A news desert is a county, not a feeling. Medill's State of Local News project counted 213 U.S. counties with no local news source at all in its October 2025 report, up from 206 the year before. The unit of measurement is the county, and that single choice shapes what the number can and cannot tell you.
What does the news desert count actually measure?
It measures the presence of news outlets against county boundaries. In the October 2025 Medill report, 213 counties had no local news source, and another 1,524 had only one, leaving roughly 50 million Americans with limited access to local news.
Closures are counted the same way. Medill recorded 136 newspaper closures in 2025, up from 130 in 2024 — more than two a week — against more than 300 local news startups launched over the previous five years, about 80 percent of them digital-only.
Who is closing matters as much as how many. Zach Metzger, who directs the State of Local News Project, said that "unlike in previous years, however, the majority of papers shutting down now are smaller, family-owned enterprises." That is a different failure pattern from the chain consolidation that drove earlier waves.
Why does a county-level map miss real coverage?
Because counties are administrative units, not information markets, and researchers have never fully agreed on what counts as an outlet. Sara Rafsky documented that disagreement for the Columbia Journalism Review in September 2020: scholars measuring the same phenomenon were working from materially different definitions.
The gaps are specific. Aaron Foley of the Black Media Initiative told CJR that conventional definitions overlook Black media outlets that are understaffed but still serving their communities.
Quality is the harder gap. Penny Abernathy, whose research established the field, noted in the same piece that automated counting cannot tell the difference between "a five-inch story saying there will be a city council meeting, and one where someone actually attended [the meeting] and talks in depth" about it.
| What the county count registers | What it does not settle |
|---|---|
| Whether any qualifying outlet exists in a county | Whether anyone attends the council or school board meeting |
| Closures and launches, year over year | Whether a launch replaces the beat a closure ended |
| Population in counties with none or one source | Coverage crossing county lines, in either direction |
Treat this much as settled: the count is a proxy for supply, not a measure of coverage quality. Whether a specific outlet belongs in the tally is still a judgment call, and careful researchers make it differently.
What do people in those counties actually do for local information?
They substitute. A Medill Local News Initiative survey fielded by Qualtrics from July 22 to August 8, 2025, polling 1,000 respondents split evenly between residents of 206 news desert counties and residents of news-rich areas, found 51 percent of desert residents relying on non-journalistic sources: social media groups, influencers, friends and family.
Forty-two percent used social media news groups daily, 41 percent watched local TV news daily, and 30 percent followed influencers. Medill published the findings on February 10, 2026.
The uncomfortable result is that the deprivation is not felt. Ninety percent of news desert residents said getting reliable local news was somewhat or very easy, against 94 percent in news-rich areas. Tim Franklin, the Medill professor who leads the project, framed the substitution plainly: "Instead of having local journalists...you have unvetted information bouncing around Facebook."
National attention data points the same way. Pew Research Center's local news fact sheet records 21 percent of U.S. adults following local news very closely in 2025, down from 37 percent in 2016, and 12 percent paying for any local news in the past year. Half of those who do not pay say they can find plenty of it free.
How do funding shocks move the map faster than closures do?
They cut reporting capacity inside counties the map still records as covered. Federal support for public broadcasting, routed for decades through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ended with legislation signed in July 2025, and CPB has since dissolved. That funder averaged 8 to 10 percent of public radio station budgets.
The consequences landed locally. NPR's July 2026 accounting reported that South Dakota Public Broadcasting laid off seven of its eleven journalists and canceled its daily show In the Moment, while WNIN in Evansville, Indiana cut 20 percent of its staff after losing $1.5 million in combined state and federal money. A tally by the newsletter SemiPublic put public media layoffs above 500.
Audiences filled part of the hole: South Dakota Public Broadcasting raised a record $8 million, and in March 2026 NPR and co-plaintiffs including KSUT won their suit over the cuts. None of it shows up in a desert count, because the stations are still on the air, and a surge in member giving does not re-hire a reporter who has already left.
How should you use the number in a story?
Use it as a starting coordinate, not a conclusion. Five steps keep the figure honest in print, and keep communities losing coverage from reading as a cautionary spectacle rather than a beat.
- Name the source and the year in the sentence. "Medill's State of Local News, October 2025" is checkable; "studies show" is not, and the count is revised annually.
- Say which unit you mean. A county with one surviving outlet is not a news desert under Medill's definition, however thin its coverage feels locally.
- Check the outlet before you write it off. Read a month of its output and find out whether anyone from it attends the county commission.
- Ask what filled the gap, then name it. In desert counties the answer is usually a Facebook group, a TV signal from a neighboring market, or word of mouth.
- Keep supply and quality in separate sentences. Eighty percent of the startups Medill counted are digital-only, which is not the same thing as a restored statehouse or courthouse beat.
Frequently asked questions
How many U.S. counties are news deserts right now?
Medill counted 213 in its October 2025 report, up from 206 in 2024, with another 1,524 counties served by a single source. The figure is revised every year, so cite the report edition rather than presenting the number as a standing fact.
Does a county with one newspaper still have real coverage?
The count cannot answer that. Abernathy's point to CJR was that a meeting notice and an attended meeting register identically in automated tallies. Before describing a county as covered, check whether the surviving outlet still produces original accountability reporting.
Are the new startups replacing the papers that closed?
Not one for one. Medill counted more than 300 launches over five years against 136 closures in 2025 alone, and about 80 percent of those startups are digital-only. Whether a launch restores a specific beat is a question the aggregate cannot settle.
Do residents of news deserts say they notice?
Mostly not. In Medill's 2025 survey, 90 percent of news desert residents called reliable local news somewhat or very easy to get, close to the 94 percent in news-rich areas. Perceived access and actual journalistic supply are measuring different things.
For a related media news perspective, read What Actually Counts as a "News Desert".
For more context, read What the Local News Desert Numbers Actually Show.