EVANSTON, Ill. — The number of local news desert counties in the U.S. shot up by 26 in the last year, the largest one-year rise in at least five years, according to the Medill State of Local News Report 2026.
There are now 238 news deserts in the U.S., as the pace of newspaper closures hit an average of about three per week. Exacerbating the challenge is a precipitous 50% drop in digital traffic to local newspapers’ websites, coinciding with growing consumer use of AI platforms, the study shows.
Despite that, the report tracked the creation of 75 digital-only and print local news startups in the last year, a rise in national local news networks and a small but emerging cohort of content creators producing original local journalism.
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