Since 2008, Canada has lost 11% of its local newspapers, leaving almost 2.5 million Canadians with only one local news outlet; some with none. South of the border, almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have disappeared since 2005, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to the local news.
A healthy democracy requires leaders who are held to account, citizens who have access to trustworthy information, and a public that takes part in civic life. Local news sustains these basic facets of any democracy; as a result, these organizations must be treated as vital democratic infrastructure.
Local news is accountability
A healthy democracy depends on citizens knowing what their leaders do. When no one is watching, this risks creating an environment for corruption.
In Kamloops, British Columbia, reporter Jessica Wallace's series on exorbitant spending prompted a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation. They had found that the former chief administrative officer had charged more than $500,000 to his work credit card over five years, including on an $8,600 champagne room in Whistler.
In Bell, California, The Los Angeles Times uncovered that the city manager was giving himself a $1.5 million pay package; his $800,000 salary alone was double that of President Barack Obama at the time. In both cases, wrongdoing came to light only because the newsrooms had the courage and resources to investigate.
At the June conference, Audrey Cooper of The Banner warned that these vital resources are disappearing, and that newsrooms under financial pressure increasingly avoid stories that could bring legal threats. As a result, without the sustained support that local reporting requires, an important foundation of democracy weakens.
Local news is where trust still lives
Democracies depend on citizens having accurate information, and local reporting has long been turned to as a trusted source. Subsequently, when local reporting disappears, imitators move in to fill the vacuum.
In 2017, Radio-Canada uncovered a series of fake newspaper websites that were posing as local Quebec outlets. These websites were run by foreign actors looking to earn advertising revenue and were doing so by were publishing inaccurate rewrites of news stories from other outlets.
In the United States, the practice has grown and even turned political. By June 2024, researchers had identified 1,265 websites that pose as neutral local news outlets but are actually tied to partisan groups or foreign governments. Shockingly, these websites outnumber the country's remaining daily newspapers today.
Like any infrastructure, it takes years to build and cannot be replaced easily once it is gone; the same is true for local newsrooms. If governments want citizens to have access to information that is grounded in reality and trustworthy, governments must support this vital infrastructure before imitators fill the information gap.
Local news keeps us engaged
Finally, democracies need citizens who are engaged. Research has consistently shown that people who do not know what is happening in their community are less likely to vote, run for office, or attend a council meeting.
When reporters cover issues at city hall, residents learn what their council is doing and whether it could be done better; this urges challengers to run and others to vote in better candidates. In fact, researchers in California found that cities with larger newsrooms attracted more mayoral candidates, and that incumbents were less likely to run unopposed.
Ontario's upcoming municipal elections show what weak local competition looks like. When nominations closed in August this year, nearly one in four heads of council had already been acclaimed, and in 19 municipalities the entire council had been acclaimed.
Competitive elections depend on informed voters. Informed voters, in turn, depend on local newsrooms that governments must help sustain. Without them, the civic participation any democracy needs begins to fade.
To be sure
Treating local news as public infrastructure raises fair objections. The first is the issue of independence. A newsroom funded by government may hesitate to scrutinize. But this may depend entirely on design of the support that is given. For example, payroll tax credits reward newsrooms for hiring reporters not the content they produce.
A second objection is that the market is already adapting. In the United States in particular, more than 300 local digital news startups have launched in the past five years. This is an important innovation, but most operate in metropolitan areas where stronger philanthropic support already exists.
The third objection is that both governments are already acting to support local newsrooms. Canada's Local Journalism Initiative, and New York’s $90 million in tax credits are important commitments yet these short-term grants cannot ultimately reverse the trend.
In conclusion
At the Slater Family Conference, Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union reminded the audience that some of democracy's most important resilience lies at the state and local level. Yet, for 2.5 million Canadians and 50 million Americans, local news is disappearing, and with it the accountability, shared facts, and civic participation democracy depends on.
Governments do not wait for bridges to collapse before maintaining them. Local newsrooms deserve the same foresight; what is needed throughout the continent is stable, multi-year support delivered at arm's length from politicians and directed first to the communities with the least coverage. Local news is democratic infrastructure, and it is time governments started treating it that way.
