Ann Telnaes: Why I'm quitting the Washington Post

[jayschool2013]

39. If you've canceled your Washington Post subscription

and want to support journalism, may I politely suggest that your first dollar might go to your local news site, or a student-led news site at a local college or university.

National news is great, but there's also this warning from the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University:

In news deserts, Trump won in a landslide
But what does this election-result correlation mean?

by Paul Farhi and John Volk | volk_maps

Donald Trump won the 2024 election with one of the smallest popular-vote margins in U.S. history, but in news deserts – counties lacking a professional source of local news – it was an avalanche. Trump won 91% percent of these counties over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, according to an analysis of voting data by Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project.

While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points, the analysis shows.

The findings are based on results from 193 of the 206 counties Medill has identified as news deserts, in states where county-level election results are currently available. The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative in October, documented the continuing decline of local news across the country, as measured by the number of newspapers, circulation, frequency of publication, employment and readership.

The report found that the highest concentration of counties with limited access to local news were in solidly “red” states, such as Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana and Mississippi.