; (3) more than 200 of the 3,143 counties and county equivalents in the United States have no local newspaper at all, creating a news shortage for the roughly 4,000,000 residents of those areas; (4) of the remaining counties in the United States, more than 1/2 have only 1 newspaper to cover populations ranging from fewer than 1,000 to more than 1,000,000 residents and 2/3 have no daily newspaper, with fewer than 100 of these counties having a digital substitute; (5) more than 1/2 of all newspapers in the United States have changed owners during the past decade, and, in 2020, the 25 largest newspaper ownership companies owned 1/3 of all daily newspapers, including 70 percent of newspapers that still circulate daily; (6) of the surviving 6,700 newspapers in the United States, thousands now qualify as ghost newspapers , or newspapers with reporting and photography staffs that are so significantly reduced that they can no longer provide much of the breaking news or public service journalism that once informed readers about vital issues in their communities; (7) rural counties are among the counties most deeply impacted by the loss of local reporting, as more than 500 of the nearly 2,900 newspapers that have closed since 2005 are in rural counties; and (8) researchers at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism estimate that 228 counties in the United States are at an elevated risk of becoming news deserts in the next 5 years, which would inordinately impact high-poverty areas in the South and Midwest and communities with significant Black, Latino, and Native American populations; Whereas, while overall employment in newspaper, television, radio, and digital newsrooms dropped by roughly 26 percent, or 30,000 jobs, between 2008 and 2020, the plunge in newspaper newsrooms alone was much worse at 57 percent, or 40,000 jobs, during that same time period; Whereas the number of news employees in the radio broadcasting industry dropped by 26 percent between 2008 and 2020