With newspaper closings rising, TV newsrooms consolidating, and local creators scarce, a sweeping new report sketches local news as thinning out in the places where it may be needed the most. Will hometown radio and its digital products be there to fill the gaps?
The 2026 State of Local News report from the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University counts 238 U.S. counties as “news deserts.” That is up 26 from last year and the largest single-year jump in Medill’s research.
In the past year, 170 newspapers closed or merged, nearly three a week, and nearly 47 million Americans live with limited or no access to local news.
DIGITAL VOID
Digital has not filled the space. Of roughly 1,900 digital-only local news sites, just 9% sit in rural counties, and fewer than 50 US counties lack a newspaper but have a digital or broadcast alternative. Medill’s September survey in Chicago found close to half of younger consumers get local news from content creators daily, yet fewer than 10% of nearly 1,500 creators the researchers examined cover their own communities, and only two-thirds of those do original reporting. In a separate Medill survey of news desert counties, 42% of respondents said they get news from social media at least once a day.
Television is contracting too. The report identifies 678 commercial local TV newsrooms, more than 95% of them in metropolitan counties, and says the 10 largest owners control nearly 75%. The number of stations producing local news, total hours of local TV news, and local TV news employment all fell in 2026, according to the RTDNA and Newhouse School Annual News Survey. If Nexstar’s planned $6.2 billion Tegna acquisition closes, 33 of Tegna’s 48 newsrooms would overlap markets already served by Nexstar, the report says.
Public broadcasting is the one broadcast category the report says has held up. It describes public stations as an important source for rural communities and says the wave of closures predicted after Congress rescinded federal funding has not materialized, thanks to private giving and the Public Media Bridge Fund, which has raised more than $86 million as of September. In May, NPR said it was cutting newsroom jobs to close an $8 million gap while merging its National and General Assignments desks to focus on deep dives, natural disasters, and news deserts. In September, NPR directed a $1 million restricted gift to the Fund.
Commercial radio already operates in the places the report describes.
Some, like the NAB, say whether stations can invest in more of that work is a policy question. In August, NAB Radio Board Chair and Beasley Media Group General Counsel Chris Ornelas argued that ownership modernization would free resources for local reporting and digital products.
In the October 2026 edition of the Radio INK magazine, Wyatt Cox, who has been the entire staff of KELY-AM in Ely, Nev., for years, shares how he’s handling news, weather, agricultural reports, and sales calls in a town four hours from Salt Lake City, three from Las Vegas, and four from Reno. Cox has covered a wildfire nine miles south of town and flash floods the nearest National Weather Service radar cannot see.
