U.S. News Deserts Grow at Record Pace: 238 Counties Now Have No Local News

The United States added 26 news deserts in a single year — the largest one-year jump Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism has ever recorded — bringing the total to 238 counties with no locally based source of professional news.

The latest edition of Medill's "State of Local News" report, published in October 2026, counts 170 newspapers closed or merged over the past year. That works out to more than three per week. Many of the shuttered titles were the last outlet producing original reporting for their communities, and closures in rural Midwestern counties drove the expansion.

The picture barely improves one county over. More than 1,400 additional counties rely on a single local news source. Add both groups together and nearly 47 million Americans live with limited or no access to local news.

What does the count actually measure?

Medill's researchers did not simply tally mailing addresses. For each outlet, they evaluated whether it consistently publishes original, locally focused reporting that addresses its community's critical information needs. An outlet that exists in name but syndicates national copy does not clear the bar. That method matters, because raw outlet counts tend to overstate how much local journalism remains.

The surviving infrastructure skews thin. Nearly 8,400 outlets currently provide local news across the country, and more than 5,400 of them — nearly 65% — are newspapers. Of the newspapers still producing original local reporting, 84% publish once or twice a week. Only about 900 publish more than three times a week. A weekly paper, however committed, cannot cover a county commission meeting on Tuesday and a school board vote on Thursday.

The non-print side remains smaller than the shift in attention might suggest: nearly 1,900 digital-only sites, more than 300 public broadcasters and 678 television newsrooms.

What does this change for communicators?

Plenty. A pitch list built on five-year-old media directories now overstates the available targets in much of the country, and the closures concentrate exactly where regional brands, health systems and utilities need coverage most. Digital-only sites are not replacing newspapers at anything close to one-for-one — 1,900 sites against thousands of lost titles — so placements that once took one call may now have no outlet to call at all.

The jobs numbers point the same direction. Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the report says the newspaper industry lost more than 7,500 jobs between 2024 and 2025, a decline of more than 8%. That contraction matches the previous year's rate, which suggests a steady bleed rather than a one-off shock. Every lost reporter is one fewer person to answer a pitch.

The caveats deserve equal weight. Medill's desert count is a specific definition — no locally based professional source — not a claim that no information flows in those counties. Volunteers, Facebook groups and regional outlets from neighboring markets fill some of the gap, with uneven results. And the report does not break out which digital-only sites are financially stable versus running on grants that expire next year.

What is not in dispute is the trend line: another record year for deserts, another 7,500 jobs gone, and 47 million people whose access to local reporting now depends largely on where they happen to live.