The Providence Journal
Over the past year, local journalism has been more important — and more needed — than ever. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the reignited social justice movement to the explosive 2020 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath, people have been turning to news publishers, day in and day out, to keep them up to date on how the changes happening around the world affect their daily lives. However, while news has been more in-demand than at any time in recent history, news publishers have been struggling more than ever.
Companies like Facebook and Google routinely profit off of the content produced by news publishers. The duopoly earns 70 percent or more of every advertising dollar spent online, leaving publishers with literal pennies to help pay for news. That imbalance is part of why the news industry has lost more than 28,000 jobs since 2008, and why 1,800 communities have lost their local newspapers since 2004. In Rhode Island, newspaper circulation has declined by 54 percent since 2004.