Nowhere has the demise of the press in the United States been felt harder than in rural America.
Tim Franklin, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and editor who’s now a dean at Northwestern University, was a member of the Local Journalism Task Force that filed a report on the decline of local journalism earlier this year with the Illinois General Assembly.
The task force reported that the problem of news deserts—regions without a local news outlet of any kind—tend to be in rural parts of the state. Franklin added that 33 counties in Illinois now have only one local news outlet.
The problem isn’t confined to Illinois. Rural communities across the country have been left in the dark as newspapers, some that have operated for more than a century, have disappeared completely.
“More than 500 newspapers have been closed or merged in rural communities since 2004. Because of the isolated nature of these communities, there is little to fill the void when the paper closes,” stated media researcher Penelope Muse Abernathy.
The newspaper’s decline in the United States hasn’t been gradual. Total circulation of newspapers dropped from 65 million in the early 1990s to 29 million in 2018—even though the U.S. population has increased during that period, noted Nick Jacobs and Daniel Shea in their book, Rural America.
Political scientists Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless said that when newspapers stop telling citizens what was happening in city hall or on their county commissions, there’s often no other place where citizens can find information pertaining to their community.
Possible solutions to the problem have included government funding but, considering the difficulty a divided Congress has in simply passing a budget, it’s hard to see meaningful government assistance that would bolster the press.
While journalism has suffered nationally, it might make sense to try attacking the problem in the region that’s suffered the most, rural America.
Why not unleash the Paper Corps, a program that would send media workers into the field, to resurrect or re-establish media outlets in small towns across America?
Programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps have shown they not only help those in need but can be inspirational for those who participate.
Such an outlet could take advantage of the plentiful supply of trained journalists that have been forced out of work in this country (Franklin noted that Illinois has lost 85 percent of its newspaper journalists since 2005) as well as providing an opportunity for young journalists looking to get established.
Despite its name, the Paper Corps wouldn’t be limited to simply starting or fortifying small-town newspapers. The program would deliver whatever form of media makes the most sense for a specific community, be it digital, radio, TV or print.
Even if only a handful of rural communities are able to
be served by such a program initially, the experience of rekindling a little journalistic fire could serve as a model for others to follow.
Paper Corps