Circulation of newspapers has been declining since the late 19th century. The decline of local printed newspapers can be due to high production costs, declining readership, or decreased advertising revenue, according to Close Up Washington DC.
“Newspapers historically have made the bulk of their money from advertisements, since that’s where people went to find out where to buy things, said Bailey Dick, a media historian and assistant professor at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). “Now, with online shopping and even things like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, people aren’t turning to newspaper ads to find stuff, so it decreases in value, meaning that newspapers can’t use ads as their main source of income.”
Recently, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced that it will cease operations in May. This publication has been running since 1786 and has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes. It was operated by a family-owned company, Block Communications, which stated that it lost over $350 million over the past 20 years while publishing the paper.
Since 2005, the United States (U.S.) has lost roughly 3,200 newspapers, with a rate of two per week, according to a 2024 report conducted by Zach Metzger at the Local News Initiative. With local newspapers closing their printing doors, readers have to find another way to get their news from a reliable source.
“Observers of governments and politics throughout history have noted that it is essential for citizens in a democracy to have access to trusted news sources,” said Adam Berger, an EBSCO Author with a PhD in social anthropology from the University of St. Andrews.
Certain places around the U.S. are considered news deserts. News deserts are communities that have diminished access to local news and information. With the decline in printed papers and media switching to primarily online, it could add more news deserts to the map.
“Smaller, local newsrooms [are] being bought up by massive corporations and being wrung dry to earn the corporations as much money as possible,” Dick said. “That means fewer reporters, less ability to directly engage with their audiences and papers not being able to stay afloat. That leads to news deserts, especially in smaller, more rural communities like ours here in BG,”
Readers are encouraged not to just go with what they might see on social media. In 2024, 38.2% of U.S. social media users unknowingly shared fake news, according to Redline Digital, an Australian internet marketing service. In 2025, Pew Research found that 1-in-5 Americans get news on TikTok.
“The more of something you consume, the more the algorithms feed you that content. And those algorithms have the ability to ‘trap’ you in digital echo chambers,” Dick said.
TikTok is known for its algorithm that learns from the videos you interact with to tailor your For You Page (FYP). So when users are constantly searching for news, it will bring up what it finds, even without knowing that some videos or information may be wrong/fake.
With the increase in smartphone users, many newspapers have made online websites and social media accounts for their news to be put out on the web. The New York Times (NYT), between the second quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2025, gained over 2.6 million total digital-only subscribers. The NYT is one of the online news sites that has a “soft paywall,” meaning users have limited access without having a subscription. Some news sites require a subscription to access articles; however, not all mainstream sites do this.
Some Americans get their news from an AI chatbot, with 1-in-10 saying that they get news often or sometimes from an AI, according to a 2025 study by Pew Research. In another study, Pew Research found that roughly half of U.S. adults believe that AI will have a negative impact on the news people get over the next 20 years.
“Journalism student or not, learning to critically evaluate information, either online or in print, is so important,” Dick said. “Understanding where information is coming from, whether it contains bias and what it intends for you to do are really important skills for anyone to have right now.”
