Rural life sucks, part 5: Local journalism

Whew, my babies. I was a journalism major and am a writer and a politics nerd. So this is gonna be a long one. And there is so, so, so much more I want to get into but don’t have time.

The TL;DR is that the death of local journalism has disproportionately hit rural communities. We can directly connect this with lower quality of life across dimensions such as lower quality governance, political polarization, one-party rule, and diminishing social cohesion. We can also indirectly connect it to an increasingly batshit GOP. And it likely puts rural Americans at greater risk of being ignorant, misinformed, and inclined to buy into conspiracy theories.

Which then, of course, helps lead to even lower quality governance, more political polarization, greater one-party rule, further diminishing social cohesion, and an increasingly batshit GOP.