Since 2005, more than 2,500 local newspapers, most of them weeklies, have closed, with more closures on the way.

Responses to the decline have ranged from luring billionaires to buy local dailies to encouraging digital startups. But the number of interested billionaires is limited, and many digital startups have struggled to generate the revenue and audience needed to survive.

The local news crisis is more than a problem of shuttered newsrooms and laid-off journalists. It’s also a democracy crisis. Communities that have lost their newspaper have seen a decline in voting rates, the sense of solidarity among community members, awareness of local affairs and government responsiveness.

Largely overlooked in the effort to save local news are the nation’s local public radio stations.

Among the reasons for that oversight is that radio operates in a crowded space. Unlike a local daily newspaper, which largely has the print market to itself, local public radio stations face competition from other stations. The widely held perception that public radio caters to the interests of people with higher income and education may also have kept it largely out of the conversation.

But as a scholar who studies media, I believe that local public radio should be part of the conversation about saving local news.

There are reasons to believe that public radio can help fill the local news gap.

Trust in public broadcasting ranks above that of other major U.S. news outlets. Moreover, public radio production costs are relatively low – not as low as that of a digital startup, but far less than that of a newspaper or television station. And local public radio stations operate in every state and reach 98% of American homes, including those in news deserts – places that today no longer have a daily paper.

Finally, local public radio is no longer just radio. It has expanded into digital production and has the potential to expand further.

To assess local public radio’s potential for helping to fill the local information gap, I conducted an in-depth survey of National Public Radio’s 253 member stations.

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