At least one-third of local governments in the United States no longer receive regular news coverage of their meetings from even a single reporter. Government Without Newspapers: Local Politics in the Age of News Deserts documents the impact of the decline of local news coverage on the communities that experience it. Thomas Jefferson's letter to Edward Carrington, wrote “[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Many communities in the United States today are experiencing what Jefferson feared – government without newspapers and because of that there is a significant deficit in accountability. In those news desert communities, citizens are either left in the dark, or have to seek out second-best sources of information about what their representatives are doing. Even elected officials, who might be expected to find the lack of scrutiny beneficial, report struggling to communicate with constituents in the absence of traditional news. The news about local journalism is not all bad, though, as experiments in non-profit news and digital delivery show some promise for the future.

Thomas C. Ellington is professor of political science at Wesleyan College in Macon, a former journalist and a long-time public servant. He has also taught at Mercer University, Guangzhou University in China, Ewha Women's University in Seoul (as a Fulbright Korea Senior Scholar) and Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul.