Michigan's shrinking local news industry

Why it matters: Most communities that lose a local newspaper in America usually do not get a replacement, even digitally.

State of play: Unlike many large U.S. cities, Detroit still has two major newspapers: the Free Press and the Detroit News.

• More than a dozen ethnic, alternative, nonprofit and other media organizations also focus on our metro.

What they're saying: "I think people in Metro Detroit get a good share of the news that they should," Gary Miles, editor and publisher of the News, tells Axios.

• Miles acknowledges that staffing levels across the state have plummeted. The News' staff of 300 when he arrived in 2000 is down to less than 100, he says, although staffing levels have been steady the past four years.
• But monthly visitors to the News' website remain at pre-pandemic levels despite the introduction of a paywall for some stories in 2020, which Miles credits to the News' shrewd allocation of resources to important stories.
• The News' budget is expected to be slightly higher next year, he says.

The big picture: The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the papers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year — rather than in 2025, as originally predicted, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.

Zoom in: Michigan has 202 active newspapers compared with 280 in 2005, according to the report from Northwestern.

• It identified six counties in the state with zero news outlets: Keweenaw, Menominee, Antrim, Kalkaska, Missaukee and Oscoda — all north of the thumb.

🥊 Reality check: We found the print-only Missaukee Sentinel, which has been covering local news weekly since 1990.

• The Sentinel doubles as a print shop and also offers tuxedo rentals.

Between the lines: The Sentinel hits newsstands on Fridays, selling for 75 cents a copy. The paper has more than 1,000 subscribers, some in far-off places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Washington, D.C.

• "We actually have not had a decline in local news," office manager Jill Thomas tells Axios. "People love our paper. I have so many compliments."
• The Sentinel's high school sports coverage — written by a local pastor who delights readers with the nicknames he gives players — is especially popular, Thomas says.

The other side: To compile its data, the report relied on press associations' membership lists and independent research, Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern and the report's primary author, tells Axios.

• "Very occasionally, we get a notification that there is a paper, such as the Missaukee Sentinel, that is print only," she wrote in an email. "In that case, we contact the paper and ask them to send us four recent print editions so we can verify there is at least one staff person consistently covering local government meetings and local events."