The connections between decline of local news and growing political division

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• Geoff Bennett:

  In a recent report, Judy Woodruff examined how the loss of thousands of local newspapers across the country is depriving communities of some of the glue that holds them together.

  Tonight, she looks at how some news outlets are managing to hang on, and whether what they're doing is sustainable. It's part of her ongoing series America at a Crossroads.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Just after dawn most Thursdays, Anne Adams takes to the winding mountain roads of Western Virginia, delivering a local newspaper, The Recorder, to small stores and coffee shops.

  Anne Adams, Editor and Publisher, The Recorder: I will set one aside when I get back over to the office.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But Adams isn't just the delivery person. She is also the owner, editor and publisher of this paper that covers three counties, including two of the most sparsely populated in the state.

  And like many local news editors, she's closely connected to the community.

• Anne Adams:

  Folks need to know what's going on. They need to know their neighbors. They need to know what what's happening, how their money is being spent.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The paper's Highland County office is nestled in the midst of the Allegheny Mountains in Monterey, Virginia, a small one-stoplight town of about 160 residents.

  Adams says people in this tight-knit community not only suggest story ideas, but also hold her to account.

• Anne Adams:

  You can be shopping, and dropping the kids off at school, and they're like, we think you crossed the line there or not sure that was the right way to put it.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For much of the country's history, local newspapers played a key role in uniting communities, highlighting common challenges and events that tie people together, like high school sports and local political races.

• Anne Adams:

  We have always had a really good — got a grapevine gossip network here. But, well, we will dig into it and find out what's really going on, what's really happening and report that. And then it settles down.

  Without a newspaper to do that, I just feel like folks would not have the right information. I think they would be less engaged, less apt to vote, less apt to care.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But that's become the reality for many Americans over the last two decades. About 2,500 local newspapers, a quarter of the total, have folded since 2005, according to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

  In that same period, newspaper revenue has plunged from $50 billion to 20 billion. News organizations that have been able to survive are operating on razor-thin margins. One-fifth of U.S. residents now live in news deserts, where residents have very limited access to credible and comprehensive news and information.

• Anne Adams:

  So they did scrub a times past look-back, even in the '30s. And that's a feature that we still publish today.

• Judy Woodruff:

  That you still do today.

• Anne Adams:

  Yes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Adams, who is only the 10th publisher of the paper, took over in 2007.

• Anne Adams:

  But look at these tiny little headlines. Graphic designers today would go crazy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The Recorder has helped hold this community with its long, proud history together for 146 years. It's done so mainly by selling ads and subscriptions at a time when so many local newspapers across the country have collapsed.

  But it may not be financially sustainable in the long run.

• Anne Adams:

  The cost of printing has gone up. The cost of paper has gone up. The cost of postage has gone up.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, can you venture a guess, an educated guess as to how long you can keep this model going?

• Anne Adams:

  Well, as long as I'm alive and doing this. I mean, I always say, we're not going to kill it off on my watch. We will do whatever we have to do.

• Judy Woodruff:

  In 2017, Adams gambled and more than doubled the newsstand price from $2 to $5. And it was just five issues away from folding during the pandemic, when its readers stepped in with donations to keep the printing presses going.

  All this has paid off, most visibly in The Recorder breaking the news in 2014 of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile natural gas line that would have cut through three states and potentially had huge environmental impacts.

• Anne Adams:

  I remember everybody kept saying, why are you bothering? You can't fight a company like Dominion, especially not in Virginia.

  We just kept hammering away at them. And we got the privilege of being the first to report when they shut the project down.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But many local newspapers lack the manpower to do that kind of reporting. Newsroom employment has been slashed by 60 percent since 2005, turning many small publications into ghost newspapers.

  In Jackson, Mississippi, staff at The Clarion-Ledger, owned by the Gannett chain, has suffered repeated rounds of cuts in the last 15 years.

• Mary Margaret White, CEO, Mississippi Today:

  And there really was just a lack of Statehouse reporting.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Mary Margaret White is the CEO of Mississippi Today, a nonprofit digital news source launched in 2016 that's run by donations and grants.

• Mary Margaret White:

  Some big issues were coming through the legislature, and there was no one there to cover them. And that was really the early days of Mississippi Today.

• Judy Woodruff:

  It's become an exemplar of now rapid growth in these alternative news outlets.

