Business
Local News Deserts Rose to Record Levels as Federal Funding Cuts Threaten Public Broadcasting, New Report Finds
Video: Joining “Chicago Tonight” on Oct. 29, 2025, is Tim Franklin, a Northwestern University professor and founder of the Medill Local News Initiative. (Produced by Bridgette Adu-Wadier)
The number of local news deserts in the U.S. — areas with extremely limited access to local news — has jumped to record levels this year amid federal funding cuts to public broadcasting that could worsen the problem, according to a report released Monday.
The annual “State of Local News” is published by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The report found 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. News deserts, on average, tend to be poorer counties, according to the report. They also tend to be in more rural areas of the country.
The number of news desert counties rose to 213 this year, a jump from 206 in last year’s report. Another 1,524 counties have only one remaining news source. The rise in news deserts coincides with an increase in newspaper closures, which ticked up to 136 this past year, or a rate of more than two per week, according to the report.
“The journalism industry faces new and intensified challenges including: shrinking circulation and steep losses of revenue from changes to search and the adoption of AI technologies, while political attacks against public broadcasters threaten to leave large swaths of rural America without local news,” the report reads.
Tim Franklin, a Northwestern University professor and founder of the Medill Local News Initiative, said people lose touch with each other and their local institutions when small newspapers close down.
“Local news is a kind of glue that binds a community together,” Franklin said. “It helps a community see itself either online or in the newspaper. It’s how they get to know other neighbors.”
In July, Republicans in the U.S. Congress voted to rescind more than $1 billion previously allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, leaving local National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service member stations without federal funding.
Nearly 300 public radio stations and more than 100 public television stations in the U.S. are producing local reporting, researchers found. In nine counties, public radio is the sole news source, making those areas especially vulnerable to becoming news deserts in coming months, according to the report.
In a notable departure from previous years, most of this year’s newspaper closures were of smaller, independently owned newspapers — not those controlled by large chains, which signals that an increasing number of longtime family publishers are surrendering to economic pressures, according to the report.
“These are often the most trusted active local news sources, and their loss creates new challenges for local news access in many communities,” Medill State of Local News Project director Zach Metzger said in a news release.
While the local news crisis deepened overall, researchers also found more than 300 local news startups have launched over the past five years, 80% of which were digital-only outlets. The vast majority of those startups, however, are in metro areas, leaving rural and poorer areas further behind, according to researchers.
Franklin said that while these digital outlets offer diverse hyperlocal coverage of neighborhoods, they can’t fully fill the gap in local news.
“What we’re lacking now are those larger regional stories that were important and kind of tied the whole Chicagoland area together,” Franklin said.
This year’s report highlights historic transformation in local news, Franklin said in a news release.
“On one hand, news deserts are expanding, and closures are continuing apace,” Franklin said. “On the other, hundreds of startups are emerging. The questions are what will the local news ecosystem look like in a few years, and will parts of the U.S. be left behind?”
Note: This article was published Oct. 20, 2025, and updated with video and additional information on Oct. 29, 2025.
Contact Eunice Alpasan: [email protected]
