Fewer newspapers means fewer opinions expressed. According to Tim Crosby, in 1923, 502 U.S. cities had access to at least two local newspapers, and since then the number of cities has been on the decline, so by 2003, only two dozen cities across the country had such a thing available to them. Opinions are especially important when it comes to things like elections. According to Hallock, the heart of any newspaper is it's editorial or opinion pages, and not being able to have people express their opinions and ideas about the upcoming local elections and the candidates seriously hurts America's democracy.
Newspapers keep their citizens informed of not only what is going on around them locally, but nationally as well. Of course, people could go online or turn on the television and watch what was happening, but not everyone has access to the Internet or television. In the case of the news on the Internet and television, it is more of a national news then it is local. People want to know not only what is going on nationally, but they want to know the stories and topics that hit close to home. Newspapers seem to be the only thing that really does that.
Residents want to be deeply informed about candidates, policy, and government responsiveness in their own communities, and the local newspapers were doing just that for them. As a result of having that kind of information in the newspapers, better candidates and policies came out of it. The competition is what strengthens the democracy. You take the healthy competition away, and your going to start to have unjust and corrupted politics. We all know that politicians are considered "liars," so if you have two politicians competing against each other, the truth will eventually come out, and that right there is the a major reason why we need to keep newspapers around; to save America's democracy.
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