• Mary Margaret White:

  In early days, making a case for journalism as philanthropy was really a long and hard conversation. It was just so new to so many people that you would give philanthropically to the press, to media.

  And now six, seven years later, people are really beginning to understand the value of journalism to our democracy, the value of it to local communities, and that it is a worthwhile cause to support.

  Last year, I'm so proud, we brought in more than $400,000.

• Judy Woodruff:

  My gosh. Wow.

• Mary Margaret White:

  And that's from everyday people.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Mississippi Today publishes the names of its donors online, and is partially funded by a venture philanthropy, the American Journalism Project based in Washington, D.C.

• Sarabeth Berman, CEO, American Journalism Project:

  We think we're at the front end of building a new generation of news organizations.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The project was established four years ago, and now helps support 41 newsrooms across the country.

  Sarabeth Berman is the CEO.

• Sarabeth Berman:

  We have seen over the last several years new digital nonprofit news organizations that are really fundamentally reimagining how we finance local news.

  We used to use advertising to finance local news. That has largely disappeared. About 80 percent of advertising revenue has disappeared in the last two decades. And these organizations are really thinking of their financial structure in the same way we think of other organizations that are really essential to our communities, like libraries and museums and other institutions that stitch us together.

• Man:

  If you're trying to register to vote, can't do it.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Mississippi Today's reporters cover policy and politics, which are livelier than usual in this, a statewide election year.

• Man:

  Because I want to see our election system change in our state.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Last month, we caught up with their small team of reporters covering the candidates at the Neshoba County Fair.

  And we spoke with residents who say they have grown to rely on Mississippi Today's digital-only platform.

• Will Simmons, Mississippi Resident:

  And I don't agree with everything they write, but it is — I mean, a lot of it is — it seems like they're — it's just pretty straight facts, a lot of what they do.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Now one of the largest newsrooms in the state, Mississippi Today won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year.

  Reporter Anna Wolfe's investigation "The Backchannel" exposed the state's diversion of millions of federal welfare dollars intended to help some of the poorest people in the country instead directed to political supporters, such as former football star Brett Favre to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater.

• Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today:

  I think I'm probably on that story up to at least 100 public records requests.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Wolfe estimated she worked on the story on and off for five years.

• Anna Wolfe:

  So you think about the time that it takes to draft those and see them through the process of actually being able to get your hands on those records, and people might not realize how long it takes, and then might not realize the investment that is required to do that kind of work.

• Judy Woodruff:

  At times, the news outlet's reporting has angered Republican leadership.

  Just last month, former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant sued the news outlet, charging its employees defamed him in public comments. The lawsuit does not appear to challenge the veracity of the reporting. While Mississippi Today has focused heavily on state House and investigative reporting, Sarabeth Berman acknowledges that new nonprofit newsrooms also need to build up trust in their communities.

• Sarabeth Berman:

  Mississippi Today, last year during the Jackson water crisis, was out there providing people with just the basic tools that they need to be able to navigate this crisis, information about how to get water and what to do if you if you don't have access to good water.

  And by providing people with that kind of information, you begin to build trust with them that you are there and you're on their side.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, the nonprofit model is showing promise in urban settings, economic realities persist for small local newspapers that still depend on subscriptions and advertising, like The Recorder in Virginia.

• Penny Abernathy, Northwestern University:

  The traditional news model has just vanished.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Northwestern University's Penny Abernathy has done extensive research on local journalism. She posits that more than 90 percent of all news organizations are still commercially based and news organizations benefiting from nonprofit dollars are geographically uneven.

• Penny Abernathy:

  It leaves smaller communities kind of at a loss as to how do you go about getting that initial ignition that brings people together and helps them understand that they can do this, that they can raise that money to support local news operations.

• Judy Woodruff:

  She says one solution might be using public dollars to help local newsrooms survive, subsidies for hiring reporters and for local businesses that advertise in the local paper.

• Penny Abernathy:

  There just isn't sufficient subscriber revenue to pay the bills. And, of course, there's not sufficient philanthropic dollars to lift them up over the profit margin.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The challenges ahead are great, and the stakes are very high.

• Penny Abernathy:

  Increasingly, I'm worried that we're evolving into a nation of journalistic haves and have-nots. That has huge implications for not only our democracy, but for our society.

  How do we come together around a common set of facts to solve the issues that are confronting us in the 21st century?

• Judy Woodruff:

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Jackson, Mississippi, and Monterey, Virginia.

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