Media Matters: “A defense against polarization”

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the Oxford Free Press, a good time to revisit the state of local news.

While the U.S. has lost 3,300 newspapers over the past two decades — and 130 alone last year  – about 250 new start-ups have launched in the last five years, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.

Of those new start-ups, 85% are digital only. The OFP is among the 15% committed to a print edition, as well. When we investigated newspaper printers in the area, we learned there aren’t any. The Dayton Daily News and the Journal-News are now printed in Detroit, trucked in each morning.  The newspaper versions of the OFP and The Miami Student are printed in Indianapolis.

Nationally, Northwestern found that roughly 5,600 newspapers remain, 80% of which publish weekly print editions. Since 2005, overall newspaper circulation has decreased by 60% — that’s about 75 million fewer readers.

Northwestern’s news initiative also tracks news deserts, which are “areas that lack consistent local reporting that fills information needs.” The U.S. now has 206 counties without any news source and 1,560 counties (out of 3,144) with only one source. Readership has also declined dramatically over the past 20 years. In 2024, “500 of the largest daily and weekly newspapers in the United States … lost an estimated two million print and digital readers.”

We know from various studies that when towns lack local news sources, community involvement and voting turnout decline. In Oxford, anecdotal evidence offers some positive impacts about the return of a weekly newspaper. Our editor, Sean Scott, reports that his sources have seen an increase in awareness around housing issues in town over the past year. The Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services also received more individual donations for its cold shelter this year after the Free Press reported on it. 

Additionally, we know that when citizens have little access to local news, they gravitate for information to talk radio, cable chatter and social media. So instead of looking inward to their communities, they look away, searching for opinions that affirm existing beliefs through the partisan lens of whatever national media outlets they’ve adopted.   

Two studies demonstrate that access to local news and local opinion actually lessens polarization by refocusing on our communities on issues that we can do something about, issues that affect our everyday lives.  

Danny Hayes, a political science professor at George Washington University, is co-author of “News Hole: The Demise of Local Journalism and Political Engagement.” In an email to me, he called local journalism “a defense against polarization.” Studies have shown that Americans with access to quality local news are less partisan and are more likely to be split-ticket voters, Hayes wrote. 

“Polarization is a tough problem to solve,” Hayes told me, “but local news seems to be one of the few things in the world that can bring people together rather than drive them apart.” 

Joshua Darr, a public communication professor at Syracuse, is the lead author of “Home Style Opinion: How Local News Newspapers Can Slow Polarization." The book examines a local California newspaper that dropped a national news focus from its opinion page, rebooting the page with local writers addressing local issues, not unlike our nonprofit OFP. The study suggests that a local newspaper, by banishing national political opinion-makers, pushed back against polarization, and that in this community, "politically engaged people did not feel as far apart from members of the opposing party.”

Take the Dayton Daily News, for example, my hometown paper. Its opinion page is a shrine to the left-right divide, featuring two dimensions – national columnists and cartoonists on the left and on the right. Yes, the top third of the page on most days features local voices (on occasion, my own) and sometimes moderating viewpoints. But what would be lost — and what would be gained — in eliminating the part of a page that reaffirms daily our polarization? 

In fact, Gallup polls for the last 25 years have tracked the decline of party affiliation. Gallup annually poses this question: “In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?” In 2000, 30% of respondents identified as Republican, 34% as Democratic and 35% as independent. In 2024, those numbers were 28-28-43.

It seems to me that any responsible opinion page, and any good local newspaper, should better respect the 43 percenters and better reflect, at the very least,  a middle ground – where more of us live.

Richard Campbell (campber@miamioh.edu) is a professor emeritus and founding chair of the Department of Media, Journalism & Film at Miami University. He is the board secretary for the Oxford Free Press.