When Local Newspapers Die, Corruption Festers

In 2009, David Simon, the creator of HBO’s The Wire and a onetime crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, told a Senate subcommittee that as America’s regional newspapers collapsed, corruption would flourish. “The next ten to fifteen years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption,” he said. “It is going to be one of the great times to be a corrupt politician.”

Sixteen years later, it seems like an opportune time to take stock of that prediction. After all, the decline of the local newspaper has continued relentlessly in the intervening years, with more than a quarter of American newspapers disappearing since 2004. Along with my coauthor Ted Matherly, then of Northeastern University, I published a paper in June of last year exploring this question: Has the disappearance of local and regional newspapers given local officials the green light to engage in corruption?