Establishing a baseline understanding of the Indiana news ecosystem

Journalism at the Crossroads of America: An Ecosystem Analysis of Newsmaking in Indiana

By Suzannah Evans Comfort, Ryan Comfort, Jack Bassett, Tyler Spence, Aanila Kishwar Tarannum, and Jiye Sun

Watch the recording of Comfort presenting the team’s findings.

Acknowledgements

This report was made possible by a gift from Barbara Restle, an IU alumna who earned her B.A. in Journalism and Political Science in 1977. We are also grateful to the Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies and the Indiana Broadcasters Association for their support.

Introduction

Indiana is a local news state. It is not home to any news organizations dedicated to producing journalism for a national audience. Our Hoosier journalists are our journalists. They report for Hoosier communities.

Assessing the Indiana news ecosystem is an important step toward shoring up and protecting what is an essential resource for civic health. Reflecting national trends, Indiana has faced news organization closures, declines in advertising sales, the loss of state and federal funding for public media, and many other headwinds that have harmed local journalism over the last two decades.

But the story of local news in Indiana is not just one of distress and decline. And the goal of this report is not to look backwards. Instead, we focus on the present and the future for newsmaking in Indiana. Because despite some reports to the contrary, local journalism in Indiana is not dead. It’s changing – sometimes in painful ways. But at the same time, a new infrastructure for journalism is growing in Indiana.

We are at an inflection point: a crossroads for journalism at the Crossroads of America.

Why local journalism matters

The journalism landscape has been profoundly affected by changes in the information marketplace since the early 2000s. The last two decades have seen the closures of thousands of news organizations nationwide and the loss of tens of thousands of journalist jobs, particularly in local news.¹ These changes have been primarily driven by the advent of a hypercompetitive digital media environment drawing both audience attention and advertising investment away from traditional news organizations.

These challenges have exposed a weakness in the news infrastructure: Journalism is primarily a profit-driven institution, and yet it is tasked with a public service role to inform the public and to hold powerful institutions and people to account. This public service role is rarely, on its own, profitable. Once digital media allowed audiences to divorce their attention from news products toward entertainment and games (which have long subsidized newsmaking when they were bundled together in the form of newspaper sections or on television and radio stations), it became very challenging to make news production a market success.

The legacy local news organizations that have survived tend to be in affluent communities and surrounded by other news organizations with which they can collaborate and share resources.² Meanwhile, lower density and lower income communities faced the greatest losses and access to quality local news.

Yet local news is a foundational ingredient in community and civic health. Local news organization closures have been connected to a variety of negative externalities, including higher borrowing costs for local governments,³ increased air pollution,⁴ and even decreased rates of violent crimes being solved by law enforcement.⁵ Because national news media tend to be more partisan in their coverage, reliance on national news after the disappearance of local news results in communities that are more polarized than ever.⁶

Moreover, local news is more trusted than national news. This especially applies to news organizations that indicate their locality through something as simple as their name.⁷ Three-quarters of Americans report “a lot” or “some” trust in local news, compared to 59 percent for national news. The difference is especially stark for Republicans, 66 percent of whom report “a lot” or “some” trust in local news compared to 40 percent in national news.⁸

Local journalists are community members too, and this dual identity – reporter, but also school parent and taxpayer and Little League coach – influences their decisions in their reporting. Compared to national reporters, they are much more likely to produce journalism that they believe contributes to community building, meaning-making, and problem-solving.⁹In other words, local journalism is likely to be less conflict-oriented than national news while at the same time providing essential information and context for community function.

Social media platforms, while hugely popular, have not shown that they perform these same roles. Rather, social media platforms tend to contribute to polarization and community unease.¹⁰ Citizens who have lost their local news organization can report diminished pride and a loss of sense of community identity.¹¹

In a nutshell: local news matters.

The goal of this project is to establish a baseline understanding of local news in Indiana to inform broader conversations about civic health and community wellbeing. 

