This Memo is about the news biz, not our special corner of it — the religion-news biz.

Here’s the theme: America’s alarming decline of journalists and journalistic outlets from coast to coast endangers a functioning democracy at a time of political polarization, and lack of trust in central institutions that includes a low point in public regard for the news media.

One major aspect of this dire situation is dramatized in the November 15 release of the fifth report by the State of Local News Project, commendably operated by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism with support from key media foundations.

“Many news organizations are hanging on by a thread,” this report says.

Much can be said about the failings of the old mainstream media, or of this or that news organization, or of a particular story — and should be said. Solid criticism is fair game.

But something very fundamental to the republic is occurring in the 21st Century.

Washington politics will always get lots of coverage, and likewise for national-level treatment of other subjects that newspaper executives value, such as business, entertainment and sports. The crisis comes with information at the state and local level. The Medill report, focused on local rather than state-level journalism problems, documents the following geography of “news deserts” where coverage is iffy or even non-existent.

Out of the nation’s 3,144 counties, 1,562 have only one surviving source for local news in any format, whether print, digital or broadcast, usually a weekly newspaper. Of these counties, 228 are on Medill’s Watch List, signifying “high risk” that the one existing outlet will die.

Then there are 204 counties without a single local journalistic shop. The worst situations tend to be in lower-income sectors of the South and Midwest.

Typically, newspapers have carried the burden for independent, professional local journalism, with minor involvement from radio and TV, plus more recently an important but spotty increase in locally-focused online news sites.

Here is a shocker: Note that Medill reports only 213 of some 1,100 public radio stations produce local journalism, while only a third of the 158 public TV stations have a reporter on staff.

American newspapers continue to disappear at an average rate of two-plus per week. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers, including 130 in the past year. Most deaths are of weeklies. That leaves an estimated 1,200 dailies and 4,790 weeklies that have survived to date, compared with 24,000 U.S. newspapers in the early 20th Century.

While losing nearly a third of its newspapers, Medill reports that since 2005 the nation has lost a ruinous 43,000 newspaper journalists, a decline by nearly two-thirds.

As everyone in the industry knows, the chief reason for disappearing news outlets and shrunken staffs is loss of advertising revenue and inability to find a replacement. Circulation is also down. One survey of 504 newspapers said their current total print plus digital circulation of 10.2 million represents a loss of nearly one million in just a year. (In 2005, print-only circulation for all audited newspapers topped 50 million.)

Lest the picture be unremittingly bleak, Medill reports that the U.S. has 164 news start-ups that are less than five years old. A sidebar profiles 17 of these that have shown progress in the necessary search for new, sustainable business models alongside quality journalism that others could emulate. The “bright spots” are both for-profit and non-profit, “legacy” print and digital, urban and rural.

The report notes that organizations like the News Media Alliance and America’s Newspapers are promoting federal and state governmental aid to improve matters. But any government role raises debatable issues, and passage of proposed legislation seems unlikely. One prospect is that the $45 billion for expanded broadband access under the Infrastructure Act will help digital news sites operate in remote areas.

To The Guy (who lives in a “news desert” with zilch non-partisan coverage of November’s red-hot local school board race), it appears that much of local news is destined to become a non-profit charity. That may raise questions about the ideological slant of journalists involved.

Then again, is non-profit status better for journalism than for-profit? A recent GetReligion piece about funding options for independent religious media posed intriguing questions. Money tends to come with strings attached, one way or the other.

Further resources:

* Rebuild Local News, a nonprofit coalition, advances public policies to counter “the collapse of local news.” President Steven Waldman is well-known on our beat as the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com.

* Press Forward is a coalition of 22 philanthropies that in September announced plans to spend $500 million or more the next five years to support local news coverage. Details here.

* The National Trust for Local News, launched in 2021, is a nonprofit to allow newspapers to survive under local ownership. After a Colorado pilot project, in August the trust purchased much of Maine newspapering, five dailies including the Portland Press Herald and 17 weeklies.

* Everyone will be watching the new combine of a major “legacy” daily, the Chicago Sun-Times, which was acquired last year by public radio station WBEZ. In 2019, the Salt Lake Tribune became the pioneer metro “legacy” daily in turning to a nonprofit strategy.

 * “News Hole: The Decline of Local Journalism and Political Engagement,” a 2021 work by Danny Hayes of George Washington University and Jennifer Lawless of the University of Virginia, is available for online purchase.

* “Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy” (Columbia Global Reports) by Margaret Sullivan is a 2020 evaluation of the situation.

* Consider this e-book forthcoming in January: “What Works in Community News: Media Start-ups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate” (Beacon) by Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy.

FIRST IMAGE: An uncredited graphic with this feature, “QUESTIONING FACEBOOK’S NEWS DESERT DESIGNATIONS IN VIRGINIA” at the Gong Blog at the Hodges Partnership website.