Media · Local News (report of Oct. 13) · October 14, 2026
170 Newspapers Closed or Merged in a Year. The Number Is Right. The Report Also Has Good News That Headlines Skip.
Northwestern's Medill school documents a record rise in news deserts. It also counts 75 local news startups, almost all in cities.
True The Overlooked
The claim
“170 newspapers closed or merged in the past year.”
Medill State of Local News Project, Northwestern University, released Oct. 13, 2026, as reported by Poynter.
Verdict: True
What we found
- The Medill report says “170 newspapers have closed or merged, at a rate of nearly three a week” [3], up from 136 the year before [1]. Medill says that in past years the U.S. was losing about two a week [3].
- 26 more counties became news deserts, the largest single-year rise since Medill began keeping records five years ago, bringing the total to 238 [1][2]. Nearly 47 million Americans live in a news desert or a county with only one local news source [1].
- More than 425 newspapers changed hands, 75% more than the prior year. The newspaper industry lost more than 8% of its workforce between 2024 and 2025 [2].
- Ownership is concentrated: three-quarters of the 678 local TV newsrooms are owned by 10 companies [1][3]. Newsprint prices rose about 18% in a year, roughly five times the inflation rate [1]. Medill's report puts the 10 largest newspaper owners at nearly a quarter of all newspapers and “more than half” of dailies [3]. Poynter's “two-thirds of daily newspapers” [1] is a higher figure than the report's own wording, so we use the report's.
- Where the closures fell: Medill researchers say 75% of the 170 closures were in rural communities, almost half in the Midwest, and that Illinois and Iowa alone accounted for about a quarter [5]. Web traffic to the 100 largest local newspapers fell roughly 50% over four years [3][5], by researcher Zach Metzger's account in the podcast [5].
- The counterweight: 75 local news startups launched in the past year, mostly digital. But “virtually all the new news sources are in urban areas, while rural America is increasingly arid news and information territory” [2]. Medill researcher Srishti Bose says startups tend to cluster in “relatively affluent areas, rather than news deserts” [5].
The headline figure is True. It matches the report as published.
What they didn't tell you
- It isn't all decline. Startups and national networks such as Axios and States Newsroom are growing [2]. But the growth is mostly in cities and relatively affluent areas, while most closures were rural [2][5].
- “In the past year” is loose, and the same figure is described two ways. Poynter says closures run at “more than three a week” [1]. Medill's report says “nearly three a week” for the same 170 [3]. Over exactly 52 weeks, 170 is about 3.3 a week. Search excerpts of coverage of the report (Nieman Lab and Editor & Publisher [6], both of which blocked our tool) describe the count as running from July 2025 to August 2026, about 14 months, which works out to about 2.8 a week and fits Medill's wording. We could not confirm that period on the report page itself. If it is right, the 170 covers a little more than a year, and Poynter's “more than three” overstates the rate.
- The hardest-hit are the middle. Project director Zachary Metzger says smaller regional papers face “this really razor-thin level of precarity financially” [1].
- What a “news desert” measures. The unit is the county. An analysis of Medill's method calls it “a proxy for supply, not a measure of coverage quality,” and notes it can miss understaffed outlets and cuts inside counties still counted as covered, such as newsroom losses after 2025 public-broadcasting funding cuts [4]. The count is a floor for the problem, not a full picture of it.
- Why it matters for accuracy. Where no one covers local government, there is nobody to check it. This is a documented trend in the report. We haven't studied its effects on any specific community.
What we still don't know
- Will new local outlets reach the rural counties losing coverage?
- How many of the 170 were mergers rather than closures? The report counts both together, and we did not read the full methodology appendix.
- The exact period of the 170 count (see above).
Sources
- [1] Reporting. Poynter, “Local newspaper closures and news deserts,” Oct. 2026
- [2] Primary. Medill Local News Initiative, State of Local News 2026
- [3] Primary. Medill Local News Initiative, The State of Local News: 2026 Report
- [4] Reporting. Nathan Brooks, “What a news desert actually measures, and what it misses,” Aug. 17, 2026
- [5] Primary. Medill Local News Initiative, podcast discussion of the 2026 report with the researchers, Oct. 13, 2026
- [6] Reporting. Editor & Publisher, “Local news deserts skyrocket as newspaper closures escalate…” (blocked our tool; read through search text only; used for the July 2025 to August 2026 period)
Book connection: Escaping the Human Zoo, Ring 3 (Media). Fewer local reporters means fewer people checking what is done in your name. Found an error? Corrections policy · Submit a claim