Local News Is Disappearing: What That Means and What You Can Do

Nearly 40% of America's newspapers have closed in the past 20 years, about 3,500 in total. In 2025, the number of local news deserts hit a record high. Over 50 million people now have limited access to local news. And the UK faces similar challenges, with regional newspapers closing at an alarming rate.

This isn't just a media industry story. It affects your community directly.

What Happens When Local News Disappears

Local journalism covers things that national and international media ignore: planning decisions, school board meetings, local government spending, community events, and the issues that directly affect your daily life. When local newsrooms close:

• Accountability drops. Local politicians, police, and institutions operate with less scrutiny. Research shows that municipal borrowing costs increase and corruption rises in areas without local news coverage.
• Community knowledge declines. Residents know less about what's happening in their own neighbourhood than about events on the other side of the world.
• Misinformation fills the gap. A 2026 study found that in news deserts, people turn to social media feeds, influencers, and gossip for local information, which is far less reliable than professional journalism.
• Civic participation falls. When people don't know what's happening locally, they're less likely to vote in local elections, attend community meetings, or engage with local issues.

Why Local News Is Struggling

The causes are primarily economic:

• Advertising revenue has shifted to Google and Facebook
• Classified advertising, once a major income source, moved entirely online
• Subscription revenue can't sustain the newsroom sizes that advertising once supported
• Corporate owners of newspaper chains prioritise profit over coverage, cutting staff and closing papers

Bright Spots

Despite the crisis, more than 300 local news startups have launched in the past five years, 80% of which are digital-only. These new outlets are experimenting with different models:

• Reader-supported nonprofits
• Community-funded cooperatives
• Hyperlocal newsletters funded by local business advertising
• Volunteer-run community news sites

What You Can Do

Support your local outlet

If you have a local newspaper, news website, or community newsletter, subscribe. Even a small subscription helps sustain the journalism that keeps your community informed and accountable.

Use aggregation to include local sources

Services like BriefMyNews let you include local and regional sources alongside national and international ones. This ensures you get community news as part of your daily digest rather than having to seek it out separately.

Attend community meetings

In areas without local news coverage, attending council meetings, school boards, and community forums is one of the few ways to stay informed about local decisions.

Share local journalism

When your local outlet publishes something worth reading, share it. This drives traffic, which helps sustain the publication.

Volunteer or contribute

Many community news outlets welcome volunteer contributors, especially for event coverage, photography, or specialist topics.

The Bigger Picture

Local news is the foundation of informed civic participation. Without it, we know less about the decisions that affect us most directly. While tools like BriefMyNews can help aggregate local sources into your daily reading, the long-term solution requires supporting the outlets that produce local journalism in the first place.

Check whether your community has a local news outlet. If it does, support it. If it doesn't, you're in a news desert, and the most valuable thing you can do is help create or fund one.