A new Pew Center Research report on the end of local newspapers is very telling.
“Fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available.”
And:
“About half of Democrats (49%) and 47% of independents say civic life would be hurt “a lot” if the newspaper shut down, compared with 33% of Republicans.”
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I bet the results would be even more dramatic if sliced by demographics. We asked our 50-some students in Advanced Legal Research for a show of hands as to how many of them subscribed to or actually bought newspapers . . . One student raised her hand; she buys the Sunday New York Times.