Democracy Dies in Darkness. It is a saying popularized by Washington Post investigative journalist Bob Woodward and later adopted by the paper as the slogan beneath its masthead.
I’ve always liked to think about journalism as a light you shine on what happens in dark places. As newspapers moved from the printing press to the website post, subscription and advertising revenue became less reliable. Some newspapers closed, and many of America’s small towns were left in the dark, without coverage – also called by some – news deserts.
A mixed-use building at I-95 and Saint Lucie West Boulevard, in Port Saint Lucie, used to be the Treasure Coast Newspapers printing and packaging facility. It was sold in 2023. The facility used to be home of three newspapers, The Saint Lucie News Tribune, The Stuart News and The Indian River Press Journal.
Right now, Saint Lucie County does not have any physically-printed daily or weekly newspaper. The closest t-v news stations are in West Palm Beach… 50 miles away.
According to a list compiled by the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism, Saint Lucie County is one of six Florida Counties – including its southern neighbor Martin County – to have zero such papers. Nationwide, you will find 200 such counties. It is published at usnewsdeserts.com.
This sounds bleak, but small communities similar to these are finding a renaissance of coverage… from TV news.
In recent years, FOX4 in Fort Myers and ABC27 in Tallahassee — both owned by Scripps — have switched news formats to feature reporters covering geographic beats.
“There are some cities in our DMA [or Designated Marketing Area] that are an hour and a half away,” said Alberto Camargo, WTXL’s Collegetown Neighborhood Reporter. “Having the neighborhood model allows someone to be based there always 24/7. It allows more stores, better stories, probably scoops out there that other stations aren’t getting because someone is out there every day.”
In WTXL’s In-Your-Neighborhood model and WFTX’s Community-Correspondents model, reporters join the communities they cover. They sign up for local online discussion forums, living there when they can and often volunteering for non-profits in the community.
“I volunteer at the animal shelter,” said WFTX Charlotte County Community Correspondent Alex Orenczuk, “so a lot of people know me from there, being involved in the community more so than if I was living in Fort Myers and reporting in Charlotte County.”
Tallahassee’s WTXL was the first to adopt the new format. It was back in summer of 2023. Managers there quickly decided to only require four stories in a five-day work week.
“The reason we decided it was important that our reporters were given what we call a work day,” said WTXL Station Manaager Vicki Bradley, “is because we know that it takes time to set up quality stories.”
With newscasts no longer featuring news anchors, her station hired more reporters and also asked them to do more, often beginning the newscast from the field and tossing to each other, with limited live studio segments other than the weather.
At WFTX in Fort Myers, things are a little different. FOX4’s station manager, Autumn Jones says her market is larger than Tallahassee’s and often has more late-breaking news. That’s why they keep a full news set and sometimes opt to bring back anchors when the news demands.
“Our team really has to be ready to pivot if, there’s something breaking it,” said Jones, “a lot of information is coming in quickly, so they have to be able to pivot between the live traditional model and also the recorded model.”
If this formula for covering these under-covered communities is universal… then you’d be able to find four stories a week in other such communities… so I gave it a try.
Mainland Florida’s southernmost city—Florida City – is just far enough from Miami that it is usually the crime stories drawing coverage. In February 2024, I set out in search of four news pkgs every seven days. They can all be found at YouTube.com/@30DayMMJ.
In week one, I cover a street naming for agricultural icon who was once the city’s top employer, a feature about the city’s unofficial nickname, a dying tree being removed ahead of a wind advisory, and the release of bodycam video showing an officer being hit by car.
In week two, I cover a celebration of the mayor’s 40th year in office, a restaurant preparing for Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day at the same time, a community trash cleanup, and a red cross smoke detector giveaway.
In week three, I do a feature on Presidents Day weekend shopping, a proposed city hall internship program for high schoolers, an annual festival in memory of a teenage shooting victim, and the proposed moving of the city’s pioneer museum.
In the fourth and final week, I cover a mobile van bringing access to medicine to migrant workers, the mystery of a limestone cottage on the grounds of city hall, the origin of the city’s popular fruit-stand business, and the swearing-in of new city commissioners and an update on plans to revitalize they city’s downtown.
Of these 16 stories, only one — the dashcam story — attracted the attention of the network affiliates in Miami.
I found out what leaders at these two stations already knew: driving distance plays a role in story selection.
“Valdosta, Georgia is actually our second largest city in our DMA,” said Bradley, “so you would think we would be there every day. We were not because it is an hour and a half drive to that city.”
Management at the stations have realized that each year, more and more of their viewers will encounter a story for the first time on a phone or a computer, not on their television. Instead of this trend driving them out of small towns, it is having the opposite effect and pushing them back in.
Bradley said, “there are a lot of news deserts right now, and by having those reporters that are able to go to those smaller communities, we are filling that void.
On the financial side, Bradley describes the change as relatively neutral. Initially, she says, there was a small drop in overall ratings but an initial increase in viewers for the 11 p.m. news. The station met the elimination of anchors with more reporter positions and a pay increase for both reporters and producers.
Even after this research, I am uncertain about the future of local news stations; but it will undoubtedly involve a shift to an online-first mentality. As already faced by newspapers, the challenge will be keeping stations profitable after this transition. Can they all survive the shift? Although it is too soon to know the answer to that question, these two trailblazing Florida TV stations are providing early evidence that the shift will benefit small communities by bringing those communities considerably more news coverage.
