NEWS DESERTS
When asked about the root cause of news deserts, Dr. Yonty Friesem—a journalism professor at Columbia College Chicago—replied “The economic [feasibility] is a secondary kind of cause. It's all about discrimination.”
Report for America reporter Melody Mercado—who works for Block Club Chicago, a non-profit newsroom that does ground-level reporting in potential news deserts in Chicago—described that people in her community “deserve not only a voice but also a local news that represents them and includes them in the conversation.”
Isabelle Chapman—an alumna of Lake Forest Academy who is currently a national producer for CNN investigates—said, “A lack of local news has lead to polarization, there’s a lot reasons that happened, but I think a big one is that people used to live next door to journalists, they knew them, and I think there is less interaction between the public and journalists now because there are fewer journalists and fewer local papers. I think that trust in journalism is built on local journalism.”
Mariah Rush—a Report for America reporter covering mainly the South side of Chicago—described how she makes a pointed effort to cover “good things you don’t know about or bad things that you are ignoring.”