Skip to main content

The I Index

Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy

Maybe someday

47

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

38/100

Critics

10/100

Scholars

92/100

Author:

Margaret Sullivan

Publisher:

Columbia Global Reports

Date:

July 14, 2020

Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan explores the closure of print newspaper outlets and the threat it poses to our democracy.

What The Reviewers Say

Megan Garber,
The Atlantic
Ghosting the News, as the bearer of very bad news about the news itself, adopts an aptly funereal feel. But Sullivan—a media columnist at The Washington Post, a former public editor at The New York Times, and a longtime chief editor of The Buffalo News—is also offering an opportunity: to recalibrate our vision.
Susan Benkelman,
The Washington Post
In Sullivan’s conversations across the country, readers told her they were aware of the problem — they saw local news as increasingly partisan or shallow. But they apparently hadn’t made a crucial connection: The decline in quality is due to the erosion of the industry’s financial foundation.
Dale Singer,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
[An] insightful, sobering analysis of the modern news landscape.
Sewell Chan,
Los Angeles Times
Sullivan is the perfect person to diagnose the problem.