The state of rural journalism in the United States is parlous. Just how parlous is hard to tell.

Journalism in rural America comprises mainly newspapers. Few rural radio stations cover local news in the way that newspapers do, and the few TV stations that can be classified as rural cover vast areas and are not reliable, regular sources of news for any particular locality. Online rural news outlets are scant, though a few online news organizations that serve particular states make an effort to cover rural news that has a local impact.

More than 60% of U.S. counties (1,958 of 3,151) are outside metropolitan areas, the broadest definition of “rural,” and many other counties just inside the boundaries of metro areas are primarily rural as defined by their census tracts but are classified as metro because of commuting patterns.

Very few of these rural counties do not have a newspaper or other news outlet, according to the county-by-county data maintained by the Medill School at Northwestern University. Most that lack a news outlet are sparsely populated rural counties.

The Medill database is the handiest metric available, and it is valuable if you want to know the number and names of newspapers. However, it gives few clues about the quality of journalism being offered to rural Americans, or how many of them are actually reading those papers or other news sources.

The Medill database was started by now-retired Penny Abernathy, a former news-media executive who was a Knight Foundation chair at the University of North Carolina. She popularized the term “news deserts,” which she defined as “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”

In recent years, however, the term “news deserts” has often been misconstrued to include U.S. counties that have only one newspaper. Most counties have one paper, and in many of them it’s been a long time since they’ve had more than one. Many of those counties do not fit Abernathy’s definition, by my reckoning, because they do a good job of covering local news.

These newspapers cover meetings of public boards, keep up with local business activity, follow local schools, sports and other topics of interest to the communities in their market areas – which are most often defined by county lines, because government and school coverage is the heart of their journalism and in-county print circulation gets a discounted postal rate.

Beyond my armchair reckoning, which is based on more than 20 years of following rural newspapers, there is no easy way to tell just how many rural counties fit Penny Abernathy’s definition of “news desert.” There is no generally accepted metric for the quality of journalism. Developing such a metric would be useful for news outlets, their audiences and their potential audiences, but let’s reserve that for the end of this treatise.

The other major metric for news outlets is audience. The circulation of daily newspapers and the viewership of TV stations is well tracked, but that is not the case with rural news outlets.

Newspapers must publish an annual report of their circulation, management and ownership, but the closest thing to a central repository for those reports is the U.S. Postal Service, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have a central repository but a far-flung collection of post offices and regional offices. When I asked for the annual reports for the approximately 600 newspapers in Texas, the Postal Service coughed them up after a few weeks, but when I asked for the reports from certain counties in certain regions of Appalachia, the Service said I would need to specify the names of the newspapers – even though the county names are included on USPS Form 3526, Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation. I’m working with the Postal Service to get the information.

What we do know about rural newspapers is that their circulation and household penetration – the percentage of households in a market area that regularly receive the newspaper – is declining, but not as much as those of metropolitan newspapers.

For the last 15 years, I have conducted surveys of newspaper circulation and penetration in Kentucky, one of the more rural states. Few national reports, including Abernathy’s original research and updated versions of her work with Northwestern University’s State of Local News Report, include circulation data as part of their analysis of the health of news organizations. But that information helps to provide insight into a news organization’s reach (penetration) in its community and whether the circulation is increasing or decreasing for print and digital-only subscriptions. 

In the past 15 years, the average household penetration of rural weekly newspapers in Kentucky has dropped from just over 40 percent to just under 30 percent. (Those calculations are based on the number of housing units divided into the total of in-county paid mail circulation and the paid circulation outside the mail. The latter type of circulation is generally single-copy sales, the vast majority of which occur in newspapers’ home counties. These numbers are unaudited but filed under penalty of perjury.)

How much household penetration is enough for a newspaper to survive? Jeremy Gulban owns CherryRoad Media, which operates 92 community newspapers and has been on a buying spree in the past few years. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that “Gulban needs between 15% and 20% of households in his communities to subscribe to be economically viable. Across the company, about 8% of households subscribe now, but that ranges from 2% to 69%, depending on the paper.” 

Those subscriptions can be for the printed newspaper or access to the online edition, but few rural newspapers have more than a handful of online-only subscribers. As print subscriptions continue to decline for most newspapers, the number of digital subscribers is growing slowly, if at all. In Kentucky, for example, one-third of newspapers had 25 or fewer digital subscribers in 2024; most of those papers are in rural areas. Most rural papers still receive the majority of their revenue from print, especially print advertising. Larger tech companies, including Google and Meta, have a dominant hold on online advertising, and local news organizations have trouble competing on price and reach. 

