers have seen their staff shrink from hundreds to dozens, completely abandoning suburbs and outlying counties they once covered aggressively. For example, the (Raleigh) News and Observer no longer covers most of the exurban and eastern North Carolina counties for which it once won a Pulitzer, while 36 newspapers have closed or merged in North Carolina over the past 20 years and six counties have no newspaper whatsoever. The estimated number of journalists, reporters, correspondents and broadcast analysts employed in North Carolina has fallen from 1,130 in 2017 to 830 in 2021, a 27% decline.

News sources are also competing with misinformation via the Internet and social media, a chorus that’s only grown louder in recent years. People trying to make reasoned decisions about whether to send their children back to daycare or shop in-person during the pandemic had access to fewer local news resources and more online information of dubious provenance.

The problem is simple: At a critical time when people needed local news more than ever, many local news sources were significantly weakened, potentially leaving communities without the information they need to keep themselves and their families safe.

Next chapter