When the News Left Town

I was born in 1978. That year, the Granite City Press-Record was a fixture - as it had been since 1903, when the city itself was barely a decade old.

I have a memory from grade school that's stayed with me. I won some kind of prize - a drawing contest or a short essay, I can't quite remember which - and my parents took me to the newspaper’s actual brick and mortar office to have my picture taken. I remember the place. I remember feeling like it mattered.

When I searched the Six Mile Library District’s online archive of the Post-Dispatch, I couldn’t find that photo or story, but I did go down a rabbit hole of memories from articles that I had appeared in through the years.

Our teachers taught us about the importance of media, especially local media. The newspaper wasn't abstract - it was tangible. We knew the reporters and photographers when they showed up at school events. They had names and faces. They were part of the community they covered.

Every week for 109 years, the Press-Record covered Granite City, Pontoon Beach, Mitchell, Madison, and Venice. City council meetings. High school sports. Business openings. Obituaries. The small accumulations of fact that told residents what was happening in the place they called home.

On December 26, 2012, the Press-Record published its final edition.

The Press-Record's story is Granite City's story.

The paper started in 1903 as the Granite City Press, just twelve years after the Niedringhaus brothers founded the city. A competing paper, the Granite City Herald, launched in 1906. By 1908, the two had merged into the Granite City Press and Herald - because even then, the economics of local news were challenging.

In 1912, the paper became the Granite City Press-Record. For the next century, through two world wars, the Great Depression, the rise and struggles of the steel industry, the transformation of Lincoln Place, and countless school board elections, it documented this community's life.

The paper changed hands over the decades, eventually becoming part of Lee Enterprises' Suburban Journals chain. When Lee acquired Pulitzer in 2005, the chain published 35 papers. The bad economy, the internet, and crushing debt forced consolidation. By 2009, they were down to 10 editions. More cuts followed.

The Press-Record held on until December 2012. In August 2014, what remained was merged with the Collinsville Herald to create the Madison County Journal - a regional paper covering multiple communities, none with the dedicated focus the Press-Record once provided.

It wasn't alone in disappearing. In the years since I was born - in my lifetime, all 48 years of it - America has lost more than a third of its newspapers. More than 3,200 papers have closed since 2005 alone. Two newspapers disappear every week, on average. Over 266,000 newspaper jobs have vanished - a 73% decline.

I knew this was bad for journalism. What I didn't fully grasp until recently was how bad it's been for democracy itself.

Over the past decade, researchers have been documenting what happens to communities when their local paper dies. The findings are consistent and troubling.

Voter turnout drops. A study of 233 Canadian municipalities found that healthier local media environments are significantly and positively related to higher turnout in mayoral elections. In Boise, Idaho, as mayoral coverage in the Idaho Statesman fell from 7.7% to 3.5% of the news hole between 2001 and 2011, mayoral turnout declined from 24.8% to 11.4% - a virtually identical 54% drop in both.

An Illinois State University thesis published just this year examined 45 Illinois counties from 2005 to 2023. The finding: voter turnout in local elections declines with the loss of each local newspaper.

And it's not just the inattentive who stop voting. Researchers found that citizens exposed to less local news coverage are less able to evaluate their elected officials, less likely to express opinions about candidates, and less likely to vote - regardless of their level of political awareness. The damage is widespread, not restricted to people who weren't paying attention anyway.

Corruption increases. When researchers at George Mason University studied federal districts that lost a major daily newspaper between 1996 and 2019, they found a 7.3% increase in corruption cases filed, a 6.8% increase in indicted defendants, and a 7.4% increase in total cases after the paper closed.

The pattern held across the country. Less scrutiny means more misbehavior.

Government costs more. Economists studying newspaper closures found that municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points after a paper closes - costing municipalities an average of $650,000 more per bond issue. Why? Without reporters watching, local governments become less efficient. Wages for government employees rise. Deficits grow. Costly financial transactions become more common.

When the watchdog leaves, the costs pile up - and taxpayers foot the bill.

Corporate misconduct rises too. Harvard researchers found that when local newspapers close, workplace safety violations, environmental violations, and other corporate misconduct increase at facilities in the affected areas. The press isn't just watching government - it's watching everyone.

Consider what's disappeared:

The pace isn't slowing. In the past year alone, 130 newspapers shut their doors. The United States has now lost more than one-third of the papers it had in 2005 - a milestone researchers predicted wouldn't arrive until 2025 but we passed in 2024.

And the closures aren't random. They cluster in communities that are already vulnerable - rural areas, low-income neighborhoods, places with significant Black, Hispanic, and Native American populations. The communities most likely to need accountability journalism are the ones most likely to lose it.

Here's the cruel irony: the elections most affected by newspaper decline are the ones that matter most to your daily life.

Presidential races still get plenty of coverage. But your city council? Your school board? Your park district? Those decisions affect you more directly than almost anything that happens in Washington - and they're the ones most likely to happen in the dark now.

When Cincinnati lost its second newspaper, the Cincinnati Post, researchers found that fewer candidates ran for office, incumbents became more likely to win reelection, and both voter turnout and campaign spending fell. Less competition. Less accountability. Less democracy.

In communities with less local news, voters are more likely to vote on party lines, relying on partisan cues rather than information about specific candidates. Members of Congress who get less local coverage vote the party line more often. The connection between citizens and their representatives weakens at every level.

A University of Chicago professor who studies elections put it starkly: "If the question is 'What do we do to increase voter turnout?' I don't think there's evidence of any reform that has as big an impact as [local news coverage]. There's just nothing that even comes close."

