What I Learned About News Deserts

     Newspapers seemed like a thing of the past to me. With all the information and news you need at the tip of your fingers with the internet, what's the point of old fashioned news papers? It didn't seem as though there were any downsides to getting rid of them and just prioritizing online news. These were my thoughts until I learned about news deserts.

    A news desert is defined as "a community where residents have significantly diminished access to important local news and information that feeds grassroots democracy". Newspapers provide communities with essential information, whether the information is on a national or local scale. With the world of digital news constantly becoming more popular, these newspapers are diminishing at a rapid rate. 

    As digital news becomes more and more popular and newspapers start to disappear, these journalists are losing their jobs. Not only does this harm the journalists themselves, but it harms the people looking for information. With the easy access to online news, fake news is much more easily created. These websites are also not always concerned with their accuracy, but getting as much traffic as possible to generate revenue. When you are searching for a news story on the internet, you can usually find what feels like endless sources. However, have you ever thought to think about how reliable these sources really are? Yes, there are some sources that are credible and you can trust as a reader, but there are even more that you can't. Newspapers never struggled with either of these issues. It is extremely rare to find fake news within a newspaper and although it doesn't feel more convenient to have to use a physical paper to find information, it actually eliminates the searching through sources. 

    With all of that being said, it is actually very concerning to see the rapid decline in newspapers over the years. There are many people who don't realize what types of issues this can cause. The news we consume is extremely important, so it's even more important that we can trust our sources.