New Report: The Expanding News Desert

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Since you are interested in the state of the news media in this country, I wanted to let you know about our 2018 report, The Expanding News Desert, being released today, and the accompanying interactive website, usnewsdeserts.com, where you can download a copy of the report.  
Our 2018 edition consists of two separate reports. The Loss of Local News, which documents the loss of newspapers and readers (almost 1,800 papers in recent years), recent efforts being made by other media trying to fill the void that is left when a local paper dies and the challenges and opportunities that remain.  “The Enduring Legacy of Our New Media Barons” explores the indelible mark hedge funds and private equity firms have left on the newspaper industry during a time of immense disruption.
 
On our interactive website – usnewsdeserts.com – concerned citizens, community activists, philanthropists, policy makers, educators, journalists and others in the industry can drill down to the county level to understand how the news landscape in each of our 50 states has changed in recent years and the political, social and economic implications this has for their communities. Our findings are based on analysis of the data collected by the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over the past four years and considerably expands on the information in our proprietary database of more than 9,000 U.S. newspapers.
 
Thanks for your interest and support,
Penny Muse Abernathy
pennyma@email.unc.edu