News deserts If local papers are dying, will local democracy die with them?

'Do you have lots of stickers?" asks a mother with a buggy and two small children as Evelyn Akoto takes a break outside Coffee #1 in Trowbridge during a day of knocking on doors.

- Jane Croft

If the national polls are correct, Akoto is in with a decent chance of becoming the first ever Labour MP for South West Wiltshire, where the Conservative incumbent, Andrew Murrison, is defending a 21,630 majority.

In the past Akoto might have stopped off at the market town's local newspaper office on the campaign trail. But the main Trowbridge office of the Wiltshire Times, part of Newsquest and ultimately the US-based media group Gannett, closed in 2019 and was redeveloped for housing.

These days political campaigns are as likely to target local voters on social media as through the columns of regional newspapers or local radio or television, where cutbacks mean far fewer journalists having to cover larger areas.

According to the Charitable Journalism Project, there are probably fewer local newspapers in Britain now than at any time since the 18th century, and the number continues to decline: more than 320 local titles closed between 2009 and 2019 as local newspaper advertising revenue fell 70% between 2010 and 2020.

Trowbridge was one of seven places including Whitby in North Yorkshire and Lewisham in London analysed in depth in 2022 by the Charitable Journalism Project in a report on local news deserts in Britain. It described the collapse in reporting as a "slow-burning crisis". Its report found Facebook pages were increasingly supplanting local papers. It noted that Trowbridge had a population of more than 45,000 and more than 31,000 people were in a single Facebook group, Spotted in Trowbridge. It now has 38,000 followers posting on topics from job requests to crime.