Here's what I keep thinking about: the reporters and photographers we recognized.

When a Press-Record photographer showed up at a Warriors soccer game or a city or parish festival or a city council meeting, they weren't anonymous. They were neighbors. People knew their names. They'd been covering the community for years - sometimes decades. They had institutional memory. They knew who was related to whom, which alderman had a grudge against which developer, what had been tried before and why it failed.

That kind of knowledge doesn't come from parachuting in. It comes from showing up, over and over, year after year. It comes from being embedded in a community.

When the Press-Record closed, that institutional memory walked out the door. Regional reporters covering Madison County from Collinsville or Belleville can't possibly know Granite City the way a dedicated local reporter did. They don't have the time. They don't have the relationships. They don't have the history.

So things go uncovered. Meetings happen that nobody writes about. Decisions get made that nobody scrutinizes. The connective tissue between citizens and their government frays a little more.

When newspapers close, something usually fills the gap. The question is what.

Granite City Gossip has provided community news since 2006. The Granite City Daily News website covers local events. Regional outlets - the Belleville News-Democrat, RiverBender.com, the Alton Telegraph - include Granite City in their coverage area. These matter, and the people doing this work deserve credit.

Researchers tracking the media landscape have found net increases in digital-only local news sites - a genuine bright spot. Nonprofit newsrooms, ethnic media outlets, and public broadcasting stations are picking up some of the slack.

But these replacements tend to cluster in metropolitan areas. They're smaller. They cover fewer beats. And crucially, when researchers examined whether online news startups curbed corruption the way traditional papers did, they found no effect.

The reasons aren't entirely clear. Maybe the new outlets lack the resources for investigative work. Maybe they haven't built the institutional relationships and sources that take years to develop. Maybe readers don't trust or follow them the way they did the hometown paper.

Whatever the reason, the substitutes haven't fully replaced what was lost. Not yet.

There's a practical response to all this, and it's one I've been thinking about a lot.

If reporters aren't showing up to public meetings, citizens need to.

City council meetings are public. Anyone can attend. The agendas are posted in advance. You can even watch them on YouTube. The discussions happen whether anyone's watching or not - but they happen differently when people are watching.

I've started paying attention, asking more questions, and discussing these issues with others more myself. Not because I expect to find scandal or corruption, but because I want to understand how decisions get made. Who raises concerns? Who defers to whom? What gets discussed at length and what gets rushed through?

Here's what I've learned: it's valuable even when nothing dramatic happens. You start to see patterns. You start to understand the context behind decisions. You become a more informed citizen - and a more informed voter.

When you show up and then talk to your neighbors about what you heard, you're doing a small version of what newspapers used to do. You're sharing information. You're creating common knowledge. You're being the connective tissue.

It's not a replacement for professional journalism. But it's not nothing, either.

If this resonates with you, a few thoughts:

Vote. The next election is closer than you think. Illinois holds its General Primary on March 17, 2026 - less than seven weeks away. That's when we'll nominate candidates for U.S. Senate (Dick Durbin's open seat has a competitive Democratic primary), U.S. House, Governor, and state legislature. Early voting opens next week.

Then there's the General Election on November 3, 2026.

Municipal elections - city council, school board, park district - happen on a different cycle in Illinois: the first Tuesday in April of odd-numbered years. The next consolidated election is April 2027. That's when local offices are on the ballot, and that's when turnout craters. In some Illinois communities, fewer than 15% of voters show up for municipal elections. Your vote matters more, not less, when fewer people participate.

Attend a public meeting. City council meets regularly. So does the school board. So does the park district. Pick one. Show up. You don't have to speak - just watch and listen. See how decisions get made.

Talk about what you learn. If you attend a meeting and hear something interesting, tell people. Post about it. Mention it at church or at work. Be the information network the community needs.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to outlets that cover your community. Share their stories. If you see good local reporting, say so. The business model is broken, but communities that invest in their news outlets tend to keep them longer.

Be a source. If you know something newsworthy, tell a journalist. Local reporters - the ones who remain - need tips and sources more than ever. If you see something that should be covered, say something.

I didn't start Granite Citizen to replace the Press-Record. I don't have the resources to publish a comprehensive local paper, and I'm not pretending otherwise.

But I looked at the research on what happens to communities that lose local news - the declining voter turnout, the rising corruption, the government inefficiency, the fraying of civic life - and I thought: we can do better than nothing.

I remember that trip to the Press-Record office as a kid. I remember thinking the newspaper was important - not because my teachers told me so, but because I could see it. The reporters who showed up. The stories that mattered to people. The connection between information and community.

Every story we publish about city council. Every business we profile. Every piece of Granite City's history we preserve. It's a small attempt to rebuild something that was lost.

The research is clear: local journalism matters. Not just for the journalists, but for the community. For the voters who need information. For the officials who need accountability. For the residents who need to know what's happening in the place they call home.

For 109 years, the Press-Record did that work. We've been without a dedicated local paper for over a decade now.

I can't bring back what we lost. But I can try to build something new. And I can show up to meetings and report what I see.

Maybe you can too.

The Illinois General Primary is March 17, 2026. Early voting opens next week and February 18 at remote sites. Find get more information at https://www.madisoncountyil.gov/departments/county_clerk/elections/index.php.

Granite City Council meets on the first and third Monday of each month. School Board meets monthly. These meetings are open to the public. Show up sometime - and let us know what you learn.

Have thoughts on local news and civic engagement in Granite City? Contact me at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you.

GraniteCitizen is just getting started. Be sure to sign up to get notified when new stories go live - business profiles, heritage features, local news, and more. No spam, just Granite City.