A first-ever database and survey of news organizations 

Our team of researchers at the Media School at Indiana University, led by Associate Professor of Journalism Suzannah Evans Comfort, have produced the first-ever news ecosystem report for the state of Indiana. This project included three phases: first, the creation of a database of news organizations throughout the state; second, a survey of news managers, and third, the publication of the database and survey findings.

Our first task was to establish a baseline of journalistic newsmaking capacity in Indiana. Where are our news organizations? What are their basic characteristics, including type of media production? We built a database of existing news organizations in every city, town, and county of Indiana. We cast a wide net, including legacy news media organizations like television and radio stations along with newspapers and magazines, as well as newer online-only news outlets.

No news organization was too small or niche for inclusion as long as it produced some original journalism serving Indiana communities. The final list included 225 professional news organizations.

Then, we identified a senior newsroom manager at each news organization and invited that person to participate in an online survey. One purpose of the survey was to take the temperature of journalism in Indiana in terms of its health and stability: is our capacity for newmaking growing or shrinking? Another goal was to capture the journalistic values that define local news in Indiana. What coverage areas and practices do these news organizations prioritize, and what areas may be overlooked? Lastly, we examined the adoption of social media and generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology in Indiana newsrooms.

This report begins with an overview of findings before taking a closer look at several emerging trends in the Indiana news ecosystem. What we found is a story that includes economic distress and a notable lack of news presence in many rural areas, but also resilience, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

As a local news state, Indiana has often been overlooked in conversations about the fate of journalism in the U.S. at large. This report is the first step toward a more nuanced understanding our journalistic ecosystem as it evolves out of the crisis that has characterized the last two decades of local news.

Newsmaking in Indiana: Where is it taking place?

Our team identified 131 newspapers, 10 magazines, 18 digital native news organizations, 66 commercial and public television and radio stations (excluding radio stations that air only music or other entertainment content). See here for the full database of news organizations, including location, medium type, ownership, and more.

Half (52.7 percent) of Indiana’s news organizations are located in urban counties, with the rest nearly equally divided between rural (20.9 percent) and rural/mixed (25.5 percent) counties, using a typology for Indiana counties created by Purdue University Extension’s Center for Rural Development. Marion County is home to the most news organizations (24), followed by Allen (14), St. Joseph (11), Vanderburgh (10), Lake (10), and Monroe (9). Three counties in the state – Ohio, Switzerland, and Vermillion – are home to no local news organizations. These are among the state’s smallest counties by population, and in total include about 30,000 Hoosiers.

Additionally, some counties are home to news organizations that still publish regularly, but employ no journalists. This includes newspapers in Lawrence and Morgan counties that are owned by USA Today Co., previously known as Gannett. These so-called “ghost newspapers” republish content from other outlets in the USA Today Co. portfolio. Very little, if any, material published by these newspapers is specific to local news in those counties.

Another typology of counties produced by Michigan State University’s American Communities Project provides a more detailed view into the characteristics of Indiana counties. Suburbs and exurbs constitute much of the communities that are home to news organizations. College towns, in particular, pop with an abundance of news organizations, with one in five of all Indiana news organizations located in those communities – even though only professional news organizations, not college and university student publications, were included in the database.

^{Note: Percentages may not add to 100 due to missing data for some news organizations.} 

Most news organizations in Indiana are corporate in nature (79.1 percent) and owned by a national (44 percent) or regional chain (21.1 percent). Thirty-seven (17 percent) are independent, meaning they are not owned by a larger media company, and 18 (8.3 percent) are local affiliates of NPR or PBS. Independent news organizations, meaning they are not part of a larger company or chain, are most likely to be located in urban counties.

Thirty (13.6 percent) of news organizations in Indiana are noncommercial. These noncommercial news organizations are much more likely to be located in urban counties (25 noncommercial news organizations) than rural/mixed counties or purely rural counties, which are home to four and one noncommercial news organizations, respectively, using the Purdue University county classification system. A closer look using the more detailed American Community Project’s county classification typology reveals that, again, college towns stand out, with about one in three (36.7 percent) of all noncommercial news organizations in Indiana located in these communities, compared to 23.3 percent in big cities or 26.7 percent in suburbs.

