INTRODUCTION
13 Barbara O’Brien: Barbara O’Brien, “Orchard Park Police Chief Gets Another $100,000 to Retire,” Buffalo News, May 25, 2019.
15 As local journalism declines: “Losing the News,” PEN America, November 20, 2019.
16 It’s painful: Margaret Sullivan, “Is This Strip-mining or Journalism? ‘Sobs, Gasps, Expletives’ over Latest Denver Post Layoffs,” Washington Post, March 15, 2018.
17 They’re going to disappear: Sam Ro, “Warren Buffett Says the Newspaper Business Is ‘Toast,’” Yahoo Finance, April 29, 2019.
17 From 2004 to 2015: Bill Reader, “Despite Losses, Community Newspapers Still Dominate the U.S. Market,” Newspaper Research Journal 39 (2018): 32.
17 “I think most local newspapers”: Joe Concha, “NYT Editor Predicts Most Local Newspapers Will ‘Die in the Next Five Years,’” the Hill, May 22, 2019.
18 A Pew study in 2019: “For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection,” Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media, March 26, 2019.
19 A Northern California man: Margaret Sullivan, “Cancel in Protest? Or Stay with a Local Newspaper That’s Being Strip-mined for Profits?” Washington Post, January 27, 2019.
21 a “news desert”: Penelope Muse Abernathy, “The Expanding News Desert,” University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media, 2018.
22 A Journal of Politics study: Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless, “The Decline of Local News and its Effects: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data,” Journal of Politics 80 (2017): 332.
22 Voting becomes more politically polarized: Joshua Darr, Matthew Hitt, and Johanna Dunaway, “Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior,” Journal of Communication 68 (2018): 1007.
22 When local reporting waned: Pengjie Gao, Chang Joo Lee, and Dermot Murphy, “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance,” Brookings, September 24, 2018.
23 The harm is not confined: Yukihiro Yazaki, “Newspapers and Political Accountability: Evidence from Japan,” Public Choice 172 (2017): 311.
23 Studies in Japan and Switzerland: Daniel Kübler and Christopher Goodman, “Newspaper Markets and Municipal Politics: How Audience and Congruence Increase Turnout in Local Elections,” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 29 (2019): 1.
CHAPTER TWO
36 David Gottesman: Jonathan Laing, “The Collector,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 1977.
37 By 2006, according to Forbes: Louis Hau, “Newspaper Killer,” Forbes, December 11, 2006.
38 Emily Bell: Emily Bell, “Media Amnesia and the Facebook News Tab,” Columbia Journalism Review, October 25, 2019.
39 As the Reuters Institute study succinctly put it: Joy Jenkins and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, “The Digital Transition of Local News,” Reuters Institute, 2018.
40 Writing in Recode: Kurt Wagner, “TV and Newspapers Are Out. Facebook and Google Are In,” Recode, February 20, 2019.
41 It’s no exaggeration: Felix Richter, “Fifty Years of Growth Wiped Out in a Decade,” Statista, September 17, 2012.
42 What concerns Tingley: Margaret Sullivan, “The Local-News Crisis Is Destroying What a Divided America Desperately Needs: Common Ground,” Washington Post, August 5, 2018.
43 Ken Doctor: Ken Doctor, “Newsonomics: It’s Looking Like Gannett Will Be Acquired by GateHouse—Creating a Newspaper Megachain Like the U.S. Has Never Seen,” Nieman Lab, July 18, 2019.
43 As the unwelcome trend: Robert Kuttner and Hildy Zenger, “Saving the Free Press from Private Equity,” American Prospect, December 27, 2017.
44 a young reporter, Jesse Aaron Paul: Margaret Sullivan, “Is This Strip-mining or Journalism? ‘Sobs, Gasps, Expletives’ Over Latest Denver Post Layoffs.”
45 Jesse Paul: Margaret Sullivan, “Is This Strip-mining or Journalism? ‘Sobs, Gasps, Expletives’ Over Latest Denver Post Layoffs.”
45 Just short of setting the place on fire: Joshua Benton, “The Boston Herald’s Buyer Is A vulture Capitalist,” Boston Globe, February 15, 2018.
46 From a business perspective: “Local TV News Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media, June 25, 2019.
47 Stations need market differentiation: Margaret Sullivan, “The ‘I-Team’ Is Back—and It Might Help Save Local TV News,” Washington Post, August 7, 2016.
47 A 2018 Knight Foundation study: “Local TV News and the New Media Landscape,” The Knight Foundation, 2018.
CHAPTER THREE
51 late columnist Mike Royko: Mike Royko, “A Truly Great Newspaper, Why Couldn’t It Make It?” Chicago Daily News, March 4, 1978.
53 “Crimetown, USA”: David Grann, “Crimetown USA,” New Republic, July 10, 2000.
