In the Empire State alone, the number of daily newspapers decreased from 439 in 2004 to 249 in 2019, with circulation plummeting from 4 million to 2.2 million
By Aaron Gifford
March 13, 2025, was a sorrowful, sobering day in Cortland.
The Cortland Standard, the small city’s daily newspaper for 157 years, published its final edition. It was one of the five oldest family-owned newspapers in the nation and the second oldest in New York state.
The closure mirrored a national trend.
In the Empire State alone, the number of daily newspapers decreased from 439 in 2004 to 249 in 2019, with circulation plummeting from 4 million to 2.2 million during the same time period, according to the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
New York’s weekly newspaper industry sustained similar casualties, with the number of publications decreasing from 439 to 249 and circulation falling from 2.2 million to 1.2 million during that 15-year period.
Collectively, the circulation for both types of local newspapers across the state tanked by 63%, UNC reported on its “Expanding News Desert” webpage. It identifies Orleans County, located halfway between Rochester and Niagara Falls, as a news desert with no daily or weekly papers to serve its many towns and villages.
Local news can never die, but the way folks get information about current events is continually changing. Newspapers appear to be an endangered species in need of special protection.
“Just about every newspaper is struggling,” said Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association. “It’s dramatic.”
She said average revenues for newspapers in this state decreased by about 75% in 15 years.
Kennedy said advertising made up about 85% of newspaper revenues until about the past 20 years. That market has migrated to the internet, where ads no longer command high prices and publishers have no say in Google’s control of the digital ecosystem. News organizations, big and small, are increasingly forced to put up paywalls for online content now.
Papers are also losing younger readers to social media outlets, which usually provide news and information in brief, condensed posts or videos. An ever-expanding roster of popular social media influencers has an easier time catering to shorter attention spans.
Kennedy said the industry struggled with high paper prices for decades and there are new fears that tariffs could drive up production costs even more, as most newsprint paper comes from Canada.
“Brand safety” is another recent obstacle, Kennedy explained. Retailers don’t want their ads near controversial content and require assurances that their product is not mentioned near certain words or acronyms, like COVID or MAGA.
Worse, generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT get behind paywalls, scrape content from newspaper websites and provide that information to users for free. The newspaper industry is lobbying Congress to outlaw these practices, Kennedy said.
“[AI] can summarize everything that’s out there,” she said. “That’s an extinction-level event. That may just kill us all outright.”
But there have been a few bright spots for New York’s newspaper industry in recent years, Kennedy said.
In 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which provides tax credits to news outlets, print or broadcast, incentivizing hiring and staff retention.
“It’s non-bureaucratic. It helps for-profit and nonprofits, print, digital and broadcast, urban and rural, the Rebuild Local News Coalition, which lobbied for this law in New York and several other states, announced in a press release praising New York state lawmakers.
“It’s future-friendly, so new innovators can plug in, too. And it does all of this while being compatible with the First Amendment and the need to protect the editorial independence of news outlets.”
Another highlight, Kennedy said, is the growth of nonprofit digital newspapers across the state, including the Central Current in Syracuse, the Daily Catch in Red Hook and Rhinebeck, the Highlands Current in Cold Spring, and New York Focus in New York City.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm in this space right now,” she said.
Kennedy believes journalism programs at colleges and universities will remain viable, but she hopes they place a strong emphasis on ethics and civics in an era when ad dollars are hard to come by and social media influencers who operate without editors or rules are trying to drown out the real professionals.
“It has always been a calling,” she said. “Young journalists still get fired up. I don’t think people have changed.”
Still, Kennedy added, so many newsrooms were lost after the COVID-19 pandemic. Young reporters who can find jobs in this field are increasingly working remotely and missing out on the excitement and camaraderie when major events happen and a team of journalists practice their trade on the front line.
To stay in business, many papers in New York offer value-added services to their advertising clients and subscribers, like hosting webcasts or special events and forging “as close of a relationship as possible” with local businesses, Kennedy said.
Eagle News Community Media Group, which serves the Syracuse metro area with several community papers and specialty magazines, is an example of this. Thanks to donations from readers, its websites and weekly mailed subscriptions have remained free.
“That’s been relatively successful for us,” said Eagle’s publisher, David Tyler.
But local news is not a free commodity, he explained. To offset the loss of traditional newspaper ad revenues, Eagle has partnered with The Palladium-Times and weekly papers in Oswego County to share printing costs and advertising opportunities.
Tyler said this kind of collaboration between news outlets was unheard of when he began his career in newspapers more than 30 years ago. But now, it seems like common sense.
“When I got into the business, there was a lot of competition,” he said. “We have to look at each other as partners now. As an industry, we need to support one another. Collectively, we’ll be stronger because of that.”
Tyler said the growth of targeted email advertisements and the specialty publications with content for parents, seniors, homeowners and health care consumers that supplement the weekly newspapers has helped Eagle remain viable in the Central New York news market.
But the bedrock of Eagle’s success is its staff, which includes a lead sales person who has worked for the company for nearly half a century, a circulation department employee of 42 years so far, a sports editor with 28 years on the job and several others with a decade or more of service to the company.
“That longevity and institutional knowledge go a long way,” Tyler said. “They love what they do and they love the company. A lot of us got into this because we love newspapers.”
That passion for newspapers, large and small, daily or weekly, will continue to be tested in the years ahead.
Northwestern University and the Medill Local News Initiative, in its 2024 State of Local News report, notes that news deserts are spreading in areas across the country, larger companies are acquiring smaller papers and consolidating at the regional level at a furious pace and the number of standalone digital news sites continues to grow.
In the past year alone, more than 130 newspapers across the nation shut down and 3,200 have vanished since 2005, the report said.
The number of U.S. newsroom jobs, mostly reporters and editors, decreased by 2,000 from 2022-2023. Overall newspaper circulation has decreased by 75 million (60%) since 2005 and in 2024 there were 206 counties across the country without a single local news source.
“The loss of local newspapers is continuing at an alarming pace, deepening the local news crisis and further depriving people of information they need to make informed decisions.
“In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether,” the report said.
Editor’s Note: The Cortland Standard, which stopped publishing March 13, resumed publication May 17, under the ownership of Sample News Group, which also owns the Oswego County Media Group and dozens of other newspapers in several states.
