Duolingo English Test Interactive Reading Practice #11 — Upper Level

The printed newspaper dominated public discourse for nearly three centuries. At its peak in the mid-twentieth century, a major city newspaper could reach millions of readers daily, employing hundreds of journalists who covered everything from local crime to international affairs. The business model was straightforward: advertising revenue subsidized the cost of producing and distributing content, while circulation figures determined advertising rates. The arrangement, though far from perfect, sustained newsrooms large enough to conduct time-consuming investigative work.

The arrival of the internet fundamentally disrupted this ecosystem. Classified advertising, which had historically accounted for a significant portion of newspaper revenue, migrated almost entirely to free online platforms within the space of a decade. Display advertising followed as brands discovered they could target specific audiences with greater precision and at lower cost through digital channels. Between 2005 and 2020, the number of newspaper newsroom employees in the United States fell by more than half, leaving vast regions of the country with dramatically reduced local coverage — a phenomenon scholars have termed 'news deserts.'

Digital journalism emerged to fill part of the void, but its economics have proved persistently fragile. Online advertising revenue is concentrated among a handful of large technology platforms rather than distributed across publishers. Subscription models have shown promise for elite national outlets with strong brand identities, but have struggled to gain traction among local news organizations, which face the additional challenge of convincing readers to pay for coverage of issues they may not perceive as urgent. Philanthropic funding and nonprofit models have emerged as alternative structures, though they remain insufficient to replace commercial newsrooms at scale.

The consequences of diminished local journalism extend beyond the inconvenience of being less informed. Research has documented a correlation between the decline of local newspapers and measurable civic disengagement: lower voter turnout, reduced participation in public meetings, and higher rates of government corruption in communities lacking robust press coverage. When no reporter attends a city council meeting, officials face fewer accountability pressures, and the decisions made in those rooms become effectively invisible to the people they affect.