Study: Demise Of Local Newspapers Results In Political Polarization

The death of local newspapers increases political polarization and straight-ticket voting, according to the authors of a new study from researchers at MIT, Yale and French university Sciences Po.

The Hill reports the study found that as national news outlets win out over local papers people view politics through a national lens and split-ticket voting tends to decline.

“An often-unexplored consequence of the disappearance of local news is the fact that local politics will become increasingly determined by national matters,” said Charles Angelucci, one of the study's coauthors.

In turn, voters become more polarized, Angelucci argues, as political discourse is driven less by what happens locally.

A separate study released by the Pew Research Center on Friday found that one-third of large-circulation U.S. newspapers laid off staff last year.

And since 2004, the U.S. has lost 2,100 publications, or one-fourth of its newspapers, according to a 2020 report from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina.

Angelucci’s study examined how the growth of TV affected finances and content at 1,963 daily newspapers from 1944 to 1964 and matched those results against county-level election data on House, Senate and presidential races from roughly the same time.

The era was ideal for studying the decline in local news, the authors wrote, because TV had technical limitations, forcing it to report national news, while newspapers provided both local and national content.