This report continues our effort to monitor and assess the health of Oregon’ local news ecosystem. As the local news crisis intensifies around the country, we shine a spotlight on what has happened to local news outlets—including print, radio, television and digital—here in Oregon since the release of our first report in 2022.
As the state and the nation wrestle with challenges ranging from housing and income inequality to climate change and its impacts to political polarization and steadily declining trust in institutions and the news media itself, we are more keenly aware than ever that the civic health of communities is tied to the availability of quality, trusted, locally relevant news and information. Unlike our first report, we don’t dwell here on the mounting research that demonstrates this connection (readers not familiar with that research are encouraged to see our first report). Instead, we get straight to the question of how Oregon’s local news environment has changed since 2022.
More and more researchers are documenting local news ecosystems in places around the country. Recent statewide local news projects have been published in Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Maryland, and other parts of the country. This work of documenting and mapping local news providers is challenging for many reasons. Not all local news and information is produced by traditional newsrooms, including the increasing use of Facebook and other social media platforms as places to “cover” local news and events. And mapping local newsrooms based on their physical address, as we do in this report, has its limitations, particularly as news and information increasingly circulate via social media through individuals’ geographically dispersed social networks. Moreover, the quick rise of so-called “pink slime” and other online sites that mimic real local news complicates the task of differentiating types of local information available to communities. Researchers are redoubling efforts to improve the mapping of local news ecosystems. The recent launch of the Local News Impact Consortium, with seed funding from the Knight Foundation, represents one effort to expand the study of local news with rigorous and comparable methods (the University of Oregon is an LNIC partner). Readers with questions about how the data here were compiled are encouraged to see our Methods appendix and to reach out to us with questions or suggestions.
When reading this report, it’s important to bear in mind that our maps indicate the physical location of newsrooms—not necessarily the entire areas they aim to cover. It’s also important to note that the local news ecosystem is always in flux—particularly in times like these—and that the data presented here provide a snapshot in time that may be somewhat incomplete and will likely become less accurate over time.
We also want to acknowledge both the usefulness and the limitations of the term “local news ecosystem”—a phrase that has caught on among journalism researchers and funders. The term is useful and evocative, though it has been criticized for implying that local news environments are “natural” rather than humanly-created. That assumption is not necessarily helpful if our aim is to intervene to counteract the decline of local news, which is why some local news advocates instead use the term “civic infrastructure” to talk about local news. We use the term “ecosystem” to bring attention to the overall availability and viability of the media “species” providing news and information to communities. It is important to note, however, that describing some news species as “endangered” does not necessarily reflect a natural evolutionary process. Just as with natural ecosystems, the survival or disappearance of various species is not a foregone conclusion, and human interventions can improve the health of news organizations and therefore the informational civic health of communities. Much depends on what journalists, philanthropists, journalism support organizations, policy makers, and the public do in response to the local news crisis.
This work is an outgrowth of the Agora Journalism Center’s mission to be a forum for the future of local news and civic health. We hope this report will contribute to the work of building a more sustainable, locally-relevant, and trusted local news ecosystem for all Oregonians.
— Regina G. Lawrence, Research Director, Agora Journalism Center
— Andrew DeVigal, Director, Agora Journalism Center
Acknowledgments
We want to thank the many colleagues, reporters and editors, civic and community leaders, and experts who helped us craft this report; any mistakes or misinterpretations here remain our own. We also want to thank the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center for allowing us to explore questions about Oregonians’ trust in local news through their survey, and to the many members of the Oregon Media Collaborative that participated in our survey to better understand newsroom needs. Especially hearty thanks go to Erica Pully and Madison Schroder, PhD students at the University of Oregon, for their research assistance.
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