What’s Trending: The Big Picture

The thing is, everybody thinks they live in a news desert.

Some people pepper their conversations with the term, perhaps to absolve themselves from the dreaded responsibility of possessing an informed opinion. Others (and by “others” we mean the media haters in the world) tout the term as if it’s some type of status symbol. For those who don’t land squarely into either of the aforementioned camps, read on.

First things first: There is no clear-cut definition of what constitutes a news desert. What began as an academic attempt to map

America’s changing media landscape and, in particular, a decline in printed newspapers, soon became the actual subject of news reports. It’s precisely at this intersection where the wheels came off, causing confusion among the public and more than a touch of clinical depression among news professionals. Probably the best definition we’ve found to adequately explain a news desert is a county with no printed newspaper. Daily or weekly doesn’t matter. What does matter, is the concept of a printed paper, which is vital to areas in America lacking in broadband coverage, resulting in online news being unobtainable for the masses.

Second — and this is huge — is the quality of the research that went into these newspaper mapping exercises. It’s comparable to what happens when a national news…