King's College London

Researchers analysing 27 newspapers across a six-year period found the volume of locally authored news fulfilling the ‘critical information needs’ of audiences (CIN) - such as health, politics, and crime - had plummeted.

In addition, between 2019-2025, the proportion of original content in the studied local papers, all owned by media group Reach Plc, dropped from 79.7 per cent to 56.5 per cent, while specifically local coverage declined from 66.5 per cent to 51.5 per cent.

The findings were revealed in a new study, published in the journal Journalism, co-authored by Simona Bisiani (University of Surrey), Martin Moore (King’s College London), Agnes Gulyas (Canterbury Christ Church), and Bahareh Heravi (University of Surrey).

According to the researchers, this decline of civic journalism was linked to a corporate restructuring introduced by Reach that centralised editorial operations into regional and national hubs, removing editorial production from smaller, localised offices.

Rather than supplementing community news, the analysis found that shared, homogenised content produced in the hubs was actively crowding out local reporting. Nationally focused articles and lifestyle pieces were more than seven times more likely to be distributed across multiple titles than locally relevant news.

The trend had accelerated since Reach’s 2024 launch of a centralised ‘content hub’ and Guten, an AI-assisted editorial tool designed to rewrite and syndicate stories across the network of newspapers.

The researchers said: “Generally, a zombie or ghost paper, as the concept has developed across national contexts, is a newspaper whose civic substance has been hollowed out while its outward presence - masthead, publication schedule, nominal editorial staff - remains intact.

“By that standard, the newspapers in our panel are on a zombie trajectory: original local CIN content halved over six years, replaced in part by centrally produced non-local material, within a shrinking editorial space.

“The papers are not yet fully hollowed out, a substantial floor of original local reporting persists, but the direction is unambiguous and as such warranting further scrutiny.”