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Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy
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About This Book
Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: how democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the US. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008. One in three Brazilians lives in news deserts. The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. This is not the much-discussed fake-news problem--it's the separate problem of a critical shortage of real news. America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage, and surveys a range of new efforts to keep local news alive--from non-profit digital sites to an effort modeled on the Peace Corps. No nostalgic paean to the roar of rumbling presses, Ghosting the News instead sounds a loud alarm, alerting citizens to a growing crisis in local news that has already done serious damage.
Reviews
"Sullivan is the perfect person to diagnose the problem ..."
"the author's goal isn't to lament the good old days of once-mighty businesses."
"She's not the first to explore this crisis, but her book succeeds in its aim of delivering an urgent message in a concise way ..."
"Sullivan's book had been published 10 or 20 years ago, I suspect she would have found much more room to discuss the need for diversity in the newsroom ..."
"a brisk and pointed tribute to painstaking, ordinary and valuable work ..."
"But Sullivan—a media columnist at The Washington Post, a former public editor at The New York Times, and a longtime chief editor of The Buffalo News—is also offering an opportunity: to recalibrate our vision ..."
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