Ghosting the news : local journalism and the crisis of American democracy

Ghosting the news Local journalism and the crisis of American democracy

Margaret Sullivan, 1957-

Book - 2020

"Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. Reporting on some of the news-impoverished areas in the U.S. and around the world, America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage but also surveys some new efforts to keep local news alive-from non-profit digital sites to an effort modeled on the Peace Corps. No nostalgic paean to the roar of rumbling presses, Ghosting the News instead sound a loud alarm, alerting citizens to the growing crisis in local news that has already done serious damage. If local newspapers are on the brink of extinction, we ought to know the full extent of the losses now, before it's too late"--

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Subjects
Journalism, Regional > Political aspects > United States.
Local mass media > United States.
Press and politics > United States > History > 21st century.
Published
New York, NY : Columbia Global Reports [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Margaret Sullivan, 1957- (author)
Physical Description
105 pages : maps ; 19 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 99-105).
ISBN
9781733623780
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1. Leaving Buffalo
  • Chapter 2. The Unregulated Toll Bridge
  • Chapter 3. News Deserts, Ghost Papers, and Beacons of Hope
  • Chapter 4. Global Problems
  • Chapter 5. New Models
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Further Reading
  • Notes
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A dire warning on the decline of daily newspapers and the danger that their disappearance poses for democracy. Anybody who follows the media business is familiar with the broad outline of the problem the author lays out in this unapologetically dour book: Newspapers have shuttered with distressing speed in recent years--more than 2,000 since 2004, she reports--and many of the ones that remain are shadows of their former selves. Sullivan, a media columnist at the Washington Post, used to be the top editor at one of those, the Buffalo Evening News, and she shares her own glimpses of the decline. However, the author's goal isn't to lament the good old days of once-mighty businesses. Instead, she trains her eyes on the "news deserts" that now litter the landscape and voices concern about how corruption will consume communities that no longer have media watchdogs. For instance, the Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, used to send reporters to all area school-board meetings, a manager told her, and "people knew that…and they behaved." But now TV news and online outlets aren't picking up the slack, and though nonprofit news sources have emerged, they don't have the reach or stability that newspapers once claimed. Combine that with social media platforms that allow misinformation to spread, and it's no wonder local civic discourse has degraded into meme-vs.-meme slap fights. (Sullivan is careful to note that this is hardly just an American problem.) What to do? The author chronicles her discussions with the leaders of some promising startups and considers more radical ideas, such as federal subsidies for media. But her glass is resolutely half-empty: She predicts that "American politics will become even more polarized; government and business corruption will flourish, the glue that holds communities together will weaken." A no-nonsense retort to the notion that we live in a time of abundant information. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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