Local newspapers are disappearing at a rapid rate across the country, but these outlets provide an essential function informing the communities they serve. According to recent research, they also significantly outperform other news outlets in producing more original, local journalistic content of a critical nature.
The News Measures Research Project, a joint research initiative comprised of students and post-grads from Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and Rutgers, conducted a recent study of local media outlets (radio stations, TV stations, newspapers and online-only publishers) in randomly-sampled communities across the U.S. and analyzed the stories of each medium by multiple criteria to gauge the journalistic performance of each outlet type and determine what outlets are best meeting the informational needs of their communities.
The study discovered that local newspapers significantly outperform local TV, radio and online-only outlets in terms of overall story output as well as their ability to produce journalistic content that was both original and local in nature.
While local newspapers accounted for only about a quarter of the local media outlets in the study’s sample, the study discovered these publications were responsible for producing almost 60 percent of the stories researchers gathered that were of a local nature. Moreover, local papers also produced nearly half (47 percent) of all original news items they found as well.
By contrast, only about 12 percent of local TV outlets’ output consisted of original stories. Local radio produced about 32 percent of original stories and online-only outlets produced less than 10 percent.
 (Top): Share of Journalistic Output by Original Stories.(Bottom): Share of Journalistic Output by Local Stories. |
The study discovered that local newspapers also exceeded their outlet frequency in terms of producing stories that addressed information of a critical nature (38 percent), beating out their local TV (18 percent), radio (33 percent) and online-only (11 percent) counterparts.
Among the stories produced by local newspapers, the study also found that more than half (53 percent) of those stories were original, compared to 48 percent for online-only outlets and 32 percent for both TV and radio sources. And more than a quarter (26 percent) of local newspaper stories were local in nature, compared with 25 percent for online-only outlets, nine percent for TV and less than eight percent for radio.
“By all of the criteria we employed to assess local journalism output, local newspapers over-performed relative to their prominence amongst local media outlets,” reported James R. Shepley public policy professor Philip M. Napoli, one of the study’s authors, who wrote about the study’s findings for Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab.
The study, “Who’s Producing Local Journalism?” analyzed 16,000 news stories created by 663 local media outlets in 100 randomly-selected communities across the U.S. Findings were originally published by The DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, Duke University’s hub for the study of journalism.
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
Rothschild family plans to unload 26.7 percent stake in The Economist... STAT, a digital media company that focuses the life sciences, brings back Damian Garde, who anchored its biotech newsletter and podcast from 2016 to 2024... High Times officially resumes print publication (following its 2024 shutdown) with the release of a limited-edition, collectible 50th anniversary issue. 
CBS News is set to hand over its reins to The Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss as Paramount acquires her site for $155M... C-SPAN comes on board as an official media partner of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which is charged by Congress to lead the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence... A new Gallup survey says that the level of trust that US audiences have in the media has hit a new low.
