For my second Each One Teach One project, my group was told to choose one from the Policy section. At first glance, I had never heard of any of these phrases and therefore had no previous knowledge. My group felt the same way so we randomly assigned each other a topic to research. I ended up being assign the topic of News Deserts.
When I heard the name News Deserts, I could kind of already assume what it would be about. Deserts are usually empty and have nothing around them. People in deserts also always lack natural resources needed to survive like water. So, I presumed that News Deserts are places that lack the natural resource of news sources.
I found that the definition of a News Desert is a community that has limited access to credible and comprehensive information and news. This community is usually in a rural or urban area. This place contains few to no news outlets. News deserts are created when a local newsroom shuts down. An example of a news desert today is Ellis County, Texas. Ellis County is known as the nation's largest cotton-producing county. They have an estimated population of 205,000.
The news industry was affected a lot after the Covid 19 Pandemic. It caused multiple newspaper sources to switch to online only or completely shut down. This then led to a ripple effect to occur. So many journalists lost their jobs and were then forced to find somewhere else to make money during this pandemic. This was obviously very difficult for them because there were very few jobs looking for new employees to hire. Covid 19 also caused a prolonged recession that could eventually lead to hundreds of newspapers to shut down.
News Deserts are a huge issue that the world is facing. News deserts cause a lack of community. A sense of community is created through local newspapers. Secondly, a lack of regional economic growth is presented. An important quality that newspaper advertising helps businesses with is communicating and reaching out to potential consumers. This helps businesses grow. So, without this important factors businesses will eventually fall out and lose everything they worked so hard to build. The third thing that news deserts cause is a lack of social cohesion. Newspaper are an important factor to helping put national problems into local context. An example of this is the health care industry.
The following picture is a representation of News Deserts in the United States.
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