The 2025 Medill State of Local News Report, produced by the Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative, revealed a continued dramatic decline in local newspapers, with 136 outlets disappearing in the past year, nine more than in 2024.
Written by Zach Metzger, the initiative’s director, the report provides an annual update of the condition of local outlets throughout the nation. This year’s report looks back at the changes in local media over the past two decades.
Since 2005, over 60 counties across the U.S. have lost access to a local news source, and over 1,500 counties have only one outlet, leaving around 50 million Americans with limited or no access to local news, according to the report.
“In the first quarter of the 21st century, a period marked by rapid digital innovation and evolution, local newspapers and the U.S. news media industry have undergone profound shifts,” Metzger wrote in the executive summary. “Close to 3,500 newspapers have vanished, leaving one in every four Americans with limited access to a local print newspaper.”
As the number of news deserts, or counties with no local outlet publishing original news, rises, the Local News Initiative’s “Watch List” identified 250 counties in 2025 that have a 40% likelihood of losing local news outlets within the next decade.
In 2025, the majority of newspapers that have disappeared are small and independently owned, indicating that increasing economic pressures are impacting a number of long-time family publishers.
Posing additional threats to local media, the Republican-led U.S. Congress cut $1.1 billion in federal funding allocated to public broadcasting. This puts local NPR and PBS member stations at risk of reducing or suspending operations, according to the report.
The report found nine counties rely on these broadcasting stations as the only source of local coverage, and 47 other counties use public media as one of two sources.
“This is an essential promise that our government made to Americans really early on,” said Anna Brugmann, senior manager for state policy at NPR, who is quoted in the report. “They have the ability to access information that reflects their communities and share it with each other and enter into a national conversation, no matter how difficult that may be.”
While public media is being threatened by funding cuts, Medill researchers found that in the past five years, more than 300 new local news startups, mainly in urban areas, have emerged across the country.
Through a combination of entrepreneurship, philanthropic support and legislation, virtually every state has startups taking initiative to provide communities with local news heavily centralized in urban areas, according to the report.
“This report highlights the historic transformation in local news,” said Medill Prof. and founding director of the Medill Local News Initiative Tim Franklin in a news release. “On one hand, news deserts are expanding, and closures are continuing apace. 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?”
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