“The local news crisis in the US is deepening,” according to the latest edition of the State of Local News in 2023, published by Northwestern University’s Medill School.
The Press Gazette reports half of counties in America have either one news outlet or none at all, finds the 2023 report, as many publishers are still struggling to find a model for local news in the digital era.
Some local publishers have hit upon a model, however, bucking the decline and finding success through digital subscriptions.
This second and updated list of paid digital subscriber counts at local news publishers reveals that there is a small but sizeable group of independent titles growing their paid subscriber base.
Since large publishing groups such as Gannett, Hearst and Lee Enterprises tend to reveal their digital subscriber numbers at a publisher-wide level only, once again Press Gazette’s list focuses on independent, local titles.
Gannett, publisher of USA Today as well as some 100 local titles, saw paid digital-only subscribers increase just under 1% in the third quarter of 2023 after falling slightly in the first two quarters. Hearst’s newspapers unit, which publishes titles including The Houston Chronicle and The San Francisco Chronicle, was reported to have around 370,000 digital subscribers as of the beginning of 2023.
The Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe again top our list of independent local titles with over 800,000 digital subscribers between them. Since the first version of this story appeared in September 2022, the LA Times has upped its digital subscriber count by 10% to 550,000, while the Boston Globe’s count is up 6% to just over 260,000.
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