Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy

Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy

By Margaret Sullivan

How the current epidemic of news deserts and ghost papers threatens democracy Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the U. S. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008.

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Book Information

Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Publish Date: 07/14/2020
Pages: 105
ISBN-13: 9781733623780
ISBN-10: 1733623787
Language: English

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Full Description

How the current epidemic of news deserts and ghost papers threatens democracy Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the U.S. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008. One in three Brazilians lives in news deserts. The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. This is not the much-discussed fake-news problem--it's the separate problem of a critical shortage of real news. America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage, and surveys a range of 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 sounds a loud alarm, alerting citizens to a growing crisis in local news that has already done serious damage.

About the Author

MARGARET SULLIVAN is an award-winning media critic and a groundbreaking journalist. She was the first woman appointed as public editor of the New York Times and went on to the Washington Post as media columnist.

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