When Washington Becomes the Only Story

When I say that media has changed profoundly, I don’t just mean the way we consume content—I mean that the business of storytelling has shifted.

Once, individual communities had their own voices, issues and stories; now, the news most Americans see never strays from Washington, D.C. —and too often, focuses on only one person.

From the Three‑Channel Era to Fragmentation and Back Again

From the 1950s through the early ’70s, ABC, CBS, and NBC formed a shared cultural pipeline. They unified audiences and produced mega‑stars—from Lucy to Mary Tyler Moore. That era faded in the cable age in the late 1980s, giving way to a fragmentation of sources competing for audience share. Then, the Internet splintered attention into millions of micro‑niches (Local News Initiative).

Andy Warhol once predicted we’d all get “15 minutes of fame.” With the rise of social media, that became more like 30 or 45 seconds spread across millions of small audiences. Yet paradoxically, as local news media died off because of an Internet-induced demolition of the news media’s longstanding advertising supported business model, audiences re-concentrated around a few mega‑figures. It turns out that covering one market, Washington D.C., and endlessly discussing politics is way less expensive than covering hundreds or thousands of individual communities. The result: we’re back to a handful of “superstars”—political and cultural—dominating national attention.

The Local News Collapse

• Between 2005 and 2024,  3,300 U.S. newspapers went out of business, that is about one-third of the previous total number of papers. In the twelve months leading into October 2024, 127 papers shuttered—that’s a newspaper loss rate of nearly two per week (medill.northwestern.edu).
• Newspaper subscriptions plunged from roughly 115 million in 2005 to just over 40 million in 2024, a drop of nearly 65% (Local News Initiative).
• The number of journalists per 100,000 people has declined by 75% since 2002, with the national average now just 8.2 local journalist equivalents (LJEs) per 100,000. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties fall below that rate (Axios1).
• “News deserts” in America now cover 206 counties with no local news outlet, and over 1,561 with only a single outlet. This means that more than 55 million Americans live in areas with severely limited coverage (Local News Initiative).

The collapse of local newspapers and other local news distributors isn’t just a statistic—it’s a loss of the binding fabric of communities themselves. Local journalists served as watchdogs, and their disappearance has correlated with lower civic engagement, reduced voter turnout, and higher municipal borrowing costs due to weaker oversight (American Journalism Project).

Why Washington D.C. Dominates the News Today

It clearly costs news organizations far less to dispatch a few reporters to cover a White House event that is of interest to the whole world than it costs the same companies to staff hundreds of reporters in numerous communities who each cover issues relevant only to the people living within those communities. That makes Washington not just a beat—it is the beat. From a business model perspective, covering Washington provides the biggest economic return on the investment — more clicks and more eyes on each story. If gaining revenue through advertising is the dominant business model – and it unfortunately still is – a financial officer could certainly ask why news teams would cover anything other than DC.

Because he’s the President and is more vocal than most Presidents, Donald Trump provides fodder for half a dozen stories each day (Or more.) Everybody covers the President. It is an easy story that is comparatively inexpensive to staff, and is legitimately newsworthy. Cable channel commentators and podcasters discuss DC oriented stories for hours every single day. (Talk is cheap and opinions are free, while actual reporting is expensive.) But it’s not just a broadcaster problem, the country’s leading national newspapers fill their front pages with stories about the President every single day. The result is that active news consumers hear and read one story after another that has President Trump in the headline. However, it’s important to acknowledge that this coverage is driven not just by his actions and newsworthiness, but by the conscious business decision of news organizations to maximize margins by repeatedly covering what is basically one single news beat rather than the countless stories that exist in communities across the country and around the globe.

Public Media Under Siege

The U.S. Government’s support for Public Media helped ensure some coverage for local communities, but the Trump administration targeted funds spent on taxpayer financed journalism whether distributed internally or externally. Congress cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for NPR and PBS. This impacted around 1,600 local stations, many in rural and underserved communities. As we know, the nation’s public broadcasting service filled coverage gaps—emergency alerts, indigenous language programming, and community affairs – that are not big money makers. The loss further reduces the coverage of local news.  (The Washington Post) This contributes to a further decline of local news leaving those national stories as the only stories that are accessible to consume.

Earlier in the year, the White House significantly diminished personnel working for the Voice of America through executive order. (White House Executive Order) The Voice of America ensured journalism reached millions of people around the globe, inspiring others to mimic our democracy, which is most beautiful in its myriad stories of people debating different points of view and coming together to form – as our Constitution’s preamble aspires to create – a more perfect union.

This ain’t Political nor is it Anti-Media – I love both

Let’s be frank. I love politics, am a grad of the Harvard Kennedy School. And I love journalism, having spent 20 years as a broadcast reporter and another 15 years serving the broadcast journalism industry through the professional video workflow platform latakoo. (An unbiased aside – latakoo is the best professional video platform on the market today by a mile – check it out.) Both journalism and politics are key to government. Government by the people and for the people, literally is the people. That means government is us. To complain about the government is to complain about ourselves. There’s no gain in it. Same thing with the media. The business model shifted, and companies have had to adjust as they see fit to run profitably. We are a free market economy. In the same way voters decide who runs government, buyers decide which businesses thrive through purchase decisions.

