Americans generally understand that losing local newspapers is bad for democracy and their communities.
They may have taken solace, though, in the thought that people could still get traditional news from national outlets.
But that’s not really happening, according to a distressing new study published June 29 in Communication Research.
When people lose their local newspaper, the study found, they also consume less mainstream, national news.
Instead, they fill the void with more partisan sources, especially if they’re liberals, according to the research by Jianing Li, assistant professor of communication at Rutgers, and Michael Wagner, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s journalism school.
“Instead of replacing good, local information with good, national information, they’re replacing it with more ideological national information,” Wagner explained in a phone interview.
It gets worse.
Americans without local newspapers who turn to partisan sources are also more likely to believe lies propagated by elites in their political party, increasing polarization and disagreement about what’s true.
Wagner said much of the news from partisan, national sources is accurate. But it also includes a lot of inaccurate information.
So when people’s news diet is filled by those sources, it amplifies the degree to which they believe “things that aren’t true that are said by their side.”
“So Republicans tend to believe more false things that President Trump says, Democrats tend to believe more false things that Democratic politicians say,” Wagner said.
People don’t exclusively consume local newspapers when they’re available. They get news from all manner of sources.
But the presence of local newspapers “has a moderation effect on the relationship between partisanship, media use and misperception,” the authors wrote, after analyzing 2,063 news consumers in 295 counties.
This isn’t to say local newspapers are a paragon. Of course they aren’t perfect and there are plenty of examples of where they could do a better job of avoiding biased coverage.
But they generally strive for objectivity and have standards in place. They give people a more balanced sense of what’s happening.
When local newspapers disappear, the research suggests, people become unmoored from traditional journalism and drift toward hazardous shoals.
“They’re losing one of the sources that reports news in a way that takes competing sides seriously and treats them as more honest brokers,” Wagner said, “whereas a lot of ideological news will treat one side with kid gloves and the other side much more skeptically.”
Consider that in context with the spread of news deserts in the United States. More than two newspapers a week are closing and more than half of counties now have few to no local news outlets.
No wonder voters are angry, dissatisfied and choosing more extreme candidates, with or without experience.
More than 50 million Americans no longer have local newspapers that kept them in the habit of using traditional, relatively balanced media to stay informed.
When that moderating effect is gone, it magnifies people’s existing partisanship and they turn to more partisan sources, “which may in turn widen the divide in how people understand politics and learn what is verifiably true,” the authors wrote.
Wagner said people use their local newspaper not only to understand what’s happening in their community, but because “it’s a driver of consensus and helps people understand things they have in common.”
When people interested in politics lose their local newspaper, “it just becomes a lot easier to say, well, why don’t I just get my information from folks who tell me what I think is the right thing to think — and the people who don’t think that way are dangerous and un-American and, you know, need to be stopped.”
This complements recent Pew Research Center polls that found relatively few Americans feel well informed about important topics like economic and tax policy.
Fewer than half of Americans now count the news media as their major source of information on most major topics, like voting and elections or healthcare and vaccines, Pew found.
Local outlets often don’t cover all these topics. That’s especially the case for chain-owned newspapers that cut national and international news from wire services to save money. That contributed to The Associated Press trimming its service to newspapers.
I’ve long thought those corporate decisions have an outsized, negative effect on the country and its politics. The cuts were based partly on assumptions that people would still get national news from national outlets.
That seems unlikely, based on the research by Li and Wagner.
Other research established that places without local papers have more uninformed and unengaged voters, with many unable to name their mayors and other elected leaders.
It was also thought that losing newspapers increased polarization by pushing people to national outlets that emphasize partisan battles.
Li and Wagner draw an even clearer picture of what’s happening to our news diets and how the local journalism crisis is degrading mutual understanding and civic discourse.
To me the bottom line is that local newspaper closures aren’t just pushing people toward national sources. They’re also pushing them, and the nation, off a cliff.
P.S. That makes me really appreciate that we and you are still here, and hope that you remember to vote in the Aug. 4 primary.
