The proliferation of news deserts in the United States has been well-documented, including by CJR. But what are their effects? How is life in a news desert any different from life in the rest of the country? We worked with the University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism’s Expanding News Desert project to identify ten counties across the country where no general news publication exists. Then, using statistics from the US Census Bureau and elsewhere, we compared living conditions in these news deserts with national averages. The results, as you’ll see, provide new reason to worry about the death of local news.