Along with the digital changes and competition from larger tech companies, other threats to rural newspapers include frequent postal rate increases and less reliable delivery by the postal service, a decline in local economies and the continued growth of bedroom communities near urban areas. 

All of these changes to the business results for newspapers have led to fewer pages in print editions, a reduction in the number of journalists, editors who now oversee multiple newspapers and less coverage overall. The problem is even more pronounced at chain-owned papers than those with local owners. 

There are bright spots. The fact that more than 5,500 newspapers continue to operate each week in the United States shows that print is not dead, even if the business model is suffering. And news organizations that offer strong coverage in print and online attract a dedicated local audience.

Nonprofit journalism organizations – established by local owners or that are part of a larger group – have emerged as another option for the news business. And some larger news organizations have established partnerships with rural news organizations to tackle investigative stories in rural areas. The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, for example, has partnered with more than 15 community news organizations in South Carolina with a goal to “investigate corruption, abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer dollars.” 

Several online outlets, including Mountain State Spotlight and States Newsroom, also do some rural coverage as part of their overall mission. And The Daily Yonder provides rural stories for use by news organizations across the country, though the stories are more regional or national in scope. 

The struggles of local news organizations and concerns about news deserts and “ghost newspapers” – newspapers that are still in business but provide little local news – have attracted national attention from researchers, funders and others – though often at the 30,000-foot-level. It’s clear that more research is needed on the current state of journalism and news organizations in rural areas. The available research mostly involves the number of news outlets in each county in the United States (example: Medill’s reports), mostly in effort to determine where news deserts exist. 

But if we really want to answer that question, and get a real handle on the state of rural journalism in the U.S., we need to dig deeper. Additional research should focus more on the strength and quality of existing news outlets. Are they covering the news the community wants and needs, or are they mostly “ghost” news outlets? Do they reach a large enough audience to have an impact in the community and remain in business for the foreseeable future?  

A qualitative analysis of the effectiveness of a rural news organization could include a rubric based on the following standards. These are written with print in mind but can be adapted to online publications.

How many news-editorial employees does the newspaper have per 1,000 circulation? One longtime rule of thumb for adequacy is 1 newsroom employee per 1,000 subscribers. At many rural weeklies, employees perform more than one type of function, so the share of news effort may be needed.

What percentage of the meetings of public-agency boards in the news outlet’s market area does it cover? This will require research to determine what public boards exist and when they meet, and judgment about which boards are most important. Monthly meetings of water district boards, for example, are not likely to be worth the investment of regular reportorial time. That leads to this question:

What percentage of the meetings of the most important public-agency boards in the news outlet’s market area does it cover?

Does the news outlet cover public agencies not just by attending meetings, but by doing enterprise stories about agency activities?

Does it conduct advance reporting of public-agency meetings, examining issues to be discussed? Does it publish agendas of public-agency boards in advance?

If a public agency holds a closed session, does the news outlet try to discover what was discussed? Initial research on this would necessarily be limited to a random sample.

What public records does the newspaper publish as news? This does not include public-notice advertising, but includes such news as police and jail logs, court actions, marriages, bankruptcies, civil suits, restaurant inspections and property transfers (hopefully with the amount of the transaction in addition to the size and location).

Does the newspaper have a regular opinion page? This doesn’t have to be in every edition to be regular; some papers that print two or three times a week have one or two opinion pages per week.

Does the newspaper have a regular editorial voice? This can be columns by the publisher or editor, which appear to be the most common type of editorial voice in rural newspapers, or traditional editorials that are presented as the opinion of the paper rather than an individual.

How many letters to the editor does the newspaper publish in an average month? Letters are a useful barometer for the level of discussion of issues in the newspaper, and often reflect the paper’s effectiveness in helping set the public agenda for the community.

Does the newspaper have a physical office in the community it serves? Is it open to the public without need for an appointment? A specific metric that makes sense to us is that a newspaper needs to have an office that is open at least 24 hours per week to be convenient to the public and properly engage with it. For weekly newspapers, most of those hours might be in the first half of the week.

These qualitative measurements can provide a better understanding of where rural news organizations are succeeding and where they’re failing. They can be used by newspapers and media companies to evaluate their journalism, or by community members to hold news outlets accountable.

Research has shown that when a community becomes a news desert, it leads to all sorts of problems – more public corruption, less transparency, fewer people voting or running for office, and even higher costs for borrowing. 

Thus, it’s essential that we find ways to sustain local journalism, especially in rural areas. It’s crucial for the health of communities and for local democracy.

Benjy Hamm is associate professor of journalism and director of the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky. Al Cross is UK professor emeritus of journalism and former Institute director.