Charting the years-long decline of local news reporting

Local news has become a tough sell, especially online. It’s not that people aren’t interested in their communities -- local news usually ranks as the top priority in surveys -- it’s that the economics of the digital age work strongly against reporting about schools, cops and the folks down the street. In drawing readers and viewers from a relatively small pond, local news outlets struggle to attract enough traffic to generate ad dollars sufficient to support the cost of gathering the news in the first place. Conversely, sites that report and comment on national and international events draw from a worldwide audience, making it relatively easier to aggregate a large audience and the ad dollars that come with it. One result: A steady, years-long decline in local-news reporting, as newspapers -- the largest source of local news -- have gradually cut back their reporting staffs. A second upshot: The biggest investments in digital news have gone toward start-up ventures that target broad and borderless audiences, bypassing community news altogether.