Within my first few hours of being in Valley County, I learned people are hungry for local news. A new face in Glasgow, a town of 3,202 people, folks immediately asked what brought me, a born and bred Appalachian, to the high plains of Montana. When answering, “I’m the new editor of the Courier,” the local newspaper, I am inundated with stories – of alleged crime, alleged corruption, alleged affairs – residents eagerly want covered.
That thirst for local news is not unique to Glasgow, but it is increasingly difficult to quench. In its 2025 report on the state of local news, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University found that over the past two decades, 40% of local newspapers have closed. More than 130 local papers ceased publication in the past year alone.
This isn’t the case in Glasgow, a unique and charming place where the benefits of the 21st century have not replaced the robust local civic life of the mid-20th century. Unofficially designated “the middle of nowhere,” a 2017 study found it to be the most remote town in the continental United States. Hundreds of miles from the nearest metropolitan area or even the nearest interstate, Glasgow sits just over 60 miles from the Canadian border, surrounded by sparse rolling prairies and semi-arid ranchland.
This isolation may account for why the Courier remains a cornerstone of public life here. The region is chronically under-covered by state and national press, not out of neglect so much as out of sheer inaccessibility. Getting here is an arduous trek, and the region itself is so unique from the more populous western Montana that its rhythms, needs, and priorities can be overlooked or misunderstood.
Having a local newspaper with local reporters thus enables a community’s needs to be recorded not just for posterity, but in our digital age, for the wider public to take notice and find out what some of the most overlooked Americans think and need. I moved to “the middle of nowhere” to do just that. Taking this job was not just a professional decision, but a personal one.
Though my career began in the national and international press, I have become a passionate proponent of local journalism and the importance of having robust reporting in local newspapers. Last year, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that “[s]mall-town newspapers shutting down due to the lack of a succession plan is a growing problem in nearly a dozen states.” As editors retire, finding qualified journalists willing to relocate to small, often isolated, towns is a challenge. Moving here was my chance to use my talents in the service of a community that needed an editor to help its local paper avoid this fate.
To be sure, I do not have a savior complex. The challenges of running a newsroom are not lost on me, nor are the ambitions that keep young reporters away from rural newspapers. As a young journalist, local news was not something I aspired to cover; I was eager to make a name for myself in the national press. I did just that, building a successful career as a columnist at The Independent and a contributor at Newsweek, among other national and international outlets. I interviewed politicians, Oscar-winning movie stars, and chart-topping rock stars. I appeared on TV as a talking head a few times and made the rounds on podcasts.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the newsroom. In 2021, I began working as an editor at 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit newsroom run by and for Appalachians. Suddenly, I was writing about and reporting on regional matters I’d long overlooked, and the response was overwhelming. In my entire career, the most gratitude I received from readers – the highest volume of responses – was to stories I wrote about local and regional matters. People let me know they appreciated that someone was covering the flooding in Eastern Kentucky (long after the national media left), the environmental impact of TVA plants, and the vibrant cultural landscape of my home region.
Meanwhile, the national political landscape had me reconsidering my own contributions. I made my name as an opinion journalist, writing largely from a left-wing perspective. While I don’t apologize for my political views, the increasing divisions in our country and the sheer vitriol of the partisan press began to make my screeds feel less like a righteous contribution to public discourse and more like the very thing eroding trust in media and our civic institutions writ large.
The numbers reflect this reality, with a 2025 Pew study finding that while only 56% of Americans trust national news organizations, 70% trust their local newsrooms. While national news, particularly cable newsrooms but increasingly newspapers like the Washington Post and CBS News, have begun adopting more obvious political biases, local news remains focused on stories relevant to people’s lives.
Yet these most relevant stories are increasingly the most underreported. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle in the 1980s coupled with the technological revolution beginning with the internet and accelerating with smartphones and social media, has led many people to disregard their local newspaper as a vital source of information, the Center for Rural Policy and Development in Minnesota found. Websites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace have reduced classifieds revenue, and targeted advertising on social media and search engines has reduced ad dollars.
What these websites haven’t replaced, though, is robust local reporting on everything from town and county governance to boosterism and civic pride. Local newspapers have historically provided both, holding local officials to account while also reflecting the values and triumphs (as well as the tragedies) of a town. It isn’t just that legal announcements are frequently required by law to be published in the local newspaper, though that is important enough. It’s a matter of civic pride.
To say that local news is a cornerstone of democracy is not just a platitude. Studies have found that areas with higher engagement with local news have higher levels of civic engagement. Local newspapers foster community cohesion and contribute to the informed citizenry the Founders considered vital to a functioning Republic. After all, that’s why a free press is guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Moving from national to local news isn’t a demotion in my eyes, then, but a promotion that is a great honor and even greater responsibility. Small towns deserve to see themselves reflected and taken seriously every bit as much as large urban areas or Congress and Wall Street. They deserve reporters and editors who are dedicated to telling their stories, to establishing a public record of their history and people.
Local newspapers aren’t just instruments of reporting on the dry proceedings of city hall or the local school board. They are civic institutions that help a community function by and for the people who call it home. Glasgow may be “the middle of nowhere,” but as the newest resident and as a journalist, I want to remind my neighbors that where we live may be “the middle of nowhere,” but that even nowhere is somewhere that matters.
Skylar Baker-Jordan is the editor of the Glasgow Courier in Glasgow, Montana.
