Breaking through the local trap

“Yes, the national news media is reporting on it, but is it 'breaking through' for the average reader?” was a repeated question on social media last week, as the scope of the unconstitutional assault and attempted murder on a series of Federal departments has unfurled.

The verdict: “No” on closing USAID but maybe “Yes” on the DOGE script kiddies getting access to everyone’s Social Security numbers.

The media ecosystem has been hollowed out, with national news and especially politics left to CNN or The Associated Press while most metro and smaller newsrooms have retrenched to focus their diminished resources on local topics. Scanning Google News and browsing a selection of local and metro news sites from my spot in mid-Missouri this week was clear evidence of the shift.

USAID buys $2 billion of food from American farmers annually for humanitarian assistance overseas, including purchases from Missouri farms. It is a story national media have written about, but I have found little or no localization of it.

USAID also supports international research projects at Mizzou and Washington University to improve irrigation practices and improve agricultural mechanization.

Who is talking about it? Activists on Facebook.

Similarly, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 provided $3.1 billion to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for agricultural subsidies to struggling farmers. With those payments now canceled, livelihoods are threatened.

Who is talking about it? Farmers on TikTok.

Trump last week imposed changes to the National Institutes of Health funding model that will devastate many research universities and hospitals. Some local newsrooms have picked up the story, but it has mostly been reported by national outlets.

In 2024, NIH awarded $70 million to Missouri for a variety of health-related projects including advances in cancer, diabetes, and heart disease treatments. Hobbling those projects will punch a hole in university budgets, cost jobs, increase tuition and directly harm medical research.

Who is talking about it? Academics on Bluesky. But not university presidents, who make no appearance in this Inside Higher Education story and only a few local outlets.

In another blow to research and higher education, the National Science Foundation is being cut by two-thirds. National media and specialist newsrooms have covered it. It has seen apparently little or no local notice yet.

But the NSF awarded $96 million to Missouri in 2024, encompassing many projects in support of the state’s agriculture industry including detection of salmonella contamination in poultry farms, improved pest resistance in soybeans and corn, along with a variety of other disciplines including chemistry, biology, neuroscience, materials science, mathematics, geosciences, and engineering.

These are all “national” stories, with almost immediate and dramatic local harms in all 50 states. Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffrey noticed the trend over the weekend as well, in a thread on Bluesky

1/ A thread about why the gutting of journalism, and local news in particular, is a main reason why we are here. And what you can do—constructively—to help.

Let's start with the homepage of @dallasnews.com. Mostly sports. Almost nothing about what's happening in DC—THAT AFFECTS TEXANS

This lack of any localization is the result of publishers reacting more-or-less rationally to 20 years of digital disruption and market pressures. But, it also shows how publishers are trapped by the “local” moat they built around their business.

What’s the trap?

1. Local journalists understand their communities are overwhelmed and exhausted by national political news which commonly reads like the betting odds and theatre reviews from a boxing match.
2. Print newspapers are thin, due to a drop in local display advertising. So fewer non-local stories are needed for the paper edition.
3. Online, the politics of SEO reduces the value of national stories for local digital sites. Yahoo News or the New York Times will win most of those eyeballs, even for searches that originate in Des Moines or Tucson.
4. In reaction Gannett, McClatchy, and others have given up all or most Associated Press services. For local publishers, there is an assumption people will seek and discover national news elsewhere/everywhere else on the Internet.
5. So publishers decided to focus on their strengths. Given smaller reporting staffs, resources are best spent on uniquely local stories, from features to news businesses to the city council.

That all makes sense but the strategic march toward "local" is also an ill-considered retreat from helping readers make sense of national policy. Because "local" means "what is relevant to the lives of my readers" not just "which events happened in our city or town."

Readers still look to local newsrooms and trust them more than national outlets. And they do look to local journalists to help make sense of provincial events. But what happens when national policy is changing at an abusive rate? Readers need local journalists immediately explaining the consequence of those changes for local institutions, businesses and industries - and connecting the loss of federal dollars through the stories of individual citizens, farmers, doctors, and researchers.

As long as "national" stories are left to newsrooms headquartered in New York and DC, readers in Missouri or Oregon or Maine are not going to be fully informed about what cutting the alphabet soup of the "administrative state" means to their neighbors and their own quality of life. Only local newsrooms can do that work.