JUDY WOODRUFF: More than 2,000 newspapers
have closed since 2004, and now, amid the
global pandemic, local news is again struggling
to keep the presses running.
Jeffrey Brown recently spoke with Margaret
Sullivan about this decline. It's the focus
of her new book, "Ghosting the News: Local
Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy."
JEFFREY BROWN: Margaret Sullivan, thanks so
much for joining us.
I want to start with the title, "Ghosting
the News." Even beyond the numbers, what do
you see happening?
MARGARET SULLIVAN, Author, "Ghosting the News":
Well, we have a very serious situation with
the local news ecosystem in the United States,
in which local news in many communities is
either withering or dying out altogether.
News deserts are springing up. And, in some
cases, newspapers which have been very stalwart
in their communities for many years have become
just ghosts or specters of what they once
were. And citizens are not being well-served
in those communities by local news outlets
anymore.
JEFFREY BROWN: Your concern goes even further
than that, and that gets to the subtitle,
"The Crisis of American Democracy."
So what's the link between the loss of local
news and the loss of a larger ideal nationally?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: You know, in order to function
as citizens in our society and in our democracy,
we need to have kind of a common basis of
facts. We don't have to agree about those
facts or what to do about them, but we need
to kind of all be functioning from the same
set of -- you know, the same set of facts.
And as local news goes away, we lose that
in our communities. Yes, we may still have
wonderful sources of national news, but we
have to think about our local governments,
our town councils, our city government, our
school boards, all of those things.
And, as that dwindles, you know, citizens
become less politically engaged. They become
more tribal in the way they vote. And all
kinds of things happen that are not really
good for a functioning democracy.
JEFFREY BROWN: You know, we're at a time where
-- you mentioned facts. We're in a time where
facts themselves are questioned, right, where
the whole idea of objective reporting is questioned.
Can you give me an example of what you think
is being lost when we lose the local journalism?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: Yes.
In some ways, it is challenging to describe
it, because when we don't have reporting taking
place, it's that expression, you don't know
what you don't know. But if you just think
of some of the great reporting that has happened
at the local level -- I mean, for example,
the way The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper
that is under siege right now, really brought
the Jeffrey Epstein story, resuscitated it
and created the situation in which that came
further to justice.
If those reporters if Julie K. Brown of The
Miami Herald hadn't been doing her job, justice
may very well never have taken place there.
And then it can happen in a smaller way, too.
Who is covering the school board? Who is covering
the council meeting?
JEFFREY BROWN: What is interesting, though
-- and, as you write, even while this is happening,
a lot of Americans, maybe most Americans,
don't even realize that it is happening.
And I wonder. A lot of people -- most people
feel like they're getting plenty of news,
right? I mean, in the age of social media,
the Internet, more often the complaint is
there is just too much information out there.
So how do you convince everyone that they're
missing something?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, this is actually
why I -- a big reason that I wrote the book
I did, because I read some very good research
that said that seven of 10 Americans think
that local news organizations are doing swimmingly.
And very few people are willing to or do pay
for any form of local news. So I thought that
it would be important to sort of sound the
alarm before we lose this really important
resource that we have for being good citizens.
It is a hard message to get across, because,
as you say, we have this fire hose of information
coming at us, but, very often, that has to
do with national politics, national and international
news. It doesn't have to do with our community
news, which comes from other sources.
JEFFREY BROWN: I know that you wrote about
some of the solutions, and we can't go into
all of them, but are there signs of hope that
you see?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: There really are.
In many cases, there are digital start-up
news organizations. I mean, you think of The
Texas Tribune in Austin. And there are many
of them around the country that have been
-- that are really a new model. They're not
newspapers. They're maybe nonprofits or digital
sites that are really doing good work.
And they're based not on advertising generally,
but on membership, philanthropy, events, running
events. They are really important. I don't
think that they fully take the place of newspapers,
and I think we need to do both. We need to
shore up and support newspapers, while also
supporting these new measures that are going
to take us into the future.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, the book is "Ghosting
the News."
Margaret Sullivan, thank you very much.
MARGARET SULLIVAN: Thank you very much for
having me.
