We live in northern rural Wisconsin, in a town of fewer than 500 residents. Yes, we’re on the shore of the largest of the great lakes, Lake Superior, and even with all that our location has to offer, we are in a Media Desert.
With thanks to Wisconsinwatch.org, they posted a link to a media project out of Ohio. The Media Deserts project is a joint research project of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, the Department of Geography and the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University.
I like the term they are using for their project. While we have only occasional beach sand in the area, we truly are in a media desert. There are two newspapers available in town. The Ashland Daily Press and the regional Duluth News Tribune.
Both papers are sparse in content having mostly three or four sections during the week. Hardly enough to wrap your fish catch in. If you were to have to rely on either or both of these print resources for your daily news intake, you would certainly be news malnourished.
The Media Deserts project bears out this lack of news availability in their maps. Our region according to the map have 0-2 newspapers, the same as the Duluth, Minnesota area. Circulation penetration of the available newspapers according to their findings is 0-10%.
Our own news gathering comes from the internet. We don’t have either cable or over the air television choosing to rather stream any entertainment content. We rely on streaming news content. We also make use of our own critical thinking abilities to gather news and information from internet sources.
Are newspapers dying in these Media Deserts? If not dying they are certainly in hospice.