18.09.2025
New Koi Tū report warns that the decline of local journalism could undermine democracy, increase misinformation, and weaken communities across New Zealand.
New Zealand is on the brink of developing “news deserts” – communities with little or no local news coverage – a new paper, News deserts: Local journalism at risk, from Koi Tū Centre for Informed Futures warns.
The paper describes news deserts as a growing international problem that is now emerging here, threatening local democracy, social cohesion, and the fight against misinformation.
News deserts: Local journalism at risk is authored by Koi Tū honorary fellow Dr Gavin Ellis, previously a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and a former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald.
It builds on his earlier Koi Tū research report If Not Journalists, Then Who? which examines threats to public interest journalism in New Zealand and highlighted the urgent need for sustainable support models.
Koi Tū Managing Trustee Sir Peter Gluckman said the findings are a “sobering analysis that does not pretend there are simple solutions.”
He emphasised that access to local journalism “should not be a partisan political matter: it is a needed service for communities now compromised by changed market realities.”
Dr Ellis said the recent closure of 15 community newspapers by Stuff – including titles serving Auckland and Wellington’s northern centres – underscores the gravity of the situation.
“Over the past seven years Stuff and its rival NZME have closed 40 newspapers. Locally owned titles and smaller newsletters have suffered similar fates,” he said.
“We have no systematic mapping of where our news deserts lie, but it would be folly to think they do not exist. Other countries have carried out such mapping and the results are deeply disturbing.”
Almost 55 million people in the USA and an estimated 2.5 million Canadians have limited or no access to local news. Romania has no media outlets in any of its rural areas, and a quarter of Spain’s population live in what are considered news deserts.
Seven per cent of the population of the United Kingdom lives in news deserts. In Australia, 27 local authority areas have no local news outlets, and more than 200 regional newsrooms have closed in the past decade.
This report charts the consequences that have flowed from the growth of news deserts in other countries.
It cites research that has found the loss of local news coverage causes decreased public knowledge and participation in local democracy, a loss of social cohesion, increased incidences of misinformation and disinformation, more official corruption. higher public finance costs, and less effective commercial advertising.
“Many of those countries have begun to implement measures to halt and reverse the growth of news deserts,” Dr Ellis said.
“Central, state, and local governments – together with media organisations and communities themselves – are each playing their part in finding effective ways of pushing back the sand. We need to adopt some of those approaches, and create new ones.”
Dr Ellis said a broad approach was needed in this country to avoid the serious consequences of news deserts. Recognition of public interest journalism as a public good justified a comprehensive approach to the problem by all sectors of society.
