Local news outlets have struggled to stay open in the more competitive market of digital media. Some have noted that this decline may be due to the ways in which digital platforms direct attention to some news outlets and not others. To test this theory, we collected 12.29 million responses to Google News searches within all US counties for a set of keywords. We compared the number of local outlets reported in the results against the number of national outlets. We find that, unless consumers are searching specifically for topics of local interest, national outlets dominate search results. Features correlated with local supply and demand, such as the number of local outlets and demographics associated with local news consumption, are not related to the likelihood of finding a local news outlet. Our findings imply that platforms may be diverting web traffic and desperately needed advertising dollars away from local news.

当地新闻媒体一直在努力在竞争更加激烈的数字媒体市场中保持开放。一些人指出，这种下降可能是由于数字平台将注意力转向某些新闻媒体而不是其他新闻媒体的方式。为了验证这一理论，我们收集了 1229 万条对美国所有县谷歌新闻搜索的一组关键词的回复。我们将结果中报告的当地网点数量与全国网点数量进行了比较。我们发现，除非消费者专门搜索当地感兴趣的主题，否则全国性网点会主导搜索结果。与当地供需相关的特征，例如当地媒体的数量和与当地新闻消费相关的人口统计数据，与找到当地新闻媒体的可能性无关。