^{Note: The table only includes results from news organizations whose commercial or noncommercial status could be determined.}

The reach and capacity of Indiana news organizations: Audience, budget, and employees

The second phase of this project involved a survey of senior newsroom managers. Beyond mere presence in a community, news organizations’ economic stability, coverage priorities, and role perceptions matter in how events and issues get covered. Only news organizations confirmed to be producing original journalism that serves an Indiana audience were included in the survey.

A senior newsroom manager at every news organization in the database was identified and invited to participate in an online survey. For this section, we also included student news organizations at universities and colleges (37 identified in the state) for a total of 262 news organizations. Newsroom managers – who were often editors, producers, news directors, presidents, vice presidents, and other similar titles – were invited to participate via email and reminded via phone call when possible. The survey garnered 129 initial respondents. Of those, 103 participants completed the entire survey, representing 39 percent of news organizations statewide.

Of the newsroom managers who participated, most worked for independent news organizations (62.1 percent) while 29.2 percent worked for regional or national chains, and another 6.8 percent at public media stations. Nearly half (41.7 percent) worked for newspapers, followed by radio (20.4 percent), online only outlets (12.6 percent), television (8.7 percent), multimedia organizations (8.7 percent), and magazines (7.8 percent). The participants represented both legacy and startup news organizations. Half (49.5 percent) worked for a news organization founded more than 50 years ago, while 15.5 percent worked for news organizations founded in the last ten years. And one in five (20.4 percent) said they oversaw more than one news organization, a common situation for regional chains.

These newsroom managers oversaw organizations with a diversity of audience size, from less than 5,000 audience members per year (9.7 percent) to more than a million (9.7 percent) with most in the 5,000-99,999 range (47.5 percent). Half (47.6 percent) reported that their audiences had grown in the last five years rather than remained the same (24.3 percent) or shrunk (22.3 percent).

Remarkably, 35.9 percent of newsroom managers said they did not know their news organization’s annual budget. This could be viewed as a striking oversight, or the persistence of the firewall between editorial and business practices that is a foundational to the culture of U.S. journalism even in the wake of 20 years of economic crisis for the industry. Still, 25.2 percent of managers said their budgets had grown in the previous five years, compared to remaining the same (26.2 percent) or shrunk (27.2 percent), with 21.4 percent saying they didn’t know. 

Nearly two in three (59.2 percent) newsroom managers said their organization was financially solvent, while one in five (19.4) said it was not solvent or they didn’t know (21.4 percent). The future was more uncertain. Forty percent of managers said they were not sure if the newsroom would be solvent in five years, compared to 47.6 percent who said it would be and 12.1 percent who said it wouldn’t. On average, news organizations in Indiana have 11 editorial staff members, but the most frequent number of editorial staff members is just one person. This means most Indiana news organizations are very small in terms of employees, with a handful of very large news organizations driving up the average. One in five (20.4 percent) of managers said their staff had shrunk in recent years compared to grown (21.4 percent) or remained about the same (52.4 percent).

In other words, most newsroom managers think their finances and staff sizes are stable – but a significant percentage, about a fifth, of news organizations in Indiana are still coping with serious economic insecurity.

Recruiting quality employees emerged as the most significant challenge newsroom managers face, ranked even above financial insecurity. Forty percent of newsroom managers said they were “very concerned” about recruiting and retaining employees as well as financial insecurity. These two problems were ranked much higher than the rest of the problems managers were asked about, including insufficient technological capacities, legal challenges, and monetizing engagement through platforms.

^{Note: Rated on a 5-point scale of 1 (not concerned) to 5 (very concerned). (n=103)}

One way that news organizations deal with financial uncertainty is through the use of unpaid interns and volunteers. Independent news organizations were much more likely to include both unpaid interns and volunteers (71.4 percent) compared to regional (7.1 percent) or national (31.4 percent) chain or public media organizations (6.8 percent). At the same time, independent news organizations were also far more likely than any other category to report that their audiences had grown in recent years (73.5 percent) compared to national chains, which were the most likely to report that their audiences had shrunk (60.9 percent).

