Zach Metzger

2026 will be remembered as a seminal year for local news. The number of news desert counties in the U.S. ballooned by 26, the largest single-year rise by far since Medill began keeping records five years ago. There are now 238 news desert counties. Newspapers closed at an escalating rate of nearly three every week. More than 425 newspapers changed hands, 75 percent more than in the prior year. The newspaper industry lost more than 8 percent of its workforce between 2024 and 2025. On top of that, several major local news publishers implemented large-scale layoffs in 2026.