The State of Local News 2025 report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism is both sobering and essential. Local journalism continues to collapse at an alarming rate — with over 130 newspaper closures in the past year and more than 3,500 gone since 2005. Digital innovation, philanthropic investment and emerging startups offer bright spots, but they remain far from reversing the tide.
“This is a historic period of transformation,” said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill. “We’ve got to embrace it, and we’ve got to find a way forward.”
Zach Metzger, the report’s project director and lead researcher, added: “What worries me… is perhaps less about the losses — steep as they may be — and more about the access, and this growing divide between the news haves and the news have-nots.”
Creation is not outpacing destruction
While the report documents an encouraging uptick in local news startups, the scale is still far outmatched by the rate of closures.
“We’re now on a pace over the last five years of picking up about 60 local news startups,” Franklin noted. “That’s great — and I hope that trend accelerates. But there’s a gap, there’s a delta there between what’s being lost and what’s being created.”
That gap, Metzger explained, is being felt most acutely in smaller towns and rural areas. “A quarter of the U.S. population now lives in a community where there’s either no local news outlet or only one local news outlet,” he said. “That’s a really startling number.”
The digital crash: AI, Meta, and lost traffic
Among the most significant trends in this year’s report is the 45% decline in traffic to the top 100 U.S. newspaper websites since 2019. Franklin traced the cause to two major shifts in the digital ecosystem.
“Back in 2022, Meta — Facebook — de-emphasized news,” he said. “There was almost a ski-slope drop at many of those news organizations in digital traffic when that happened.”
The second factor? AI. “We’ve seen another decline, particularly in the past year, which I think is the result of AI and people going to AI platforms and these so-called ‘answer machines’ to get news and information,” Franklin explained.
He emphasized the urgency of understanding how AI is disrupting local media. “This is not five or ten years from now. This is happening right now. And it’s having a direct impact on business models and on news consumption habits.”
Independent ownership fades — and that matters
The continued erosion of locally owned media is a central concern in the report. In 2005, more than half of all newspapers were independently owned. Today, that number is down to 47.
“Local owners are incredibly important,” Metzger said. “They’re so much more steeped in the community.” He pointed out that they’re often the oldest businesses in town and act as the community’s institutional memory.
He also highlighted a troubling shift in what kinds of outlets are disappearing. “Of the papers that closed over the past year, the majority of those were these smaller independents or members of smaller chains. That’s a concerning development.”
Philanthropy and public funding: Still uneven
While the influx of philanthropic capital into journalism is promising, it has disproportionately benefited metro areas.
“We found… that many of those dollars were going into metro areas — more than 90% of those dollars,” Franklin said. “As we see in the study, what we’re losing by and large are smaller, independent, for-profit newspapers and news organizations in rural areas and in suburban and ex-urban areas.”
He called for financial tools tailored to those left behind. “They often lack access to capital… They don’t have community foundations in their areas. They don’t have deep-pocketed investors who can swoop in and help them out.”
Franklin suggested creating a pooled loan fund for independent owners. “That could be a potential solution to help bridge to a future.”
The promise — and peril — of public radio
Public radio is a rare bright spot in the landscape of local journalism, often filling gaps left by newspapers’ vanishing. But it too is under growing pressure.
“I’ve thought that public radio was one of the potential solutions to the local news crisis,” Franklin said. “Because these are stations that are recognizable brands… they have long relationships… they have credibility.”
But funding cuts threaten that promise. “I think over the next year or so, we are going to see a number of public radio closures,” Franklin warned. “There are nine counties in the U.S. where public radio is the last remaining news source… and unfortunately, those are many of the stations that are vulnerable.”
Network news models: Hope or hype?
The report tracked 149 local news sites across 54 digital networks — but not all networks are built equally.
“Patch… was claiming to have 2,000 sites,” Metzger explained. “About a quarter of those were actually staffed by reporters doing original local reporting.” More recently, Patch has listed over 11,000 sites, but the vast majority “are just sort of aggregating events calendars or weather.”
While some of these networks are experimenting with promising models, Metzger stressed the difference between content aggregation and original reporting. “That’s perhaps much more of a challenge,” he said, “but we’re also seeing… more traditional outlets embrace this kind of network idea too,” citing The Post and Courier as a leader in creating regional bureaus that share infrastructure but maintain editorial independence.
The policy front: Illinois offers a glimpse of what’s possible
One of the most encouraging examples in the report comes from Illinois, where a new tax credit program is being implemented to support local news.
“What I like about it is that it’s aimed at helping to retain and attract reporters in underserved communities,” Franklin said. “The data shows so far that many of those [credits] went to smaller news outlets outside the Chicago area.”
He sees it as a proof point for broader public policy innovation. “I hope that’s replicated in other places… because public policy really needs to be a part of the solution.”
A turning point — and a test of urgency
The report doesn’t offer easy answers. But it makes one thing clear: the time for hesitating is over.
“We are continuing to lose newspapers at an alarming rate,” Franklin said. “We’ve got to move fast.”
Metzger added, “We’re seeing people, we’re seeing institutions, we’re seeing philanthropies step up and try to meet this moment. The question is whether the moment will be too late.”
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