The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative Wednesday, chronicles declines in local news across the United States by essentially every important metric: number of newspapers; publication frequency; employment; circulation and readership.

Medill’s annual report has become a de facto reference point for the state of local news nationwide. But it should be read with the context that it’s difficult to create a definitive map of all local news outlets across the country. The Local News Impact Consortium (a national collaboration of local news researchers) notes that “local information ecosystems are changing faster than we can study them.” In the past year, Medill’s local news mapping work has come under scrutiny for mistakes, duplications, and omissions, which have been documented in detail by the newsletter Local News Blues. The Medill team made its data more transparent this spring and agreed to accept updates and corrections in June. Notably, the introduction to this year’s report acknowledges possible oversights (“in updating a database of more than 9,000 local outlets, we’re going to miss some”), and invites readers to flag any suggested changes (the methodology page did not yet appear to be live at the time of publication).

Still, this year’s report is framed as aiming to provide “a more holistic view of local news in the U.S.” For the first time this year, the report documents “network local news sites” like Patch and Axios Local. There are more than 700 of those sites, and they’re overwhelmingly concentrated in metro areas.

Some other tidbits from the report:

Circulation and frequency: In the past year, “500 of the largest daily and weekly newspapers in the United States have lost an estimated two million print and digital readers,” the report finds, citing the Alliance for Audited Media. Most so-called “daily” newspapers are daily in name only; Medill notes “more than 180 formerly daily newspapers that now print fewer than three days a week,” and recategorized more than 30 newspapers printing less than once a week or not at all as digital sites. All told, as of this year, “only a third of the more than 1,000 daily newspapers still print seven days a week.”

Employment declines:

From 2022 to 2023, newsroom jobs — mostly reporters and editors — decreased by almost 2,000 positions while newspaper employment overall shrank by more than 7,000 jobs, compared to the few hundred lost in the previous year. There are now fewer than 100,000 people employed in the newspaper publishing industry overall, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 20 U.S. states, there are fewer than 1,000 newspaper employees remaining. While declining journalist employment attracts much attention, newsroom jobs account for only a third of newspaper positions. Many of the losses in the remaining positions occur largely unseen as newspapers reduce delivery schedules and consolidate printing operations.

…Taken in context, this is one of the most significant declines in employment across any sector over the past two decades. In raw numbers, the loss of jobs in newspapers is the single largest drop in all industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey. Percentage wise, the newspaper industry’s losses are the fourth greatest among OEWS sectors, on par with manufacturers of cassette tapes and DVDs.

News deserts: This year’s report identified 208 counties without a single news source — four counties more than last year. Meanwhile, 1,563 counties have only one documented news source, per Medill — one more than last year. “Altogether, this means that almost 55 million people in the United States have limited to no access to local news,” per the report — that’s about the same as last year.

Ownership changes: Medill documented an uptick in newspapers changing hands this year. “We tracked 258 papers that changed ownership across 75 separate transactions with 59 unique buyers” — compare that to last year, when 180 papers were acquired across 55 transactions. Ten companies control a quarter of all U.S. newspapers and more than half of all dailies, and four of these (Gannett, Alden, Lee Enterprises, and CNHI) are majority-owned by private equity or hedge funds. (“In Gannett’s case, the largest chain of U.S. newspapers is owned by Fortress Investment Group, which in May of this year was purchased by Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.”)

A net increase in digital news; a decline in ethnic media; public broadcasters hold steady:

Beyond newspapers, this report also tracks more than 630 stand-alone digital news sites, 224 public broadcasters and more than 680 ethnic media outlets. Compared with last year, we saw a net increase of more than 80 stand-alone digital sites (including 30 newspapers moving online after ending their weekly print editions) and a decrease of a little over 40 ethnic media outlets. Our list of public broadcasters remained static.

The great majority of outlets in Medill’s database are print newspapers, and of those, more than 80% are weeklies.

Philanthropy for journalism: Over the past six years, it’s been overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. “In a review of the top 7,500 largest grants for journalism made in the last six years,” the report notes, “we found that they were dispersed to just 1,100 recipients and that more than 95% of donated dollars go to organizations in urban areas.”

The bright spots: Medill’s 12 featured “bright spots” this year include The Salt Lake Tribune (the first legacy news outlet to transition to a nonprofit); the WhatsApp-first Conecta Arizona; news nonprofits like Cityside in California and PublicSource in Pittsburgh; and for-profits like Lagniappe in Mobile, Alabama. What these otherwise disparate outlets all have in common: they’re locally controlled; everybody’s looking for philanthropic support, and appreciates the challenge of “the reluctance of tens of millions of Americans to pay for journalism, particularly online”; leaders prioritize community listening and “providing excellent customer service for advertisers, donors and news consumers.”

You can read the full report here. (Additional features zooming in on local news startups, changes in ownership, ghost newspapers, and “All the news that’s missing in Cairo, IL” will be released later.)