Background
The last 10 years have not been kind to journalists and the newspaper profession. According to the Pew Research Center, the past two decades saw the elimination of 20,000 positions at newspapers across the United States, with a 10 percent decline in 2014 alone.
In 2015, notable cuts were seen at major newspapers and newspaper groups such as The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Tronc (formerly Tribune), The New York Daily News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Orange County Register, The Seattle Times, The Denver Post, and The Boston Globe,3 among others.
This trend continued into 2016. Adding insult to injury, the website CareerCast listed “newspaper reporter” as the worst of 200 jobs in 2016. This conclusion was based on the closure of publications, leading to the availability of fewer new jobs, and a decline in ad revenues, leading to “unfavorable pay” for current employees.4
Alongside this, in September 2016 the polling company Gallup reported that Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history.”5
Another 2016 Pew study about the modern news consumer revealed: “Few [audiences] have a lot of confidence in the information they get from professional outlets . . . Only about two-in-ten Americans (22%) trust the information they get from local news organizations a lot, whether online or offline, and 18% say the same of national organizations.” 6
Added to this, the nature of the 2016 presidential election and the accompanying rhetoric of fake news have lead to further distrust in the news media. In December 2016, Pew reported that 64 percent of Americans “say completely made-up news has caused a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events,” and almost a quarter of Americans reported to Pew that “they had shared fake political news online.” 7
These recent studies make for sobering reading. They reveal that, among large parts of the population, the media is witnessing declining levels of trust, while the economic forecast for the newspaper industry continues to look challenging.
Juxtaposed with this well-known and researched backdrop, we felt that the views and experiences of many newspaper journalists often went untold, especially in the local arena. Our research, supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, seeks to remedy this by focusing on small-market newspapers and the journalists who work for them.
A deeper understanding of this sector is important, because it contains the daily and weekly news sources to which many Americans continue to turn for information.89 10
Local newspapers make up the bulk of the American newspaper ecosystem, yet they typically receive less attention from industry watchers than larger, better known outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times.
There are approximately 7,071 regularly published newspapers in the United States (daily and weekly), and of these, 6,851 have circulations of fewer than 50,000.11 The majority of these papers—titles like The Wickenburg Sun (Wickenburg, Arizona) and the McKenzie County Farmer (Watford City, North Dakota)—often go unnoticed. Yet, their continued importance to the communities they serve and their contributions to our wider media ecology mean they merit exploration.
While we are getting closer to knowing how many newspapers exist in the United States, largely thanks to the database collected by Penelope Abernathy and her research team at the University of North Carolina, the experiences and opinions of journalists working in this sector tends to remain somewhat under-reported.12 In an attempt to help redress this, we asked local journalists—via an online survey—to tell us about their experiences. Based on these findings, we found a hardworking group that was optimistic about the future of the sector and interested in better understanding how digital tools and platforms can support their work.
At the same time, they also recognized that their sector is not without its challenges. Local journalists are not immune to the cynicism and criticism of journalists and the wider media that dominate our current news cycle. They were also grappling with the challenges of attracting and retaining both journalistic talent and younger, paying news audiences.
The findings from this survey complement our larger landscape study, “Local News in a Digital World.” That report tells the story of small-market newspapers through in-depth qualitative interviews with experts and practitioners. In contrast, this study focuses on the work habits and attitudes of editors and reporters at these smaller outlets.
Taken together, our two reports—“Local News in a Digital World” and “Life at Small-Market Newspapers”—offer us a detailed understanding of the state of small-market newspapers in the United States. They examine everything from business practices and strategic challenges, through to usage of digital tools and the wider journalistic experience.
We are grateful to everyone who took the time to participate in this study, and generously shared their insights and experiences with us.