Oct 27
2025
The sorry state of local news
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Nationally, the state of local news is pretty depressing according to the just-released study produced by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
As summarized by Poynter, the respected journalism think tank:
The country has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs over the past two decades, leaving 50 million people in “news deserts,” areas where people have limited or no access to reliable local news sources.
The closures this year primarily affected papers belonging to smaller, independent owners.
Most of the papers that have closed were weeklies, which the report defines as papers printed fewer than three days a week. But the number of dailies has also declined. This year, for the first time, there are fewer than 1,000 dailies remaining in the U.S. The report further notes that more than 80% of those “daily” papers print less than seven days a week due to publishers seeking to save money by reducing print days.
The Medill report noted the financial pressure many NPR stations — particularly those in poorer, rural areas — are facing because of the elimination of federal funds.
The head count of local news outlets, which did not include television stations, found wide disparities in New York State, as illustrated in this interactive map.
There are plenty of outlets downstate, although I suspect many have been hollowed out. Upstate is another matter.
Fifteen counties have only one news outlet to cover their community, typically a newspaper, and again, often a shell of its former self. Counties down to just one outlet include three of the eight counties of Western New York — Orleans, Wyoming and Allegany — along with four counties in Central New York.
Niagara County does a little bit better, with three papers, including dailies in Lockport and Niagara Falls.
Erie County does much better, with 20 outlets, although that’s not to say we’re in great shape. Fourteen of them are newspapers, nine part of the Bee chain that distributes in Buffalo’s suburbs. I recently picked up a copy of the Amherst Bee and noticed that much of the content is either rewritten press releases or columns ghostwritten for politicians.
Other outlets included Buffalo Toronto Public Media, aka WBFO; three ethnic newspapers, including Challenger Community News; and two digital outlets, Buffalo Rising and Investigative Post.
We’re one of about 60 nonprofit news outlets based in New York state. About 20 are focused on local or state coverage. The largest of them, the Gothamist and The City, are based in Manhattan and report primarily on New York City.
Investigative Post and New York Focus are devoted to investigative reporting. Many of the remaining upstate outlets produce mostly general news or hyperlocal coverage. They include Central Current in Syracuse and The Ithaca Voice.
It’s noteworthy that wide swaths of upstate lack a nonprofit digital outlet, although some are served by one of New York’s 10 NPR stations.
Mark Sommer, retired from The Buffalo News, penned a story for The New York Times about the impact of fewer Canadians crossing the border into Western New York as the result of Donald Trump’s hostility towards their nation.
Attendance is down considerably at cultural and entertainment venues, everything from the Buffalo Bisons at Sahlen Field and the AKG Art Museum to the Darwin Martin House and the Explore & More Children’s Museum. Canadian patronage at Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls has fallen by as much as half.
Inside Climate News writes about Buffalo as a climate refuge. The story reinforces my belief that our location on a Great Lake and in the North East will eventually make Western New York a destination for people fleeing the ravages of climate change in the South and South West.
Talk about a poor return on investment: New York spends more on education than just about any state and has subpar student achievement to show for it. An analysis from the Empire Center.
Elsewhere on the education front, the feds have killed $32 million in grants to SUNY over its refusal to roll back DEI programs.
Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill to improve transparency in state government. The measure would have required agencies to stop dragging their feet in responding to requests from the public and press made under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomA lot was made, rightfully, of the hostages taken by Hamas during their Oct. 7, 2023, assault into southern Israel. There’s been relatively little said, however, about a far larger number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
An op-ed in The New York Times (gift link) had this to say:
In the West Bank and Jerusalem, far from Hamas-controlled Gaza, more than 19,000 Palestinians were swept up since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. Some were released, but as of early October, more than 11,000 Palestinians were still locked up in Israeli prisons, almost a third of them under “administrative detention,” without charges or a trial.
Some people were arrested for nothing more than messages they posted on social media. Thousands of Gazans were also held in Israeli military detention, many as “unlawful combatants,” without any legal process. Their numbers are difficult to verify, though a recent investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call found that as few as one in four of them had been classified as fighters even in Israel’s own military databases.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, echoing reports by Amnesty International and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documented testimony by Palestinians who said that while incarcerated they have been subject to beatings, torture, rape and extreme deprivation. Men and women spoke about loud music played for hours on end, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual and gender-based violence. Some of the prisoners released this week confirmed that they, too, had been exposed to brutal conditions and abuse.
Jerry Zremski, Washington correspondent for The Buffalo News, has retired. I worked with Jerry for years at The News and consider him one of the paper’s very best reporters over the past four decades. He’s stepping away from daily journalism while continuing to teach at the journalism school at the University of Maryland.
I’ll bet you never heard this version of one of the most-recorded songs in history. Better than the original, thanks to the King.
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