and tim snyder before them. good local journalism encourages good civics. yeah, that s right. there s actually a pretty big body of research at this point that shows that when a local newspaper vanishes from a community, voter turnout drops, polarization increases, misinformation proliferates. there s even some evidence that city budgets will balloon because there s less accountability for the dysfunction and corruption that can happen in local government. so what really happens is that these local newspapers not only provide an important check on people in power, they also kind of bind communities together. when you lose them, you make it easier for demagogues and other kind of divisive figures to come in and pull people apart for their own gain. some of these big newspapers we were just talking about, they re not gone. they re still there. they still publish. they might be thinner than they