One in three U.S. counties now has no full-time local journalist - a staggering 75% decline over the past 23 years. This collapse means communities across the country lack "even one full-time reporter to cover all of the schools, the town councils, the economic development projects, basketball games, environmental decisions, local businesses, and local events."
To document this crisis, Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack partnered to create the Local Journalist Index 2025, which maps journalist staffing in every U.S. county. The report analyzes data from over 100,000 journalists and 3.5 million daily articles tracked by Muck Rack’s platform, using a metric called "local journalist equivalents" (LJEs) to account for part-time and freelance work.
An interactive map in the report reveals the stark, nationwide scale of the decline. The erosion of local news isn’t confined to specific regions - it’s a universal crisis. As the report notes, the "evaporation of local news coverage has hit small towns and big cities, suburbs and rural areas alike."
You can explore which counties are most likely to become local news deserts on an interactive map developed by the Medill Local News Initiative. The Local News Barometer and Watch List maps the US counties which have a more than 40% chance of becoming news deserts within the next five years.
These at-risk counties are not just underserved - they are, on average, poorer, older, and less educated than even existing news deserts. If you select a state from the map sidebar then the Watchlist will update to show all the counties in the selected state in the most danger of becoming news deserts.
This map’s most sobering takeaway is that America is increasingly becoming two nations when it comes to local news: one with abundant access in affluent, urbanized regions, and another without. The consequences are profound. Research shows that communities without local news experience lower civic engagement, less voter participation, and weaker accountability in public institutions.
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