Local media decline poses grave danger to our democracy

The number of local reporters has been in steady decline over the past ten years, according to data from the Pew Research Center. As the Washington Postpoints out:

As the journalism industry has become more constricted over the past decade, local news organizations have been hit the hardest. This chart, courtesy of a 2014 study of statehouse reporting by the Pew Research Center, tells the depressing tale.

This trend was highlighted during a recent NPR interview, in which long-time CBS anchorman Bob Schieffer was asked to identify the gravest threat to the future of journalism. He warned that this lack of local reporters would result in increased corruption:

Unless some entity comes along and does what local newspapers have been doing all these years, we're gonna have corruption at a level we've never experienced. . . Because there's nobody -- so many papers now can't afford to have a beat reporter. For example, many papers don't have a city hall reporter anymore. They send somebody to cover the city council meetings, but to cover city hall, you have to be there every day and you have to know the overall story, not just report whatever happens on a particular day.

Bob Schieffer is right. The decline of local media is totally terrible (Washington Post, May 27, 2015)

America’s Shifting Statehouse Press (Pew Research Center, July 10, 2014)