EOTO: News Deserts: The Problem of today that some might not hear about for weeks!

When we first were assigned this project, I looked over the terms and one that caught my eye was the term “News Deserts”. I never heard the term before, so it caught my eye. I have heard of food deserts, so I assumed it was similar but involving news. I looked it up and I came across this article posted by the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media: Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. They define it as“a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.” What I got that information is that a news desert is a place where the people of the community do not receive a significant amount of local or global news. I was correct in my assumption that it is similar to a food desert but instead of food its news. From this article it seems the number of news deserts seems to be increasing. This seems to be a major issue that could cause many problems for our country. To read the UNC article click here

It seems as the rural areas experience more news deserts then urban areas, which is to be expected. When I think about the implications associated with these types of deserts I can only come up with negative ones. These people who live in these news deserts are somewhat being cut off by the world in a sense. Being in an election year, it is important that all Americans get all the information they need to cast a fair vote in the election. It is important that Americans do not get biased information and it seems that this happens a lot in news deserts with the limited news they get if they get any. 

Look at figure 1.0 to see how many newspapers are published around the world and in what areas they are published in. 

Figure 1.0 News Desert Graphic 

UNC did a study that in 208 that found out that there were about 1,300 communities that in the United States that were considered news deserts. The study also discovered that more than 2,000 counties out of 3,143 in the United States no longer had a daily newspaper. On this article I found explained that the people who lived in these news deserts were poorer, older, and less educated than the average American, which is understandable if they do not have access to the same amount of information.  To read this article click here 

Look at Figure 2.0 to see what region has the most counties without newspapers. 

Figure 2.0: Graph showing what region has the most counties without newspapers. 

One thing I immediately thought of when I found out what news deserts were the Amish. They do not use technology and today that is where most of the news we get comes from. Newspapers are becoming extinct which is probably why there is a raise in news deserts around the country. I was scrolling through Tik Tok recently and came across this video, not sure if I can find it again, but it talked about how this person was walking their dog in what is called the Amish Country and they saw this couple. The couple asked why they were wearing a mask. The person said they had no idea what was going on in the world regarding the Covid-19 crisis. This shows how negatively impactful news deserts are. It is so important that everyone has access to all news around the country. I live in an urban area, so I guess I take for granted the amount of news I have access too. I just always thought that everyone had the same access to the same amount of news I had access too. News deserts are a huge problem and needs to be solved before more problems are caused.