![]() ![]() I attended a community meeting, and people were in tears about it. ![]() Or they covered my sports event - whatever it was. Everybody had, you know, had a story about delivering it. It's a very disturbing story because it would leave a pretty decent-sized city without its own newspaper anymore and one that had been a real part of the community. So I actually went off to Youngstown and spent quite a bit of time chatting with people and trying to - spending time in the newsroom there and trying to understand what had happened and what the cost of it would be. ![]() The paper had been around for over 150 years, mostly family-owned during that time and still family-owned. They would - their last day of publication would be in August. SULLIVAN: So last summer, there was a surprise announcement that The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a substantial city, was going to close its doors the next month. Just tell us briefly its story and what it meant to the community and what happened. And I wanted to let people know what the price of it is before it's entirely too late.ĭAVIES: One medium-sized newspaper that you write about is the Youngstown, Ohio, Vindicator. But we all can sort of agree on what's happening. And it's - it means less political engagement, less voting across party lines, the possibility of more corruption at the local government level and, I think, the weakening of community ties in which we all kind of relate to each other based on a shared, you know, group of facts that we may want to do different things with - interpret in different ways. And after spending most of my career at a regional newspaper in Buffalo, I know how important that is to the community and to - sort of as an underpinning of our democracy.Īnd I thought it would be important to show people the connection between the decline of local news and what's happening in our society at large. That's not the case, especially when it comes to newspapers. In fact there's research that's been done that shows that, you know, some 70% of Americans think that local news organizations are doing pretty well financially. SULLIVAN: Well, it's - it is an alarming situation but one that, most members of the public don't seem to be very tuned into. Why did you want to sound the alarm about it now? It's great to be with you and your listeners.ĭAVIES: The decline of traditional media organizations, especially daily newspapers, is not a new story. MARGARET SULLIVAN: Thank you very much, Dave. Well, Margaret Sullivan, welcome to FRESH AIR. I spoke to her about her new book, "Ghosting The News: Local Journalism And The Crisis Of American Democracy." Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post, the former public editor of The New York Times and the former editor of The Buffalo News. In a new book, Sullivan argues that when local news fails, citizens lack critical information to make good decisions, and democracy is weakened. Our guest, veteran journalist Margaret Sullivan, believes the decline of local news coverage is a crisis every bit as serious as the spread of disinformation on the Internet. Financial stresses from the coronavirus pandemic have only made things worse. Due to competition from the Internet and other pressures, more than 2,000 American newspapers have gone out of business since 2004. Hedge fund ownership of other papers has led to sharp budget cuts and reduced local coverage. Earlier this month, the McClatchy Company, publisher of 30 daily newspapers, including the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and the Charlotte Observer, was sold in a bankruptcy auction to the Chatham Management Group, a New Jersey hedge fund. I'm Dave Davies, in today for Terry Gross. ![]()
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