With no local news, those in news deserts turn to social media feeds, influencers, and gossip

• Roughly half of people in news deserts relied on non-journalistic sources, not news organizations
• More than 200 news desert counties in the U.S. predominantly located in rural areas
• Many in news deserts don’t think of themselves as being deprived of local news sources

In local news deserts in the U.S., residents rely heavily on social media and other non-journalistic sources to stay informed, according to a comprehensive survey by the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.

The survey revealed that among people who consume news daily in news deserts, a little more than half (51%) said they get local news from non-journalistic sources, like social media groups, influencers and friends and family. This means that by a small margin, more people in news deserts relied on non-journalistic sources than news organizations to keep informed.

The survey, conducted for Medill by the national polling firm Qualtrics, asked respondents which local news sources they relied upon. The results showed that among news desert dwellers, there was a strong preference for social media news groups (e.g., Facebook groups and Nextdoor) and local television news. About four in 10 people (42%) said they accessed social news groups daily, and they reported the same figure (41%) for local TV news. These were followed by search engines (35%), friends and family (33%) and social media influencers (30%).

The poll showed that people living in news desert counties, defined as those with no professional news outlet based in their county, generally consume news at nearly the same rate as people living in areas served by local newspapers. Moreover, they don’t think of themselves as being deprived of local news sources. They appear satisfied to have social media, TV news and other options to fill the gap.

In one of the study’s most significant findings, Medill researchers said, people in news deserts trust the news media far less (46% to 59%) than people in areas served by local news sources. They also seldom speak to a journalist and far less often subscribe to a news organization. All of this adds up to a problem that suggests profound impacts: People in news deserts have a fraying relationship with local journalism.

“You might feel like you’re part of a close-knit community that knows what’s going on, but places with a lack of journalism are missing an external source of information and a system of accountability of people in power,” said Zach Metzger, director of the Medill State of Local News Project, who led the survey for Medill. “The danger is what happens when they rely on social media because they have lost the journalistic view of things they are no longer able to see in their daily lives.

As competition increases in the digital age, the news business has come under significant financial pressure, leading to the closure of nearly 40% of America’s newspapers in the past 20 years, or about 3,500 in all, according to Medill State of Local News Project research.

In 2025, the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications identified 212 news desert counties in the U.S., and another 1,525 counties with just one remaining news source. In all, 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news, the Local News Initiative has found.

The newspaper closures have been especially pronounced in the suburbs outside large cities. But when newspapers shutter in less densely populated areas, they can create news deserts. Last year, 80% of news deserts were in counties the federal government classifies as predominantly rural.

Medill researchers commissioned a survey of 500 consumers in news deserts to learn where they turn for information after the local newspaper disappears and to examine the consequences. For comparison purposes, they surveyed another 500 people in communities nationwide still serviced by local journalism. The news desert survey, Medill’s first, was conducted for the Local News Initiative last July by Qualtrics with the support of the MacArthur Foundation.

Civic engagement under pressure

The concerns about news deserts relate both to the loss of local journalists who no longer report on daily events or do investigative reports, and to the impact of residents relying too heavily on social media news feeds and influencers and town gossip. At some point after local journalism disappears, there is a risk that civic engagement weakens. It’s a phenomenon some government officials in news deserts have begun to notice.

In Sullivan County, N.H., where the Claremont Eagle Times unexpectedly closed its doors last summer, an information gap has developed, said Dale Girard, Claremont’s mayor. Residents who attend local government meetings aren’t fully informed about what’s happening, sometimes guided by misinformation online.

“They were trying their best,” Girard said of the Eagle Times before it closed. “But as you would guess, the lack of staffing made it difficult for them to be at a lot of the local meetings. … I think the readership for the local paper had dropped off considerably because everybody goes to social media, and the problem is, as we all know: Social media isn’t always accurate.”

The Medill survey’s goal was to get a deeper understanding of what happens in news deserts after the last professional local journalist leaves the county. The answer is nuanced but points in the direction outlined by the New Hampshire mayor: Residents rely heavily on non-journalistic sources to get news, especially social media. Those sources may share valuable information that keeps communities in touch, but they’re not doing the fact-checking and reporting of professional journalists, which has consequences.

