The ways people get their news has dramatically changed. Traditional media has felt the impact. More than half the counties in the U.S. have limited access to news.
Journalism has been hit hard in Illinois.
"Illinois has lost 85% of all of its newspaper journalists since 2005," said Tim Franklin, Director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.
What does less news coverage mean for civic engagement?
"What you don't have is anybody covering the day-to-day city council, what's going on with my property taxes, are they going to fix the roads and potholes? Frankly, what we hear that people would like a lot of attention on," said Molly Parker, investigative reporter for Capitol News Illinois. She's also an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University and a distinguished fellow with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.
Parker and Franklin join host Sean Crawford and Professor Emeritus Charlie Wheeler for a conversation on the state of journalism.