54 decided to fund one investigative journalist: “ProPublica is Expanding Its Local Reporting Network to Youngstown, Ohio,” ProPublica, July 8, 2019.
56 Alice Dreger: David Dobbs, “‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ by Alice Dreger,” New York Times, April 17, 2015
60 Advertisers aren’t off limits: “Breaking: A Local Newspaper Chain That’s Actually Making Good Money,” Forbes, January 21, 2013.
62 $12 million worth of free iPads: Kyle Massey, “Interview: Walter Hussman on the Future of Arkansas Newspapers,” Arkansas Business, May 27, 2019.
64 80 percent of the school district’s 184 teachers: Paul Farhi, “What happens to local news when there is no local media to cover it?” Washington Post, July 17, 2017.
CHAPTER FOUR
68 Vatican in September 2019: “Audience with a Delegation of the Regional Journalism Group of the RAI,” Holy See Press Office, September 16, 2019.
69 Not only did its government collapse: Jason Horowitz, “Italy’s Government Collapses, Turning Chaos into Crisis,” New York Times, August 20, 2019.
69 A study found that 64 million Brazilians: Alessandra Monnerat, “Almost a Third of Brazilian Cities Are in Danger of Becoming News Deserts, According to New Survey,” Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, November 28, 2018.
70 another government initiative: Júlio Lubianco, “Bolsonaro Removes Obligation of Government Agencies to Publish Public Notices in Brazilian Print Newspapers,” Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, September 11, 2019.
70 Janz’s words: Amanda Meade, “Fairfax journalists Condemn Proposed $30m Job Cuts and Political Positioning,” Guardian, April 6, 2017.
71 I was fascinated: Alex Dixon, “More Loss of Local News: Questions with April Lindgren,” University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media, December 5, 2018.
73 Trust was low: “State of Public Trust in Local News,” Gallup and the Knight Foundation, October 29, 2019.
74 The first step: Elizabeth Green, “Why I’m Placing My Bets on the American Journalism Project,” Medium, February 25, 2019.
75 became a dominant player: Justin Ellis, “What Makes the Texas Tribune’s Event Business So Successful?” Nieman Lab, September 27, 2013.
76 Two revenue paths: Heidi Legg, “A Landscape Study of Local News Models Across America,” Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center, July 3, 2019.
78 so infuriated the populace: Margaret Sullivan, “How One Small News Organization’s Investigative Reporting Took Down Puerto Rico’s Governor,” Washington Post, July 27, 2019.
80 full-time statehouse reporters: Katerina Eva Matsa and Jan Lauren Boyles, “America’s Shifting Statehouse Press,” Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media, July 10, 2014.
80 “the Billionaire Local Newspaper Club”: Heidi Legg, “A Landscape Study of Local News Models Across America.”
81 James Wright: Wesley Pippert and Nadine Epstein, “Can Sheldon Adelson Turn Nevada Red?” Slate, July 30, 2017.
82 “mobilizers” and “accelerators”: Heidi Legg, “A Landscape Study of Local News Models Across America.”
83 the Community Network: Mathew Ingram, “Facebook Is Both Killing and Funding Local Journalism,” Columbia Journalism Review, July 18, 2019.
84 David Chavern: Margaret Sullivan, “Facebook Launches a Charm Offensive—and Vows to Pay (Some) News Organizations for Their Journalism,” Washington Post, October 25, 2019.
84 News Media Alliance: “News Media Alliance Applauds Senators Kennedy and Klobuchar for Introducing Journalism Competition & Preservation Act,” News Media Alliance, June 3, 2019.
84 Nicholas Lemann: Nicholas Lemann, “Can Journalism Be Saved?” New York Review of Books, February 27, 2020.
CONCLUSION
89 Clay Shirky: Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” New York Times, March 13, 2009.
90 the haves and the have-nots: Keach Hagey, Lukas Alpert, and Yaryna Serkez, “In News Industry, a Stark Divide Between Haves and Have-Nots,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019.
90 doggedly told the unsavory story: Tiffany Hsu, “The Jeffrey Epstein Case Was Cold, Until a Miami Herald Reporter Got Accusers to Talk,” New York Times, July 9, 2019.
91 Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab: https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1153367813291225088.
91 Two researchers at Duke University: Philip Napoli and Jessica Mahone, “Local Newspapers Are Suffering, but They’re Still (by Far) the Most Significant Journalism Producers in Their Communities,” Nieman Lab, September 9, 2019.
93 The column hit a nerve: Margaret Sullivan, “Too Little for So Many, Even in the Times,” New York Times, June 1, 2013.
93 in a 2018 talk: “How to Restore Trust in the Media: Abernathy’s Testimony to the Knight Commission,” UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, April 27, 2018.
94 Gallup/Knight poll: “State of Public Trust in Local News,” Gallup and the Knight Foundation.