Navigating the News Void: From News Deserts to Revitalization

Published: Dec. 14 at Project Censored

By Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff

In 1995, early in the development of the global internet, sociologist Michael Schudson imagined how people might process information if journalism were to suddenly disappear. An expert on  the history of US news media, Schudson speculated in his book, The Power of News, that peoples’ need to identify the day’s most important and relevant news from the continuous torrent of available information would eventually lead to the reinvention of journalism

Beyond daily gossip, practical advice, or mere information, Schudson contended, people desire what he called “public knowledge,” or news, the demand for which made it difficult to imagine a world without journalism.

Nearly thirty years later, many Americans live in a version of the world remarkably close to the one Schudson pondered in 1995—because either they lack access to news or they choose to ignore journalism in favor of other, more sensational content.

By exploring how journalism is increasingly absent from many Americans’ lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.

The Rise of News Deserts

Read more at: https://www.projectcensored.org/navigating-the-news-void-news-deserts/