Residents of Manitou Springs can consider themselves lucky. Not every town has responded so swiftly — or at all — when a local newspaper has gone out of business.
Colorado Media Project, an organization advocating for a healthier local news and information ecosystem where I help conduct research, has identified 52 newspapers that have closed across our state in the past 20 years. About 20 of those disappeared in the past five years alone.
These are newspapers that had served towns on the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope for years, and are no more.
In plenty of those places, including closer to home in Fountain or Southeast Colorado Springs, no one yet has stepped up to try and revive them. They’ve faded as reliable chroniclers of local news. In that gap, people might turn elsewhere — to Facebook perhaps, or to the chatter on Nextdoor.
Fewer people vote.
In Manitou Springs, when a group of locals banded together to bring back the Bulletin as a nonprofit newspaper, the move represented a positive development amid those earlier sorry statistics. Local ownership of local news is important, particularly when those who own it view local news as a public good.
Robust local news is also good for democracy.
An organization called the Democracy Fund has been tracking research that bolsters that claim for the past five years, rounding up studies, reports and academic papers that illuminate some notable findings.
Here are just a few: When a reliable local newspaper goes out of business, we’ve seen that civic participation can drop. Fewer candidates run for local office. Fewer people vote in down ballot races. Municipal bond rates can rise. Pollution and corporate malfeasance can go up.
One study showed that when a local newspaper’s opinion page only focused on local issues, polarization slowed among readers.
Unfortunately, a trend of shuttering local newspapers isn’t likely to reverse any time soon.
A market failure and a variety of reasons have led to growing “news deserts” and “ghost papers.” The traditional advertising business model has collapsed as tech companies hoover up revenue online. Hedge funds have gotten into newspaper ownership and gutted newsrooms, including here in Colorado.
Just a few years ago, the Colorado Media Project estimated that at least 44 newspapers in our state are owned by publishers who are nearing retirement age or looking to exit the business.
What happens to those papers is an important question to consider.
Let’s all hope what has played out here is a positive signal that a community can come together to support local news.
Perhaps one day, others elsewhere might look to it as a model.
Corey Hutchins is the co-director of the Colorado College Journalism Institute. His weekly newsletter about Colorado’s local news scene, “Inside the News in Colorado,” is underwritten by Colorado Media Project and others. Find it at ColoradoMedia.substack.com.
