This headline appeared in the Norfolk Daily News on Aug. 17, 2023. The primary role of a headline is to attract a reader’s attention. Chances are, the headline on this story did just that.

Though this particular headline was in a Norfolk paper, it could have been any community newspaper across our nation. To be clear, it wasn’t the final edition of the Norfolk Daily News - but that is not the case elsewhere in our nation.

It is not an exaggeration to say our freedom as citizens is at risk. While freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, its impact is greatly diminished if there is no local, community newspaper for citizens to rely upon.

Since 2005, more than 25% of U.S. newspapers have ceased publication. That has contributed to an estimated 70 million Americans now living in what’s come to be known as a “news desert” - where there is no or just one local news source in a community or county.

Even when publications continue, many have been faced with severe staff cutbacks. For example, the Gannett Co. - the nation’s largest newspaper chain - has eliminated 54% of its combined workforce since it merged with GateHouse Media less than five years ago.

Here’s a specific example: The Salinas Californian newspaper continues to operate but has no locally based reporters in a community of about 160,000.

Ironically, all of this comes at a time when citizens across the nation want quality, community journalism.

The American Journalism Project recently spoke with about 5,000 Americans located across the U.S. about their journalism preferences, and several themes emerged, including: People want more local news, with the emphasis on local.

People want a shared, trusted source of facts. People want the full story of their communities to be told.

People want to know about decisions before they’re made, and they want decision-makers to be accountable for outcomes.

People want to see themselves in the news. These five tenets are what Syndicate Publishing strives to provide. The stakes are incredibly high. Without support for quality, local journalism, not only will communities suffer, but so will democracy in the U.S. as a whole.

This very company was born out of a desire to prevent our region from joining the evergrowing number of “news deserts” across the nation. Newspapers that had served their communities for generations, like the Gothenburg Times and Tri-City Tribune, had joined the ranks of slashed workforces and diminished quality - eventually leading to their closure. The owners/publishers of the Callaway Courier and Minden Courier were both ready to retire and finding it nearly impossible to find anyone else to carry on the torch of reporting the news in their towns.

The purpose of this column is not to toot our horn for “saving these papers”. The purpose is to bring awareness to what we do, and what our communities would look like if we didn’t.

Dozens of newspapers across the country don’t have a single full-time reporter dedicated to that publication, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis and industry observers. Many newspapers “are so depleted in staff, or maybe have no staff, that they’re not able to provide the sort of communication the residents in that community need to make wise decisions,” said Penelope Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University and lead author of a recent report on the state of local news in the U.S.

About 2½ newspapers are disappearing in the U.S. every week, according to the Northwestern study, and the country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005. The decline of local news is having an outsize impact on the entire media industry because the study said that until recently, as much as 85% of the news that ultimately made national headlines was first published in a local newspaper. So the question becomes, what is the cause of the decline and how do we prevent it from happening here?

We will explore those questions as we continue our investigation of America’s growing “news deserts” next week.