The Press Gazette’s Local News Index tracks the opening and closing of local news titles in the UK. Since 2010, it has recorded 315 closures of local and regional newspapers, with fewer than 40 new titles opening in the same period. The net decline represents a structural change in the availability of local journalism that has accelerated in the post-2020 period.
The Financial Model That Collapsed
Local newspapers were historically funded primarily by classified advertising — job listings, property sales, used car sales, and community notices. This advertising moved online in the 2000s, with platforms such as Gumtree, Rightmove, and AutoTrader capturing the classified market without funding journalism. Display advertising followed, as digital platforms offered more targeted reach than print.
By 2020, the average UK local newspaper was generating less than 30% of its advertising revenue from print sources, compared to approximately 80% in 2005. Digital advertising revenue had grown, but was captured primarily by national and regional digital brands within corporate groups rather than individual local titles. The structural surplus that had funded investigative and accountability journalism in local news disappeared over a fifteen-year period.
The Geography of News Deserts
Closures are not evenly distributed. Analysis by the Local News Map project, maintained by researchers at King’s College London, identifies “news deserts” — local authority areas with no remaining local news organisation with regular coverage of local democratic institutions. As of 2025, approximately 15% of local authority areas in England have no local news title that consistently covers their council’s meetings.
News deserts cluster in particular geographies: coastal towns, post-industrial areas of the Midlands and North, and rural areas of the East of England and South West. These are areas with below-average internet connectivity, above-average age profiles, and below-average disposable income — characteristics that combine to make digital-only journalism business models difficult to sustain.
What Communities Lose
Research on the consequences of local news closure has produced consistent findings. Studies by Cardiff University, the Reuters Institute, and the Electoral Reform Society have found associations between local news closure and: reduced voter turnout in local elections; reduced awareness of council decisions among residents; higher levels of corruption risk in local government (as measured by audit outcomes and ombudsman referrals); and reduced community social cohesion (as measured by survey instruments).
These associations are not uniform — some communities have developed alternative information channels — but they are statistically significant and robust to controls for population characteristics. The mechanisms are consistent with theory: local journalism creates shared information, enables collective action, and creates accountability pressure on local institutions.
The Policy Response
The government’s response to local news decline has combined market-based interventions (the LDRS scheme, funding for innovation in local news via the Creative Industries Clusters programme) with inaction on structural questions (the digital advertising levy, mandatory public interest journalism subsidies).
A parliamentary inquiry by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2023 recommended a Local News Fund — an independently administered grant programme funded by a levy on digital advertising platforms, provisionally sized at £150-200 million annually. The government did not accept this recommendation. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 created a new regulatory framework for digital platforms, which in principle could require advertising revenue sharing with news publishers, but implementation timelines remain uncertain.