Thread by @jbenton

For my @latimes story, I pulled together two numbers for a few big newspapers: how many print subscribers they had in 2002 vs. how many *digital* subscribers they have now.

And it basically explains the crisis in local news...

IN ONE CHART!

niemanlab.org/2019/07/the-l-…

(Well, technically, the 2002 number includes both subscribers and single-copy sales at newsstands. Newsstands used to be a thing, back in the day. You'd buy little pieces of paper covered in news there.)

So here are the circulation numbers for 2002. The @nytimes is at the top. But there are a bunch of newspapers not *that* far behind it, including healthy readership in all the large cities you'd expect.

But here's that same chart with today's *digital* subscriptions added in.

It's a totally different competition. There are two big national winners — and everybody else is struggling mightily.

The NYT and WaPo are great papers, but they didn't win just by being really good. They won by being *national* outlets, not local ones.

There just aren't that many people who really crave quality Houston news who don't live in or near Houston. But there are lots of people who live nowhere near NYC/DC who want what the NYT/WP are offering.

This unfortunate truth is why the transition to digital is killing local news. You read your local daily and watched your local TV news because *you had few other options*. The Internet brought endless options, and people are choosing something else.

That's a big problem for the people who own and work at those local news outlets.

But it's also a problem for everyone, because our governments remain stubbornly local.

The mayor, the city council, the sheriff, the state rep — they're all still where they used to be.

It's just the reporters who used to try to hold them accountable who've gone missing. /end