Local News Statistics and Data: Key Numbers on the State of Local Journalism
The statistical record on local journalism documents one of the most significant structural contractions in American media history. Quantified data from research institutions, journalism schools, and nonprofit tracking organizations reveals the scale of newsroom closures, workforce reductions, advertising revenue collapse, and the geographic distribution of communities left without professional coverage. These figures inform policy debates, philanthropic strategy, and editorial investment decisions across the sector.
Definition and scope
"Local news statistics" encompasses quantitative measurements of the local journalism sector's scale, workforce, economic health, and audience behavior. The scope includes print newspapers, local television stations, digital-native outlets, nonprofit newsrooms, and hyperlocal publications operating at the city, county, or regional level.
The most widely cited tracking effort is the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which maintains the News Desert Database. As of its 2022 reporting cycle, the United States had lost more than 2,500 newspapers since 2005 — a figure that encompasses both closures and mergers into consolidated publications. That same research documented approximately 200 counties with no local news outlet of any kind, and more than 1,500 counties served by only one news outlet, typically a weekly paper (Northwestern Medill Local News Initiative, 2022).
The Pew Research Center tracks newspaper newsroom employment separately and found that newspaper newsroom employment in the United States fell by approximately 57% between 2008 and 2020 — from roughly 71,000 employees to about 31,000 (Pew Research Center, "Newspapers Fact Sheet," 2021). Digital-native newsrooms partially offset these losses but have not replaced them at comparable scale.
The broader landscape of local news deserts in America and the decline of local newspapers both draw directly on this statistical infrastructure.
How it works
Data on local journalism is collected through a combination of methodologies:
- Newsroom census tracking — Organizations like the Medill Local News Initiative conduct annual audits of active news outlets by county, cross-referencing postal records, state press associations, and digital footprint data.
- Employment surveys — The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program categorizes newsroom employment under NAICS codes for newspaper, periodical, book, and provider network publishers, providing longitudinal workforce data (BLS OEWS).
- Revenue analysis — The Newspaper Association of America (now News Media Alliance) and Pew's State of the News Media reports tracked print advertising revenue from the 1950s forward, documenting the collapse from a peak of approximately $49 billion in annual print advertising revenue in 2005 to under $9 billion by 2018 (Pew Research Center).
- Audience measurement — Nielsen ratings for local television, comScore data for digital properties, and self-reported circulation figures from the Alliance for Audited Media supply readership and viewership metrics.
These four data streams are rarely unified in a single report, which creates measurement gaps — particularly for the growing nonprofit and hyperlocal sector covered under nonprofit local news organizations.
Common scenarios
Statistical data on local journalism appears in three primary applied contexts:
Policy and legislative advocacy — Legislation such as the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (introduced in Congress in 2021) relied on Pew and Medill data to establish the documented scale of newsroom loss as justification for proposed tax credits. The local news policy and legislation landscape continues to reference employment and closure statistics as legislative findings.
Philanthropic and grant allocation — Foundations including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation use county-level news desert data to target grant funding. The Institute for Nonprofit News conducts an annual industry census of nonprofit newsrooms and reported membership growth from 13 founding members in 2009 to more than 425 member organizations by 2023 (INN Index 2023).
Academic and journalism school research — Graduate programs at Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of North Carolina produce primary research on local news economics, often using county-level poverty rates, civic participation metrics, and municipal bond default rates as comparison variables to isolate the downstream effects of coverage loss.
Decision boundaries
Not all statistics on journalism apply uniformly to the local sector. Distinguishing between national and local metrics is essential:
| Metric | National/Aggregate Scope | Local-Specific Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Newspaper employment | BLS total for all newspaper publishers | County-level newsroom headcounts (Medill) |
| Digital audience growth | Comscore top 500 news sites | Local outlet web traffic (varies by outlet) |
| Trust in news media | Gallup national polling | Emerson College/local market surveys |
| Advertising revenue | News Media Alliance total industry | Local market spot advertising (BIA Advisory) |
The local news advertising revenue picture diverges sharply from aggregate digital advertising growth — national platforms have captured the bulk of digital ad spend that once flowed to local outlets.
Statistics on local TV news stations require separate treatment: television newsroom employment has declined far less steeply than print, and local television retains the largest audience share of any local news format according to Pew's 2022 State of the News Media report. The local news audience habits data confirms that local television remains the primary news source for adults over 50 in most U.S. markets.
The full picture of the sector — funding models, ownership structures, and digital transformation — is indexed at localnewsauthority.com, which serves as the reference hub for professional and research use across these categories.