“Instead of having local journalists do the work of reporting the news, you have unvetted, un-fact-checked information bouncing around the echo chamber of Facebook or Instagram and other social media platforms,” said Tim Franklin, Medill Professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News. “There’s so much information, and misinformation, out there that the loss of the local newspaper isn’t even obvious to many residents. Part of the significance of this study is that it indicates people living in news deserts don’t feel uninformed. But informed by whom and what’s the accuracy of that information?”

Consumers don’t know what they’re missing

Indeed, the Medill survey determined that at the broadest level news consumption habits don’t differ much between news deserts and other communities. In general, people in both news deserts and news-rich communities follow similar routines. In news deserts, 49% of respondents reported looking at news about their communities at least once a day, compared with 53% in areas with abundant news sources.

Despite being deprived of local news sources, people in news deserts don’t seem frustrated with their ability to stay informed. Consumers in news deserts and news-abundant areas both report that accessing reliable local news is relatively easy to do, with 90 percent and 94 percent of respondents saying that news is somewhat or very easy to access, respectively.

Importantly, the survey left it to answerers to define the term “news” – meaning when respondents reported consuming news daily about their local community, they were including sources beyond traditional journalism, such as social media influencers or friends and family.

The result of this is informative and unfortunate. In saying that, getting reliable local news is easy within counties without news organizations, news desert dwellers seemingly decline to raise a complaint about not having local journalism. In a way, this is the ultimate definition of a desert: Residents get so used to feeling thirsty that they no longer realize there is a different way to live.

“Without a vibrant local newspaper covering the community day-to-day, people don’t know what they are missing,” said Metzger. “They don’t know there’s an issue they aren’t being informed about in the first place.”

The survey identified one seeming anomaly related to consumer habits among news desert dwellers: Two in 10 respondents (22%) said they read a local newspaper based in their town, even though a local paper doesn’t exist in a news desert. Metzger explained that some respondents considered newspapers from adjacent counties to be their local paper, too. That’s so even though it’s unlikely those out-of-county papers provide much local coverage. The same holds true for out-of-county TV news: While 41% of respondents said they watched TV news daily, they were inevitably getting less information about their communities from a distant TV station than past newspaper coverage.

Is news still valued?

Taken together, the results of the survey paint a concerning picture for the news industry and its supporters: Respondents in counties without newspapers get a lot of information daily from non-journalistic sources, yet they indicate local news is easy to access.

“News industry professionals would all agree on the basic differences between real journalism and merely being informed, but if the consumer doesn’t share that distinction, or can’t see it, that raises issues,” said Mackenzie Warren, Interim Executive Director of the Local News Initiative. “Is this an example of the market deciding not only that it doesn’t understand but maybe doesn’t value or miss what we think is so valuable?”

Franklin said the survey reflects a gulf in news literacy created, or exacerbated, by the gusher of information unleashed daily from social media. “If you’re on Facebook, everything on your feed gets thrown together into this sort of Mixmaster of information and it becomes hard to discern between what is news, what is journalism that is verified and fact-checked, and everything else,” he said.

Overall, the result of the news source question diverged moderately between respondents who live in news deserts and those who live in areas with abundant news options. Within news-rich areas, there was an even stronger preference for TV news, with 52% of respondents saying they consume local news from TV daily. Social media groups within these areas also ranked highly at 48%. The third highest category of news consumption was reported to be search engines (47%), followed closely by social media influencers (46%).

Desert-dwellers don’t know what they’re missing

The fact that people in news-abundant areas rely more on television than people in news deserts (52% vs. 41%) raises an important issue. It suggests that people in news deserts don’t mind what they’re missing because they haven’t aggressively sought out a journalistic replacement for newspapers. Making a direct correlation isn’t possible due to surveying constraints, but the lower engagement with local TV news, for example, provides another indicator that people living in news deserts think they get enough news and information from social media and elsewhere.

“We can speculate, based on the data, that people aren’t searching elsewhere for replacements for hometown journalists,” Metzger said. “You would imagine that when the local paper goes away that people would react, ‘Where else can we go to get news?’ because there’s no more local source and they have to stay informed. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s playing out here.”

It may go too far to say that news desert dwellers are complacent, but the data, as well as anecdotal reporting on the issue, suggest that residents accept the status quo of having little to no local news coverage.

Maudene Sowders, 84, has lived in Tryon, Neb., for 47 years. But since 2009, when The Tryon Graphic merged with The Stapleton Enterprise in next door Logan County, McPherson County has lost a level of coverage its residents had previously enjoyed. “A lot of it was totally local. A lot of it was called ‘Newsy Neighbors,’” recalled Sowders, now 84 years old. “Scatterings of things that everybody was doing.”

