North Dakota Leads National Charge to Save Local News
Steve Hallstrom
Special to The Farmer
When Tony Bender, the beloved editor of the Ashley Tribune and Wishek Star, passed away suddenly last year, two North Dakota communities didn’t just lose a writer - they nearly lost their history. At about the same time, the longtime publisher in Mohall, LaVonne Erickson, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In many parts of the United States, these tragedies would have signaled the end of the local paper.
Instead, North Dakota fought back.
According to Cecile Wehrman, Executive Director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association (NDNA), the state has managed to hold the line against a national tide of closures. “We need to make the public aware that newspapers are under stress, but at the same time that we still have 71 newspapers in North Dakota. In the past year, we had two publishers die, and through the efforts of NDNA facilitating community meetings and supporting new owners, we’ve kept those newspapers going. So that’s the kind of work we’re trying to spur for this.”
Wehrman, in a recent interview with KTGO The Flag Radio, said that the NDNA, in partnership with the Rural Development Finance Corporation (RDFC), recently concluded a massive, year-long study titled the “Future of Local News Initiative.” The study was funded by a $150,000 grant from the Bush Foundation, and provides a rare, data-driven “blueprint” for survival in an industry facing a massive generational transition.
The urgency in North Dakota mirrors a dire national landscape. According to the 2025 State of Local News Report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the U.S. has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers since 2005. In the last three years alone, the rate of loss has remained steady at more than two closures per week.
Medill’s research highlights that 136 newspapers closed in the past year alone, following 130 in 2024 and approximately 120 in 2023. These closures have left 213 U.S. counties as “news deserts” - areas with no local news outlet - affecting over 50 million Americans. Unlike previous years driven by corporate consolidation, the majority of recent closures involve small, independent, family-owned weeklies - the kind of papers that have been foundational to communities across rural North Dakota.
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