So an interesting phenomenon is emerging here: a news organization model that relies more on community members in the form of interns and volunteers is arguably growing in reach while legacy media in a more traditional professional model connected to national corporations may be stagnating or even retreating. More research will be needed to fully understand these findings. 

Role conceptions for Indiana news organizations

Journalists’ jobs are multifaceted. They strive to produce factual, neutrally-voiced reporting that holds powerful people and institutions to account. At the same time, they respond to audience demands for certain types of reporting, such as sports or arts coverage. Other journalists view their job as engaging with communities to empower them for positive change or getting information out as quickly as possible.

Researchers have studied the various ways journalists prioritize their roles for decades. In 1982, Indiana University researchers Dr. David Weaver and Dr. Cleve Wilhoit published their first national survey of U.S. journalists, including their perceptions of their roles. Since then, they have published an updated survey every decade, producing a remarkable record of American journalistic professionalism and practice. The fifth book in their series, The American Journalist Under Attack: Media, Trust, and Democracy, written with Prof. Lars Willnat of Syracuse University, will be published in 2026.

A major contribution of the American Journalist survey series is its definition of four distinct journalistic roles that emerged from its survey results:

• The interpreter-watchdog, who emphasizes investigating government claims, providing analysis of complex problems, discussing national policy and international development
• The populist mobilizer, who motivates people to get involved, points to solutions, lets people express views, develops cultural interests, and sets the political agenda
• The adversary, who takes an oppositional stance toward government and business
• The disseminator, who gets information to the public quickly, reaches the widest audience, provides entertainment, and avoids unverified facts.¹²

Over the decades, the interpreter-watchdog has remained the most popular role conception amongst journalists. In other words, they like to see themselves vigorously reporting on government and other institutions. The populist mobilizer has risen in popularity since emerging in the 1990s, and the adversary and disseminator roles have diminished to some degree – perhaps because social media platforms have easily adapted to those roles.

The American Journalist survey relies on national samples that includes journalists working for local, regional, national, and international news organizations. But how do journalists in Indiana, focused nearly entirely on local news, view their roles? Will it differ from the national results?

We used the American Journalist list of perceived journalistic functions to ask Indiana newsroom managers how they viewed their work and compared the results to the national survey. In addition, we added several more functions that may be specific to local journalism, such as “discuss local policy,” “help to build a stronger community,” “showcase positive aspects of community,” and “serve the audience’s needs.”

The functions specific to local news resonated with Indiana journalists, with more than half rating each function as “very important,” including two in three (67 percent) who rated “serve the audience’s needs” as very important. Indiana journalists were much less likely than the national sample to say that investigating government claims and providing analysis of complex problems was very important, both key components of the interpreter-watchdog role. They were equally likely as journalists nationwide to support the populist-mobilizer role, including functions such as pointing to solutions, motivating people to get involved, developing the public’s cultural interests, and setting the political agenda.

Indiana journalists rejected the adversarial role, with only seven and three percent saying that serving as an adversary of government and business was very important, compared to 20 and 19, respectively, of the national sample.

On the other side, Indiana journalists were more supportive of the disseminator function of journalism than journalists nationwide, including avoiding unverified content, reaching the widest possible audience, and providing entertainment.

What emerges is a picture of a Hoosier journalistic culture that shares some characteristics with journalism nationwide but is not a perfect mirror. The lauded watchdog-interpreter role, long the most lionized images of journalistic practice both inside the news industry and in the popular imagination, still resonates with Indiana journalists but does not dominate, and they entirely reject the adversarial role.

Instead, the newly created functions specific to serving local communities emerges as a primary function. It suggests that local journalism has a character that is distinct from regional or national journalism. And since Indiana is a local journalism state, it also suggests we are home to more service-oriented journalism that builds communities. 

