WASHINGTON — I have spent most of my career in marble hallways, chasing senators between votes and waiting outside closed-door briefings. But the story I think about most often is one I did not write. It was written by a 26-year-old reporter at a twice-weekly paper in a small river town, who noticed that her county had quietly approved the same $380,000 consulting contract three years in a row without a single public bid.
No national outlet would ever have found that story. No one in Washington would have cared. But because she sat through a four-hour commissioners’ meeting on a Tuesday night, residents learned how their money was being spent, the contract was reopened, and the county saved enough to repave two miles of road.
That paper closed last year. I suspect the next contract will not get the same attention.
What disappears when the reporters do
We now have more than 200 counties in this country with no local news outlet at all, and hundreds more served by a single, shrinking publication. Researchers have spent years documenting what happens next, and the pattern is remarkably consistent. Fewer candidates run for local office. Voter turnout in local elections falls. Borrowing costs for municipalities can rise, because lenders see less oversight. People lose a shared set of facts about the place they live.
None of this is partisan. A missing reporter hurts a conservative farm town and a progressive college town in exactly the same way. When nobody is watching, small problems grow quietly into large ones.
National news tells you what to argue about. Local news tells you what is actually happening on your street.
Marcus Bell, chief political correspondent
What we can do about it
There is no single fix, and I am wary of anyone who claims to have one. But several approaches are showing promise, and they deserve wider support:
- Pay for it. A local subscription often costs less than a streaming service. If you value the paper, buy it.
- Back nonprofit newsrooms. Community-funded outlets have launched in dozens of cities and are filling real gaps.
- Train the next generation. Fellowship programs that place young reporters in underserved areas have kept many small papers alive.
- Show up. Read the coverage, attend the meetings, write a letter to the editor. Local news survives when locals use it.
Some argue that social media groups and neighborhood apps have replaced the local paper. I understand the appeal; those forums are fast and free. But a post from a neighbor is not the same as a reporter who requests the budget documents, calls both sides and corrects her mistakes in print. Rumors travel faster than ever. Verification does not.
Others say the market has spoken, and that if local papers cannot survive on their own, they should not be propped up. That is a fair argument in many industries. But accountability reporting has always been something of a public good, subsidized for decades by classified ads that no longer exist. The question is not whether we pay for it, but how.
I will keep covering Congress, because what happens there matters. But I have come to believe that the health of our democracy depends less on the reporters in the Capitol press gallery than on the ones sitting in folding chairs at the back of a county meeting room, notebook open, asking the question nobody else will.
Let’s make sure there is still someone in that chair.
