We stand to lose a lot more than local news

When my local daily newspaper, The Plain Dealer, reduced home delivery to just three days a week in 2013, thousands of readers in Greater Cleveland suddenly had to get comfortable going digital for their daily news (or head to the nearest supermarket or convenience store where a daily print edition was available for sale). No more starting their day, coffee in hand, with a paper delivered to their doorstep.

Recognizing this change would require support for readers, the paper teamed up with my library to ease the transition. Newspaper staffers conducted digital literacy training sessions at branches around town to show readers (mostly seniors) how to log in to their accounts and navigate the new digital newspaper layout. They sponsored “Plain Dealer Cafés” in two libraries, where they made giant touch tables available for people to read the e-edition of the paper. The café spaces also included wall-mounted digital displays where a feed of the latest online news stories would scroll. Then-president of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, Andrea Hogben, noted, “The mission of this partnership with the Cuyahoga County Public Library is to make it easier for residents to stay connected with what’s going on in their community.”

It felt like a creative approach to supporting local journalism at a time when consumers’ willingness to pay for news was diminishing, and free “news” on social media platforms offered a seemingly convenient alternative. But subsequent losses in advertising revenue—fewer eyeballs, fewer advertisers—have decimated the newspaper business. Pew Research Center estimates that combined advertising and circulation revenue for the industry, which topped nearly $50 billion in 2005, dropped to less than $10 billion in 2022. Newspaper closures—Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative reports more than 3,200 have disappeared over the past 20 years—mean significant areas throughout the nation are now considered news deserts.

The broader local media landscape beyond print journalism does not fare much better. A July 2025 report from the nonprofit Rebuild Local News and tech journalism platform Muck Rack identifies a “severe” shortage of local journalists in the United States. According to their analysis, more than 1,000 counties (or one out of every three) do not have the equivalent of a single full-time local journalist.

Last month the U.S. Senate also passed legislation that slashes $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports more than 1,500 public television and radio stations across the country. Such a dramatic cut will force many local stations to shutter or significantly reduce programming.    

This month’s feature story, Bookshelves to Bylines, highlights the many ways that libraries are partnering with local news outlets to address the perilous state of local journalism. Local news helps people monitor their elected officials and become or stay more informed about key issues that are directly relevant to their lives. People who follow their local news are also more likely to vote in local elections.

If local news vanishes, how can anyone have the information they need to hold their government to account? This past spring, Chris Quinn, editor and VP of content for Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer, commented on the volume of email his team had received from constituents frustrated by their inability to reach Republican members of Ohio’s Congressional delegation—it was “like nothing I’ve seen in 45 years of journalism.” So the newspaper decided to host a town hall at—you guessed it—the local library, where people could have their questions and concerns documented for future reporting. Attendees raised issues ranging from healthcare to education to the environment, and the fact that they weren’t hearing back from their elected officials.

The collaboration cemented for me the important link that libraries and local journalism share when it comes to keeping people informed and giving them voice in a democracy. If we lose local journalism, we lose a lot more than event bulletins and police blotters. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “…were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”