The Stapleton Enterprise still publishes commissioner’s meeting reports and other local government records from McPherson County, but the level of depth and consistency of the local coverage isn’t the same.

“It does leave out some things,” said Sowders, who spoke to the Local News Initiative but was not a survey-taker. “If somebody had an accident years ago, everybody knew about it because it was in the local paper. Now, we don’t necessarily see that unless it’s a week later or a couple weeks later, maybe.”

Still, Sowders said that she doesn’t necessarily consider McPherson County, the least-populous in the state, to be a news desert. “We pretty well keep up with what’s going on with the schools,” she said. “We’re kind of a close-knit community.”

Reporters are rarely seen

The issue of news consumers not knowing what they are missing is crucial to understanding the impact of news deserts. Without a local newspaper, a key component of the news ecosystem doesn’t exist. There is less likely to be journalists covering government meetings, reporting on local events or digging into allegations of corruption. And akin to the plot of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the true ripple effects of a news desert on a community become hard to grasp because residents can’t value stories that never get told.

Despite the research challenges involved in measuring something (local news coverage) that doesn’t exist, Metzger said the survey uncovered several disparities between life in news deserts and news-rich communities that show how journalism loses its luster after local news organizations disappear. The survey found that in areas with local journalism, 20% of respondents reported speaking with a journalist in the past five years, compared with fewer than 10% in news deserts.

Furthermore, 33% of respondents in news-rich areas said they subscribe or donate to a news outlet, compared to just 15% in news deserts. There was a smaller but noticeable difference concerning the consumption of national news by the two audiences. In news-rich areas, 64% of respondents say they consumed national news at least once a day, compared to 57% of respondents in news deserts.

The loss of contact between residents and reporters in news desert communities seems a small but important fact. When local reporters and newspaper editors are living and working in town, they’re showing up daily to do work that matters. They’re potentially well-known figures in town providing a crucial service. When they’re gone, the work of journalism becomes an abstraction. This phenomenon may lead to one of the survey’s more important findings: in news deserts, people are less likely to have trust in journalism. The survey found that nearly 60% of respondents in news-rich areas trust local news very well or extremely well, compared to 46% in news deserts.

For comparison’s sake, the Medill Local News Initiative’s 2025 survey of news consumption habits in the Chicago area found that 51% of respondents agree, or strongly agree, that local news media can be trusted to get things right.

The challenge of rebuilding trust

The trust question is an important repercussion of the loss of professional news organizations in small-town America. It appears fragile in news deserts, and once trust in the news media declines, it may be difficult to revive.

“We trust our local reporters because we know them,” Metzger said. “They’re members of our community and we trust that they will do a good job. When they are gone, a form of trust in journalism is broken.”

In rural Dunn County, N.D. – population 4,000 – the lack of a local news organization compelled LoAnn Roshau, the county’s communications and marketing director, to build out ways to communicate directly with residents. Roshau said over four years the county grew its following on Facebook from 200 to 1,200 followers, among other efforts.

She used a community Facebook group, Dunn County Insider, which she said frequently spreads misinformation and criticizes the government’s lack of transparency, as a barometer. Recently, the owner of the page said she was stepping away from running it because she felt much more informed about what was happening.

“That was the greatest victory,” Roshau said, “because when that page goes down, I know that I’ve met my goal.”

But the fact remains that local residents still won’t have a local news outlet. Instead, they’ll be even more reliant on government officials to know what’s happening in their community.

About the Medill Local News Initiative Survey

This study was conducted by researchers at the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University and supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The survey was conducted for Medill by the national polling company Qualtrics. It was led by Zach Metzger, the director of the Medill State of Local News Project, and overseen by Tim Franklin, professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News.

This study included respondents in 206 counties that Medill defines as “news deserts.” These are counties with no professional source of local news, such as a print or online newspaper, based within that county. Also surveyed were residents of counties with 30 or more news outlets.

Qualtrics collected a total of 1,000 responses from adults aged 18 or older residing in these counties, with half from news deserts and the other half from counties with abundant news sources.

This survey took place from July 22nd to August 8th, 2025. Survey respondents were recruited by Qualtrics based on their geographic location, using a list of counties derived from the results of the Local News Initiative’s 2024 State of Local News Report.