Comment by claudiulodro
4 years ago
There are a number of studies showing what is beneficial specifically about local news:
- "Academic studies suggest that a lack of local media coverage is associated with less informed voters, lower voter turnouts, and less engaged local politicians." [0]
- "We examine how local newspaper closures affect public finance outcomes for local governments. Following a newspaper closure, municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points, costing the municipality an additional $650 thousand per issue." [1]
Without local news people don't vote as much, are less informed about the issues, and politicians have less oversight. Local news fills a very important role in society.
[0] https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance-loc... [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555
> There are a number of studies showing what is beneficial specifically about local news:
keyword here is "associated".
Does lack of local media coverage cause "less informed voters, lower voter turnouts, and less engaged local politicians", or is it the reverse? It certainly seems plausible. If you don't care about politics at all, you're probably happy sitting at home watching daytime national TV rather than reading the local paper.
The same applies to newspaper closures being associated with higher borrowing costs. Towns that are on a downward spiral would cause higher borrowing costs (who wants to borrow to a town with a dwindling tax base?) as well as causing local media establishments to shut down.