Newspapers Sold to Corporate Owners Publish 68% Less Local News

This article from Nieman Lab is a good summary of why local publishers matter (and WordPress is their main tool).

The article is a summary of a research paper. To sum it up in a sentence: When papers are sold to corporate owners, the number of local articles can fall by 68%.

1. Acquisition leads to a significant, but not disproportional, decrease in the volume of local content produced by local newspapers;

2. Coverage of local places in the periods following acquisition is significantly more concentrated than coverage in the periods prior to acquisition;

3. Articles produced to be shared across regional hubs of newspapers are significantly less local—and discursively more national—than articles unique to a given newspaper.

This is the reason that we feature so many exciting new WordPress-based publishers on this site. Almost all of them are locally owned and operated. WordPress publishers are filling the gap left by old newspapers that are falling under corporate ownership.

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