^{Note: Rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (not important) to 5 (very important). (n=103)
*These variables were not included in the national survey. Source: Willnat, L., Weaver, D.H., and Wilhoit, G.C. (2026). The American Journalist Under Attack: Media, Trust, and Democracy. Peter Lang.}

News priorities in Indiana

Education emerged as the top news priority in Indiana newsrooms. This may reflect the service orientation of Indiana journalism, as schools and education are essential components to any community, but also an opening for original local journalism as national news media will rarely cover a local school.

Surprisingly, crime and sports were ranked relatively low as news priorities. A glance at the home pages of most news organizations will reveal that crime and sports are among the most commonly-covered topics by sheer volume alone. A gap emerges here between the stated priorities of newsrooms and the lived practice of their work. Future research that examines the output of local news organizations could more fully capture the characteristics of journalism in Indiana.

^{Note: Rated on a 5-point scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) with the statement “My news organization prioritizes covering [topic].” (n=103)}

Technology adoption, old and new: Social media and artificial intelligence

The recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies recalls the advent of social media platforms in the mid-2000s. Like these platforms did two decades ago, generative AI has the potential to significantly affect journalistic practice and dissemination. And for many in the news business, the industry’s slow adaptation to social media platforms serves as a cautionary tale. But AI adoption by news organizations is in its infancy, and what this technology will mean for local journalism and its credibility remains to be seen.

We asked how Indiana news organizations used both social media platforms and generative AI software like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Unsurprisingly, social media platforms are much more widely adopted by newsrooms compared to generative AI, and news organizations rate the success of their use fairly well, with most news managers rating their use as “good.” Meanwhile, AI adoption is evaluated as “needs improvement” or “adequate” by most newsrooms.

Only three news organizations said they had no plans to adopt social media, while 33 percent – one third – of newsrooms said they had no plans to adopt AI use. But AI adoption may resemble social media adoption in the future, as 63 percent of newsrooms report they are in some stage of AI adoption.

Meanwhile, it is clear that social media platforms have become widely integrated into the newsmaking process. While the most popular use is dissemination, e.g., sharing news items (88 percent of news organizations), most news organizations also report using social media to find news topics (84 percent), sources (77 percent), background information (63 percent) and videos and photos (51 percent).

AI use is much less common. Like social media, the top use is dissemination, with 35 percent of Indiana news organizations reporting use of that function. But many of the other uses that AI software is designed to do, such as content aggregation, translation, and transcription are still significantly underused by news organizations. And the tasks that AI could do that are closest to the journalistic mission – writing up copy wholesale, for example, or data visualization – are very rarely used (just 12 percent and 13 percent, respectively). This likely reflects the significant concerns about accuracy that still plague generative AI software. As noted in previous findings, avoiding publishing unverified content is the top concern of Indiana news organizations. 

Key takeaways

The purpose of this report was to establish a baseline understanding of the Indiana news ecosystem, which has never before been systematically examined. This project has revealed that local journalism in Indiana faces significant challenges amid ongoing change for the industry. At the same time, it also demonstrates that Indiana is home to more than 200 news organizations that strive to serve our communities through factual reporting that builds trust and collective identity. And that’s a source of Hoosier pride.

Some key takeaways from the results:

Most news organizations in Indiana are very small, with just a handful of editorial employees. Because Indiana rarely receives news attention from news organizations located outside the state, we are reliant on this small community of journalists to provide credible coverage that serves the state.

At least one in five news organizations faces serious financial distress. The news industry in the U.S. has experienced financial headwinds for nearly two decades. That continues in Indiana, leaving open the possibility that the news ecosystem is positioned for even more change in the coming years.

Indiana demonstrates significant inequality in news access in urban vs. rural counties. The large majority of news organizations are located in larger population areas, which is not surprising. Perhaps what is more surprising is the younger crop of startup news organizations are also likely to be located in urban centers, leaving rural communities behind. One exception is the recently founded Owen News in Owen County (population: 21,000). Four counties in Indiana, home to 112,000 Hoosiers, have no news organizations.

