Six Ways Local News Strengthens Democracy

As the U.S. midterm elections approach, Rebuild Local News reviewed a growing body of research on how local news encourages civic participation and strengthens democracy. The findings go beyond whether people turn out to vote. The studies reveal how the presence of local coverage can affect what people know about candidates and elected officials, how politicians respond to constituents, and how communities understand the electoral process itself.

The research points to six ways local news can matter for democratic processes:

• • Knowledge: Local coverage helps people learn about candidates and representatives.
  • Candidate competition: Newsroom decline can produce fewer candidates and more incumbent victories.
  • Voting behavior: Local information can reduce reliance on national party cues and encourage more candidate- and policy-based voting and result in less partisan polarization.
  • Accountability: Politicians respond differently when they face greater local scrutiny.
  • Turnout: Communities with stronger local news tend to have higher participation.
  • Election confidence: Local journalism can reduce the extent to which perceptions of election integrity are driven by partisan identity.

Taken together, these findings tell a clear story. When local news declines, the connection between voters and their government tends to weaken. Below, we look at evidence behind each finding.

Knowledge

Fundamentally, the decline in local news changes what voters are able to know about the people they are voting for. Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless, in “The Decline of Local News and Its Effects: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data,” tracked congressional news coverage alongside the political engagement of the same individuals over time. They found that declining local coverage was followed by lower political knowledge and participation. With voters less likely to seek out additional information about local officials or issues.

James Snyder and David Strömberg in their paper, “Press Coverage and Political Accountability” show that residents in areas with less local news are less likely to be able to name things they like or dislike about their representative. They also found that they were less likely to be able to place their representative on an ideological spectrum. They also had less knowledge about public officials.

More recent experimental work points in a similar direction. C. Daniel Myers and Taylor Hvidsten’s “Politics Through a National Lens” compares local and national newspaper coverage of Congress. It finds that people who consume local coverage become more knowledgeable about their local members of Congress compared to national news.

This matters as local news plays a key role in informing voters on local issues and politicians not just at election time but between elections.

Candidate Competition

The decline of local news also affects who runs for office in the first place.
Meghan Rubado and Jay Jennings’ “Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog: Newspaper Decline and Mayoral Elections in the United States” examined 246 mayoral elections across 11 California newspaper markets over two decades. Cities where newspapers sharply reduced their staffing later had fewer candidates, larger winning margins and more uncontested elections.

A related study by Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, “Do Newspapers Matter? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence From the Closure of The Cincinnati Post,” provides a particularly compelling natural experiment. After the Cincinnati Post closed, fewer candidates ran for municipal office, incumbents became more likely to win, voter turnout fell and campaign spending declined. Turnout remained depressed for several years.

This suggests that local journalism may matter not only because it informs voters, but because it changes the incentives for politicians and challengers alike. A challenger is more likely to run when someone can tell voters about the contest. An incumbent has more reason to worry about a challenger when somebody is paying attention.

Voting Behavior

Local information can reduce reliance on national party cues and encourage more candidate- and policy-based voting.

Daniel Moskowitz’s “Local News, Information, and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections” provides some of the clearest evidence. Using differences in television media markets, Moskowitz found that greater access to local television coverage increased knowledge about state-level candidates and made voters more likely to engage in split-ticket voting – where voters cast a ballot for candidates from different political parties. Voters with greater access to local news were about 4-5 percentage points more likely to split their gubernatorial vote from their presidential vote and 2-3 points more likely to do so in Senate races.

The evidence is just as clear when local news disappears. Joshua Darr, Matthew Hitt and Johanna Dunaway’s “Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior” examines communities where newspapers closed and finds a 1.9 percent decrease in split-ticket voting. In other words, after a newspaper closed, voters became more likely to vote for candidates of the same party across the ballot.

Together, the studies suggest a consistent pattern: local political information gives voters more opportunity to evaluate candidates independently of national party cues, while the loss of that information can make those cues matter more.

Experimental evidence points in a similar direction. C. Daniel Myers and Taylor Hvidsten’s “Politics Through a National Lens” also shows that local coverage of Congress reduces affective polarization, the distrust people feel toward the opposing party, compared with national coverage.

But the content of local news matters too. Sean Ewing’s “Frames of Nationalization: Conflict, Party Labels, and National Figures in Local News and its Impact on Affective Polarization” examines how local news is itself becoming more nationalized. His content analysis finds increasing use of conflict frames, partisan labels and references to national political figures. In an experiment, however, conflict framing in particular significantly increased affective polarization. Party labels and references to national figures alone had little measurable effect.

Accountability

Local news also matters long after the votes are counted. Politicians respond differently when they face greater local scrutiny.

Some of the foundational evidence comes from James Snyder and David Strömberg’s 2010 “Press Coverage and Political Accountability.” They found that when local newspapers gave less coverage of members of Congress, voters knew less about their representatives and representatives did less for their constituencies. Better geographic alignment between newspaper markets and congressional districts was associated with more coverage and stronger political accountability.

