Newspapers in the United States closed at the rate of more than two per week during 2023, but a burst of activity among digital entrepreneurs illustrated some tiny shoots of growth in what has become a desert-like climate for local news.

A total of 127 newspapers closed last year, while the 81 digital sites gained was the most in any year since the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University began measuring that activity in 2018, and possibly the most ever.

“It shows that there are some entrepreneurs and innovators out there,” said Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative.

One caution: digital news is still an area with a lot of churn. There were actually 212 new sites that started last year, including 30 that were former newspapers that converted to digital only, while 131 closed, making for the net gain of 81.

THE BIG PICTURE FOR LOCAL NEWS REMAINS TOUGH

The big picture also remains ominous, as few of the factors that have led to the decimation of the local news industry have really changed. Advertisers and readers are still slipping away. More than 3,200 newspapers have closed since 2005, leaving roughly 5,600 remaining, Medill said. Nearly 2,000 newsroom jobs were lost in the last year alone.

“The local news crisis is snowballing,” Franklin said. “We see it in the expansion of news deserts, the unrelenting pace of closures and the loss of newspaper jobs.”

The list includes the Hinton Times in northwest Iowa, which closed after 28 years when its owners retired; the Northland Press outside of Brainerd, Minn., which ended after the death of its publisher; and the Tioga Tribune in North Dakota, whose editor left town.

Of the new digital sites, some 90 percent are located in metropolitan areas, servicing communities that had been seeing less coverage because of job losses at larger news outlets. In the Chicago area where Northwestern is located, Block Club Chicago offers hyper-local coverage to nearly two dozen neighborhoods, The TRiiBE is geared to young, professional Black residents and the Cicero Independiente reaches Latino consumers.

STILL A NEED FOR NEWS IN RURAL AREAS

While that’s good news for those communities, there’s still an urgent need for news in rural areas, the report said. Using a metric that takes into account poverty and areas with only one news outlet, Medill placed 279 counties on its “watch list” of those at risk of losing local news altogether. That’s up 22 percent from the previous year.

Medill also noticed an increased pace in newspapers changing ownership — 258 in 2023 compared to 180 the year before. A number of smaller companies are more active in acquiring papers, as opposed to a large chain like Gannett, leading to growth in companies like the Carpenter Media Group in Farmville, Virginia.

More of the digital start-ups that have opened in the past few years are nonprofit instead of profit businesses, said Zach Metzger, director of the Medill State of Local News Project. That eliminates the expense of printing and distributing newspapers, while offering greater flexibility in funding sources, he said.