Local news connects people with decisions, events, schools, public services, and community life. In 2025, 21% of U.S. adults said they followed local news very closely, while 80% said local news outlets were at least somewhat important to their community’s well-being. The statistics below show how people get local news, what they prefer, and how the business supporting that coverage has changed.
Table of contents
- How closely Americans follow local news
- Where people get local news
- Preferred local news formats
- Community importance and willingness to pay
- Local television revenue and programming
- Local television audiences and ownership
- Newspaper access and employment
How closely Americans follow local news
The Pew Local News Fact Sheet reported that 21% of U.S. adults followed local news very closely in 2025. That was down from 37% in 2016, a decline in the share reporting close attention over the nine-year period. The measure describes how closely adults followed local news, rather than the number of stories they read or watched.
Local news participation was broader than the group following it very closely. In 2025, 72% of U.S. adults said they often or sometimes got local news from other local residents, including friends, family, and neighbors. The comparable figure was 66% in 2018. Within the 2025 result, 14% said they often got local news this way, 58% said they sometimes did, and 7% said they never did.
These figures place interpersonal sharing alongside formal news outlets. They also show that attention and access are different measures: fewer than one-quarter followed local news very closely, while nearly three-quarters sometimes or often received local information from people around them.
Where people get local news
The Pew Local News Fact Sheet found that local television remained a common source in 2025. Sixty-five percent of U.S. adults said they at least sometimes got local news from their local TV news station. That was down from 70% in 2018.
Newspapers were also used by a substantial minority. Thirty-six percent said they at least sometimes got local news from their local daily paper in 2025, compared with 43% in 2018.
Digital and community-based channels moved in the opposite direction over the same comparison period. Fifty-two percent said they at least sometimes got local news from online forums or discussion groups in 2025, up from 38% in 2018. Forty percent got local news at least sometimes from local government agencies or officials, up from 30% in 2018. Online-only sources reached 42% in 2025, compared with 15% in 2018.
| Local news source | 2018 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Local TV news station, at least sometimes | 70% | 65% |
| Local daily paper, at least sometimes | 43% | 36% |
| Online forums or discussion groups, at least sometimes | 38% | 52% |
| Local government agencies or officials, at least sometimes | 30% | 40% |
| Online-only source, at least sometimes | 15% | 42% |
The source figures come from the Pew Local News Fact Sheet. They measure whether adults got local news at least sometimes, so they should not be read as exclusive categories: one person may use several sources.
Preferred local news formats
When asked which format they preferred for getting local news, 34% of U.S. adults chose television in 2025, according to the Pew Local News Fact Sheet. Television preference was 41% in 2018. News websites or apps were preferred by 28% in 2025, up from 23% in 2018.
Social media sites were preferred by 20% in 2025, compared with 15% in 2018. Print newspapers were preferred by 8%, down from 13%. Radio preference was 8% in both 2025 and 2018.
The format preferences describe the channel people favored, not necessarily every channel they used. The comparison shows television still had the largest single preference share in 2025, while websites or apps and social media gained ground relative to 2018.
Community importance and willingness to pay
Local news outlets retained a high stated level of community importance in 2025. The Pew Local News Fact Sheet reported that 80% of U.S. adults considered local news outlets at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community. Thirty-four percent called them extremely or very important, down from 44% in 2024.
The 2025 response levels were 8% extremely important, 26% very important, 47% somewhat important, 14% not too important, and 4% not at all important. These categories distinguish broad community value from the smaller share assigning the highest importance.
Payment was uncommon. Eighty-eight percent of U.S. adults said they had not paid or given money to any local news source in the past year in 2025, while 12% said they had paid or given money.
Among non-payers, 50% said they skipped paying because they could find plenty of free local news. Another 29% said they were not interested enough in local news to pay for it. Ten percent said local news was too expensive, and 9% said the local news available to them was not good enough to pay for. These reasons were reported among non-payers and should not be treated as reasons given by all U.S. adults.
Local television revenue and programming
The local television business generated substantial revenue in 2022. The Pew Local TV News Fact Sheet reported $20.5 billion in local TV over-the-air advertising revenue, up 27% from 2021. Local TV digital advertising revenue reached $2.0 billion in 2022, an increase of 23% from 2021. Digital advertising accounted for 9% of total local TV advertising revenue that year.
Revenue for the 842 local TV news-producing stations was $16.9 billion in 2022. Separately, retransmission fee revenue for U.S. local TV stations reached $14.1 billion in 2021, compared with $12.7 billion in 2020 and $11.5 billion in 2019. Kagan projected that retransmission fee revenue would rise to $15.9 billion by 2027. The 2027 figure is a projection, not a reported historical result.
Political advertising also varied by election cycle. Five major publicly held local TV station companies reported $1.896 billion in political advertising revenue in 2022. The same companies reported $2.014 billion in 2020, $1.203 billion in 2018, and $573.6 million in 2012. These figures cover the five companies specified by the source, not every local TV station.
Local stations also devoted more weekday time to news than they did in earlier years. The average was 6.6 hours per weekday in 2022, up from 6.3 hours in 2021. The average local TV news day was 3.7 hours in 2003, 4.6 hours in 2008, 5.3 hours in 2010, 5.5 hours in 2015, 5.7 hours in 2016, 5.9 hours in 2018, and 6.2 hours in 2020, according to the Pew Local TV News Fact Sheet.
Local television audiences and ownership
More programming time did not correspond to a larger average audience in the reported television measures. Average local TV prime-news audience was 2,217,005 TVs in 2022, down from 3,863,224 in 2016. Average local TV midday-news audience was 1,863,597 TVs in 2022, down from 2,481,616 in 2016. These are audience counts expressed in TVs, as labeled by the source.
Station transactions were active in the same industry. In 2022, 286 local TV stations changed hands at a total cost of $6.1 billion. In 2021, 175 local TV stations changed hands at a total cost of $3.6 billion. The transaction figures describe stations changing ownership and do not measure newsroom staffing or audience size.
Newspaper access and employment
The State of Local News 2025 reported that local newspapers declined from 3 newspapers per 100,000 Americans in 2005 to 1.6 per 100,000 in 2025. The number of people living in zero- or one-newspaper counties grew from a little more than 37 million in 2005 to 50 million in 2025. About 3,500 newspapers vanished since 2005, and roughly 70% of those newspapers disappeared from predominantly urban counties.
Ownership also became more concentrated. Unique newspaper owners fell from 3,995 in 2005 to just under 1,900 in 2025. The share of newspapers that were independently owned fell from 54% in 2005 to 47% in 2025. There were more than 1,500 daily newspapers in 2005, compared with fewer than 800 in 2025.
Employment declined alongside the number of papers. The newspaper industry employed 365,460 people in 2005 and 91,550 people in 2024. The State of Local News 2025 reported a loss of more than 270,000 jobs from 2005 to 2024 and a 7% employment decline from 2023 to 2024. In 2024, the industry recorded the 11th-highest percentage job loss among industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In half of U.S. states, fewer than 1,000 newspaper workers remained in 2024.
The journalist occupation fared worse than 85% of all jobs tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2023 to 2024, according to the State of Local News 2025. Together, the access, ownership, and employment figures describe a local newspaper system with fewer outlets, fewer independent owners, and a much smaller workforce than in 2005.