A journalism brain drain? Recruiting and retaining quality employees emerged as a significant concern alongside financial issues for news organizations. How Indiana can become an attractive home for aspiring and experienced journalists is a challenge worth tackling.

Indiana journalists value accuracy and serving the community above all else. Journalists are mission-driven, and Hoosier journalists are no exception. They care deeply about providing credible information that helps their communities.

News organizations are grappling with the implications of AI. Like any technological breakthrough, AI is neither entirely good nor bad for the news industry. It has the potential to improve information access as well as to diminish news credibility. News organizations are still figuring out how to handle this latest disruption. Trainings on positive uses of AI software for journalism practice could be a useful resource for Indiana news organizations.

Additional resources

News ecosystem reports can take many forms other than the one presented here. The University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute has produced a guide to commissioning local news ecosystem analyses that offers a pathway for funders interested in future reports that might also include research on journalistic performance or audience information needs.

A recent report from FT Strategies and the Knight Foundation entitled “ The Local News Playbook: Creating Value for a Sustainable Future” offers a research-informed guide to building financially sustainable, community-focused local news organizations.

Ever wondered how effective community events are for driving support for local journalism? A report from the Minnesota Journalism Center and the Alliance for Trust in Media discusses how community events can deepen engagement with existing audiences but aren’t a perfect solution for reaching new audiences.

Press Forward’s “This is Local News Now: Rethinking Who Creates, Shares, and Sustains It” explores how journalism engages with other participants in information stewardship, including civic promoters and engaged citizens. Reframing journalism’s role in the information landscape can expand the possibilities for partnership and sustainability.

Speaking of information needs, the Civic Information News Census provides research demonstrating that audiences report more access to news about other countries than their own neighborhoods. They also report struggles in finding sufficient information about economic opportunities, health, the environment and politics.

References

¹ Abernathy P. M. 2020. News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive? White Paper. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/news-deserts-and-ghost-newspapers-will-local-news-survive/ 

² Qin, A. Y. (2024). Where Is Local News Dying Off?: Mechanisms Behind the Formation of Local News Deserts in the United States. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990241277885 

³ Gao, P., Lee, C., & Murphy, D. (2020). Financing dies in darkness? The impact of newspaper closures on public finance. Journal of Financial Economics, 135(2), 445-467. 

⁴ Jiang, J. X., & Kong, J. (2024). Green dies in darkness? Environmental externalities of newspaper closures. Review of Accounting Studies, 29(4), 3564-3599.

⁵ Mastrorocco, N., & Ornaghi, A. (2025). Who watches the watchmen? Local news and police behavior in the United States. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 17(2), 285-318.

⁶ Darr, J. P., Hitt, M. P., & Dunaway, J. L. (2018). Newspaper closures polarize voting behavior. Journal of Communication, 68(6), 1007-1028.

⁷ Peterson, E., Darr, J. P., Allamong, M. B., & Henderson, M. (2024). Can Americans’ trust in local news be trusted? The emergence, sources, and implications of the local news trust advantage. American Journal of Political Science.

⁸ Pew Research Center. (2025, February 10). On issue after issue, Americans say things are going better locally than nationally. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/10/on-issue-after-issue-americans-say-things-are-going-better-locally-than-nationally/ 

⁹ Smith, C. C. (2019). Identity(ies) explored: How journalists’ self-conceptions influence small-town news. Journalism Practice, 13(5), 524-536. 

¹⁰ Kubin, E., & Von Sikorski, C. (2021). The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review. Annals of the International Communication Association, 45(3), 188-206.

¹¹ Mathews, N. (2020). Life in a news desert: The perceived impact of a newspaper closure on community members. Journalism, 23(6), 1250-1265. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920957885 

¹² Weaver, D. H., Willnat, L., & Wilhoit, G. C. (2017). The American journalist in the digital age: A half-century perspective. Peter Lang, p. 189.