The state of ignorance in America is shockingly rampant and growing daily
It begins in the critical setting of schools and in health care
What happens in class is becoming a mystery. Source: U.S. Library of Congress
Is the neighborhood school succeeding in teaching our kids? Is access to health care keeping people well? Are we safe from a planet that is warming at an alarming rate? Is crime out of control?
Disparate questions but a new shocking report issued last week says there is a link to all these questions, and it is caused by the lack of local news reporting in America.
The 2026 Local Journalism Index, compiled by two journalism organizations, analyzed 4.2 million stories published in the first three months of the year. They found that no articles about education mentioning a community by name could be found in 77 percent of the counties that were reviewed.
Similar percentages for the lack of health coverage were 76 percent, environment 77 percent, and transportation 82 percent. In contrast both sports and crime reporting appeared to be disproportionately high in comparison to those and other subjects.
The Index was compiled by Muck Rack, a media analysis organization, and Rebuild Local News, a coalition of partners advocating for increased journalism coverage. So far the index has received almost no news coverage.
This is the second year for the report which focuses on how great the decline in news reporting has been going back to 2002. It compiles what it calls a Local Journalist Equivalent which in the latest 2026 report means that for every 100,000 residents the average number of local reporters would be 7.8. In 2002 the local journalist equivalent at was 40 per 100,000 residents.
The portrait of local journalism displayed by this report is dismal and discouraging. While national and international coverage remains robust, it appears that in three out of four communities in this nation we learn more about the score of a local sports team than students’ test scores in the public schools.
The authors do admit that the methodology in the report is rough at times, so there is some room for remaining wary. But even if the numbers are off somewhat, that would only tone down findings that right now are stark and alarming.
The database began with 4.2 million articles from January to March in slightly more than 3,000 counties nationally. Stories were searched to make sure they clearly mentioned the name of the community, insuring they were local, as well as the subject covered.
What subject received the most coverage? Sports, at 13.1 percent, followed by crime at 12 percent. Health stories only appeared in 2 percent of all stories, education 1.8 percent and environment 1.7 percent.
The authors also found a relationship between the number of local reporters in a news organization in comparison to the level of coverage of a particular topic. For instance, if a news organization had a low number of reporters, three-quarters of those news sites surveyed produced no education or health stories at all. About half of those news organizations that had a higher number of reporters did cover those topics.
Since we’re talking numbers here, let’s stick with them for a moment as opposed to the impact on a fifth grader in a classroom or a mom being treated at the local hospital for cancer.
The country in 2024, the last year figures were available, spent $981.51 billion on K-12 public education. Just the per pupil cost ranged from $31,629 in the District of Columbia to $10,247 in Idaho.
Health care in the U.S., also in 2024, was $5.3 trillion. Again, to make this local, per capita health care ranged from $7,522 in Utah to $14,007 in New York.
A doctor treats a sick child in Missouri. Source: U.S. Library of Congress
It’s easy to understand why news organizations do not cover schools or medicine – it’s expensive. It takes specialized reporters time to learn a beat, to get to know the key sources, and to attend the right meetings. These subjects also may not get the same number of clicks, the magic number in online journalism that tracks audience attention, as do crime and sports.
The report’s authors cautioned that the filters excluded any article that did not mention the name of a town, only included stories that had been online, and if a paywall was in place only the first 200 words were reviewed. Plus, A.I. played a key role in the analysis, which may be a plus or a minus depending on what and how it was deployed.
This report also builds on others that continue to paint a dire future.
Last year’s report had a higher Local Journalist Equivalent index number, 8.2 compared to 7.8 this year. Seventy percent of all U.S. counties now reside below the national index average. That’s 209 million people.
The five states with the highest indexes are all rural, Vermont, 19.1; North Dakota, 17.1; Maine, 15.2; South Dakota, 15; and Wyoming, 14.2. The lowest five are significantly larger in population, Connecticut, 5.5; Texas, 5.5; Delaware, 5.4; New Jersey, 5.3; and Nevada, 5.2.
The research is based on a database with 52,000 news organizations. A journalist is defined as working for television, radio, digital only, newspaper, podcaster, Substacker, both full and part-time, and they publish online.
Both organizations issued press releases last Thursday. So far the only news that I have seen was a brief article online by Editor & Publisher.
Which seems fitting in a way. Why should we get any news about how terrible local news coverage is since most of us don’t get any local news anyway?