Local Journalist Index 2025

Although rural counties tend to have some of the worst shortages — some have literally zero local journalists or news outlets — suburban and many urban counties are also severely stressed when you compare the number of journalists with the county’s population. For instance, the Bronx — across a river from Manhattan, the media capital of America — has only 2.9 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people. That puts it just below Falls County, Texas (population 17,000 and named for a waterfall that no longer exists).

Indeed, when we look at the Local Journalist Equivalent index in populations of different sizes, we see that the averages fall within a narrow range — from six to a bit more than nine — and all dramatically below a few decades ago.

Counties with fast-growing populations often have too few journalists.

The shortages are not just in areas with declining populations. For example, Fort Bend County, a suburb of Houston, and Washington County, a suburb of Portland, Oregon — both areas with rapidly growing populations — have about five Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people. The media in Houston and Portland cover those areas but typically only when there is a major incident with a large loss of life or property. Murders might get covered; school board meetings, don’t hold your breath.

Fast-growing counties may be particularly hard hit because their population growth coincided with the moment when local news business models were collapsing. Before the advent of online news, more residents meant more paid subscribers and more advertising revenue. Now, more residents mean more news but no extra resources to cover that news.

Fort Bend and Washington counties do have legacy newspapers: The Fort Bend Star near Houston and the Hillsboro News-Times near Portland are still in print. However, like so many other community media outlets, they have much smaller staffs than in past years but cover larger populations.

Many counties appear to have less than one journalist equivalent.

Of the 3,141 counties in the U.S., more than 1,000 counties have less than one Local Journalist Equivalent, leaving a total of 20.6 million people without identifiable local reporting. Many of them are remote, like Harding County, New Mexico, which is the size of Delaware and yet has under 1,000 people and no stoplights. But others are big enough to merit at least one full-time journalist. For example, our search found no local journalists in Boone County, Kentucky, even with a population of 140,000. The Boone County Recorder, established in 1875, was shut down by Gannett in 2022.

Many counties with large populations — including big cities — are severely undercovered.

Of the 48 counties with more than 1 million residents, only 14 have more than 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people, the national average (already down about 75% since 2002). Nine of the nation’s highest-population counties are dramatically undercovered. Despite having more than 2 million residents each, the counties with these big cities in them have less than five LJEs — i.e. half the already way-too-low national average per 100,000 people:

As you can see from the list above, the problem is concentrated in the Southwest in fast-growing cities.

There are, however, inspiring counter-examples.

Some 111 counties — with a combined population of about 1.9 million people — have at least as many local journalists as the national average that was reported in 2002. Lee County, Mississippi, is home to the Tupelo-based Daily Journal, once owned by a local family and now controlled by a foundation. Lee County rises to the top of the state rankings and is in the top 2% of counties nationwide with 52.1 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 residents.

Jerauld County, South Dakota, has 4.3 Local Journalist Equivalents total, which translates into an impressive 256.8 per 100,000 residents. The local newspaper, the True Dakotan, operates the way most small papers operated not that long ago. It has a range of local columnists, and it covers news beyond sports at the local high school.

Another bright spot is Hooker County, Nebraska, in which one intrepid journalist, Gerri Peterson, covers her community so deeply that, in a county of 679 people, the Hooker County Tribune has 726 paying subscribers.

Some states are doing significantly better than others.

The best states have roughly three times as many local journalists per 100,000 residents as the worst states.

Vermont has the most, with 27.5 LJEs per 100,000 residents, in part because major new publications such as the nonprofit Vermont Digger and Seven Days have helped fill some of the gaps, and in part because few of the newspapers have been bought by private equity firms. Even there, it’s worth noting that the best state is still far below the national average for the whole country in 2002, and indeed is the only state that is above even half of the national average of 40 from that year.

Although the top of the list is dominated by rural states, it’s hard to discern patterns based just on size. For instance, two of the states with the highest population densities are Massachusetts, which is near the top of the pack, and New Jersey, which is at the bottom.

Local conditions — including patterns of media ownership — may explain some of the differences. New Jersey suffers because it is in the shadow of the New York City and Philadelphia media markets. Large news outlets from those cities pull in ad dollars and audience, making it harder for local outlets to get traction. Similarly, local outlets in Maryland and Delaware languish in the shadow of the Washington, D.C., market.