The laser focus on Washington does produce a lot of eyeballs which are sold to advertisers. With a relatively small investment, media companies maximize their profit opportunity. Simultaneously, the cutback in tax support for non-Washington coverage also reduces stories about anything non-DC. The result is that there’s one story – not just in town – there’s one story in the nation.

The thing is – I am sick to death with that one story. Aren’t you? It’s important, I get it, but it’s kind of like being told to eat oatmeal for your health. If it’s the only thing you consume, it becomes tiresome. Really tremendously boring. And I could go on about other terrible things that are a result of this singular focus on one news beat, but really – isn’t it just getting old?

How many times can you read something about the same five people? How many times can you get outraged because somebody in Washington did something outrageous? And it’s not only news, social media and podcasters are even more repetitively mining the same handful of stories. It’s the same content, same stories, endlessly regurgitated and repeated. I get it that we’re all supposed to be upset by DC events, but recently… well… isn’t it just a bit boring?

Let’s find a new story. What’s going on next door? What are my neighbors doing? How does that policy created in DC actually land in rural West Texas? Wouldn’t it be meaningful to hear from a state representative or a local county commissioner or even a city council member about what they specifically are doing for our slice of the world wherever that slice exists?

Everybody should have the opportunity to learn about their unique community. The air we breathe locally is what really impacts each of us.

So What do We Do?

The answer is exactly like politics. Don’t blame government. Vote. In this case, don’t blame the media. Buy.

That’s right – We the People can buy our communities back by subscribing directly to the thing we say we want: objective, fact-based, non-biased, non-partisan journalism. Tell us what’s going on locally. Don’t give us an opinion, which, by the way, is the absolute cheapest content possible to produce as spouting opinions requires no work nor investment at all. Instead, tell us exactly what is going on here. And we get it, covering local news is expensive, which is why We the People have to pay so that covering news is a viable, attractive and profitable business. (Remember that whole free market thing that we Americans also endorse.) But once we pay, we can ask news teams to hold the powerful accountable on our behalf. They’ll work for us, not for advertisers, not for donors, not for taxpayers. They’ll work for the subscriber. That is the best – and I believe – only business model that correctly aligns interests between reporters and citizens.

We the people hold the power in our wallets. Every one of us already subscribes to an endless array of junk that we don’t use that continuously hits our credit cards. (eg. health trackers where the device has died – looking at you Oura, unused gym memberships despite our good intentions, umpteen unwatched streaming services, satellite radio in the car, etc., etc.) This time, we can allow something truly meaningful to hit our credit card. We can literally buy our local communities back by supporting local journalism initiatives.

We the People are the answer

It is easy to fret about the problems in the world, and look to others to save us. But we live in a country that values the free market. We make businesses thrive through our purchase decisions. You and I can bring reporters to our neighborhoods with little dollars – the dollars in our pocket.

And look – while I’m not opposed to someone building a new journalism company out of whole cloth (in fact, Jade Kurian and I would like to create one) – the strategy we’re discussing doesn’t require new companies to emerge. Again, it’s just like politics. You don’t have to create a new political party to change the world. You can work through what already exists.

There are companies big and small today that are asking each of us for our support. We vote with our dollars, or, in some cases, we can support them with our views. Here’s one example. While lots of folks are concerned about media consolidation, what may be the most important factor is who owns the consolidated company. A multi-university study looked at the news coverage of America’s three biggest station groups, and found that when the Nexstar Media Group¹ acquires a station, the coverage of local places and local topics and local representation all increased. That was not true for some of the other acquirers in the study. (Media Consolidation Study)

If there is a news company that comes to town and prioritizes local news, and reports stories in a non-partisan, fact-based, opinion-free manner, We the People can and should show them our approval through our economic support. And while broadcasters seek your views and hope that you will buy stuff from their advertisers, what’s even better is to find a way to subscribe directly to their products to reduce their reliance on advertisers.

Deep Throat once told journalism saints Woodward and Bernstein to “Follow the Money.” My advice is a little different: Be the Money. Businesses work for those who pay them. Pay, and they’ll work for you. Pay, and you can stop consuming thousands of stories a day from Washington. Pay, and find out what’s going on in your own town.

About the Author

Paul Adrian is the Co-Founder and CEO of latakoo. He believes fully in the power of journalism and the important role it plays in a functioning democracy. Adrian is the essence of a local reporter. As an investigative specialist, he covered the city hall beat, county commissioner’s court, state government, local businesses, the environment, countless disasters and hundreds of positive stories too in Texas, Ohio, Connecticut and Kentucky. He is an award-winning journalist who has earned multiple honors, including NATAS Emmy Awards for investigative reporting. He is a former member of the board of directors of the non-profit journalism organization, Investigative Reporters and Editors. After two decades of broadcast reporting, Adrian co-founded latakoo with Jade Kurian, and together, they used their extensive experience in the broadcasting and cable industry to successfully introduced latakoo’s video platform into some of the largest broadcasting companies in the world. Adrian holds a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Texas and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, where he focused on entrepreneurship.

1. Nexstar Media Group is one of latakoo, Inc.’s customers ↩︎