Most of Virginia has one or no local news sources in election year

The big picture: An uptick in newspaper closures this year has also left more than half of the nation's 3,143 counties — or 55 million people — with fewer than two news outlets.

• The rise in digital local news sites isn't enough to offset these closures, either, and they tend to serve city and coastal communities.
• The vast majority of news deserts (75%) are rural, which have populations that have shifted dramatically toward Republicans politically, according to Pew.
• And media trust has fallen to a record low, per a recent Gallup survey.

By the numbers: In Virginia, 81 counties have only one news source and 12 have none.

• That includes Chesterfield, which is name-dropped in the report for becoming a news desert after the Chesterfield Observer shut down last year after nearly 30 years.
• Chesterfield is the most populated county in the state outside of Northern Virginia with close to 400,000 people.
• It also has the largest and fastest-growing Spanish-speaking population in the Richmond area.

Threat level: Most communities that lose a local newspaper don't get a replacement, even online.

Zoom in: Richmond is the only one in the immediate area with more than one news outlet, per the report. 

• Henrico has the Henrico Citizen. 
• Hanover, Goochland and Powhatan have the Mechanicsville Local, the Gazette, and Powhatan Today, respectively — all extensions of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

Yes, but: The RTD, which covers the state and Richmond area, has shed thousands of subscribers, dropping from 37,000 print subscribers in September 2022 to under 23,000 as of late August.

• Its digital-only subs notched up from 22,000 to 23,873, according to the annual notice the paper is required to publish to qualify for discount postage from USPS.

Go deeper: How local news is changing