Ghosting the News - by Margaret Sullivan (Paperback)

About the Book

Local journalism is on the verge of extinction and this is bad for democracy. This book explains why.

Book Synopsis

How the current epidemic of news deserts and ghost papers threatens democracy

Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the U.S. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008. One in three Brazilians lives in news deserts. The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. This is not the much-discussed fake-news problem--it's the separate problem of a critical shortage of real news.

America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage, and surveys a range of new efforts to keep local news alive--from non-profit digital sites to an effort modeled on the Peace Corps. No nostalgic paean to the roar of rumbling presses, Ghosting the News instead sounds a loud alarm, alerting citizens to a growing crisis in local news that has already done serious damage.

"An excellent introduction to the essential problem of our republic. With a wake-up call like this one, we still have a chance." ―Timothy Snyder

Review Quotes

Named one of 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020 by The Washington Post

Selected as an NPR Best Book of 2020

"An excellent introduction to the essential problem of our republic. With a wake-up call like this one, we still have a chance." --Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

"Ghosting the News is a brisk and pointed tribute to painstaking, ordinary and valuable work." --Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"Margaret Sullivan has written one of the most timely books I've ever seen, about the biggest threat to democracy that no one is talking about. It's that rare book about journalism that regular folks need to read.... Short yet vital." --Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"To write a book like Ghosting the News is to take on the challenge of proving a negative--to make a case for the urgency of the known unknown. Sullivan succeeds. Her book is an ink-bound alarm bell. The threat Americans face, she argues, is not just the news that lies. It is also the news that will never exist in the first place." --Megan Garber, The Atlantic

"An important book.... Sullivan is the perfect person to diagnose the problem." --Sewell Chan, Los Angeles Times

"Sullivan aims to amplify the long-running alarm that local news media--entities core to local and national democracy--are in more trouble than ever. The greatest risk, she writes, is that local newspapers especially are on the verge of disappearing forever, which could have severe ramifications during time when fact-based reporting is under siege." --Fortune

"Lays out the state of journalism in America, and the desperate need for its revival." --Guardian

"Insightful, sobering analysis of the modern news landscape." --Dale Singer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan's book about what happens to local democracy when local newsrooms shrivel couldn't be publishing at a better time." --Dean Miller, Seattle Times

"Smart, tight and necessary.... Sullivan's novella-length book is a siren in the night." --Rick Holmes, CommonWealth Magazine

"A no-nonsense retort to the notion that we live in a time of abundant information." --Kirkus Reviews

A timely antidote for those outside the industry looking in." --Rick Edmonds, Poynter

"Quality journalism takes time and investment to produce, and it deserves our time and investment to preserve and appreciate. Our very democracy depends on it." --Dylan Schleicher, Porchlight Books

About the Author

Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post, the former public editor of The New York Times, and the former chief editor of The Buffalo News, where she started her career as an intern. She is a former member of the Pulitzer Prize board. She lives in New York City.