Newer research points in a similar direction. A 2025 study by Andrew C. W. Myers, “Press Coverage and Accountability in State Legislatures,” finds that state legislators receiving stronger local press coverage are more moderate, productive and responsive to constituents. The study covers partisan state legislatures across the country from 2000 to 2022.

Erik Peterson and Jongwoo Jeong’s “Making Issues Matter: Local Media and Policy-Based Evaluations of Politicians” finds that local news makes citizens more likely to evaluate members of Congress based on policy positions rather than party affiliation alone. Local coverage tells communities where their representatives actually stand, giving them something besides party labels to judge them on.

Megan Mullin and Katy Hansen’s “Local News and the Electoral Incentive to Invest in Infrastructure” shows another pathway. Local coverage of infrastructure failures makes elected officials’ more willing to support costly infrastructure investments, particularly in competitive electoral environments.

New research by Michael Auslen goes a step further. In “Local News and Policy Responsiveness in the U.S. States,” Auslen examines more than 40 million newspaper articles from 290 newspapers, matching local news coverage with state legislative votes and estimates of public opinion in individual legislative districts. He finds that state legislators are more responsive to their constituents’ preferences when they are more likely to receive local press coverage. The relationship appears across issues including abortion, gun laws, same-sex marriage, police body cameras and the minimum wage.

This suggests local journalism performs a function that is easy to overlook. It does not merely tell citizens what their representatives are doing. It can also help representatives understand what their constituents want.

Turnout

Likely as a result of these things, communities with stronger local news tend to have higher electoral participation.

One of the foundational studies is Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse Shapiro, and Michael Sinkinson’s “The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics.” Tracking newspaper openings and closings in U.S. communities from 1869 to 1928, they found that each additional newspaper increased presidential turnout by about 0.3 percentage points. The first newspaper in a town mattered most, raising turnout by about 1 percentage point, while later entrants added significantly less. The pattern is consistent with newspapers boosting turnout by adding readers, and it implies that reading a newspaper increases an individual’s probability of voting by four percentage points.

Other research points in the same direction. Jackie Filla and Martin Johnson’s “Local News Outlets and Political Participation” found that people in communities with a newspaper were substantially more likely to report that they “always vote.” The study focused on smaller communities around Los Angeles, where television news tended to concentrate on the central city.

Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless provide particularly useful evidence in “The Decline of Local News and Its Effects: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data.” Rather than taking a single snapshot, they tracked the same individuals over time, comparing changes in with changes in those individuals’ political engagement. They estimate a 1.7 percentage-point drop in the likelihood of voting associated with reductions in congressional campaign coverage.

More recent research finds similar patterns at the very local level. Melissa Boehning Libert’s 2025 dissertation, “The Future of Democracy is at Risk as Declining Local Media Erodes Voter Turnout,” examines newspaper losses across 45 Illinois counties and finds they are associated with measurable declines in municipal election turnout.

In sum, when local political information disappears, participation tends to decline.

Election Confidence

But beyond knowledge, partisanship, and turnout, the lack of local coverage can also shape whether voters trust the electoral process itself.

Murat Abus, Kexin Bai and Johanna Dunaway’s “Local News, Partisanship, and Perceptions about Election Administration” examines local news access alongside individual survey data and county-level election results from 2016 and 2020. They find that access to local news can moderate partisan differences in perceptions of election integrity. Where local journalism is weaker, voters appear more reliant on partisan cues.

Joshua Darr and Moriah Harman provide complementary evidence at the individual level in “Leaving a Legacy: Shifting Media Use and American Democratic Attitudes.” Using a three-wave panel survey, they find that people who switch away from local newspapers later report lower faith in U.S. elections.

Local journalists can report on things national political actors cannot observe directly. They can show how local election offices operate, whether polling places are functioning, how ballots are counted, and what actually happened in a particular county. In that role, local journalists can give voters an independent information source about how elections are run.

Step back from the individual studies, and a bigger idea emerges. The seven effects aren’t separate; they are connected.

Local journalism gives citizens information about candidates and government. That information shapes whether they vote, how they judge candidates, and how much they rely on party cues. Those choices affect how competitive elections are and how closely officials answer to voters. The information also flows the other way, helping politicians understand what their constituents want.

That changes how we should think about the local news crisis. The question isn’t simply whether Americans have enough news. It is whether they have the kind of information that lets them hold political institutions and candidates accountable. Reporting on the people and offices that voters can actually see and influence does that. Coverage that imitates the nationalized fight does not, and may leave communities more divided.

The research cannot settle every question, but it points in the same direction. Where local news endures, voters know who they are choosing, and officials know who they answer to.

*Editorial note: This summary draws on research featured on the Local News Research Hub. Explore the Hub and let us know if any studies should be added.