Across the United States, nearly 2.5 million people, more than the entire population of New Mexico, live on or near military bases. Over the past year, researchers at the Medill Local News Initiative have studied these communities and their local news access. The results have shown that the personnel stationed at these installations, along with their families and the wider population, are dramatically underserved by local news sources. Since 2005, newspapers in these areas have disappeared at a rate four times higher than the national average. And the remaining outlets are covering these bases less and less—since 2016, there has been a 40% decrease in the number of stories about local military issues.
Base populations vary, with some of the largest, like Fort Bragg in North Carolina, or Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, being home to more than 100,000 people. Bases of this size are more than mere outposts or staging areas; they are functionally small cities. “There’s a perception of military bases being constant drilling and weapons fire,” according to Erik Slavin, editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, the longstanding overseas-focused military newspaper. “But there are also families living on these bases, there are schools, there’s a fire department, there is everything you would find in a city or a town.”
Sizable military bases also form an integral part of a local community’s economy and residential makeup—for some installations, such as Fort Riley in Kansas, or Fort Lee in Virginia, the base accounts for nearly half of the total population of the county. The ebb and flow of this population can have an outsized impact on the affairs of the larger community, as well as the obvious impact on the lives of the personnel themselves and their families. As Courtney Mabeus, a former reporter for the Virginian Pilot in Hampton Roads put it: “When [an aircraft carrier] leaves there are 6,000 servicemembers who are leaving with it. That’s 6,000 local people who’s lives are affected: husbands, wives, children, neighbors and so forth, and with that local businesses.”
Since 2005, the number of independently owned papers in these counties has plummeted, dropping by nearly 70%.
The populations of military bases are divided between active-duty personnel (sponsors, in Department of Defense demographics terminology) and dependent family members. There are close to 1.1 million sponsors living on or near military installations in the United States, according to the latest DoD Military Community Demographics Report, who are joined by more than 1.35 million dependent family members. On most installations, there is a slightly higher number of dependents than active troops, though this is not universal. At some bases, especially those home to the boot camps where recruits begin their careers, the ratio of sponsors to dependents is much higher, sitting above 0.7 at places like Naval Station Great Lakes and Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot, for example. Beyond these populations are often found large communities of veterans who have settled in the area, either as retirees or continuing to work with the military as civilian employees. Counties with military bases have some of the highest numbers of veterans in the country: in Pulaski County in Missouri, the location of Fort Leonard Wood, roughly a quarter of the population are veterans, as is the case with Geary County, Kansas, home of Fort Riley.
For this study, Medill researchers examined 74 military installations located within the U.S., each with a total population above 10,000 people. These bases are spread across 25 states and 60 counties. While only a handful of these counties are true news deserts per se, many are nevertheless places that have been significantly impacted by the decline in local news over the past two decades. In 2025, these 60 counties, and the bases and personnel located within them, are served by 195 newspapers. In 2005, the same counties were home to 376 newspapers, a loss of 48%.
On average, the counties where these bases are located have lost nearly four papers since 2005, compared to the national average of one. Many of these losses followed the mass consolidations that occurred in the suburbs of large cities throughout the 2010s, particularly affecting installations such as Camp Pendleton outside of San Diego, which saw the loss of 11 papers since 2005, or Naval Station Great Lakes, located just north of Chicago in a county where 15 papers have vanished. But these losses have also been felt outside of these exurbs: Fort Drum, New York, for example, the largest installation in the Northeast, witnessed the loss of four papers in the past two decades. Over the same time period, Fort Leonard Wood, in the Missouri Ozarks, lost three of the papers covering it, including a daily.
As a result of these losses, consolidation of the remaining newsrooms in military base counties has significantly increased. In these areas, almost 60% of newspapers are owned by large chains—compared to a little less than half for the entire country—as are 85% of the daily newspapers. Since 2005, the number of independently owned papers in these counties has plummeted, dropping by nearly 70%. Only a quarter of papers in these counties remain independent, compared to nearly half of all papers for the rest of the country. Dailies make up just under 25% of these papers, and of those, only a third still publish seven days a week.
Given their proximity to urban centers, some of the larger bases are also served by outlets other than newspapers. In close to a third of counties with military installations, there are also digital news outlets; a small number of cities, namely San Diego and Glendale, Arizona, home of Luke Air Force Base, also boast strong bastions of Spanish-language news sites. These additional newsrooms are, however, heavily concentrated. Half of the digital sites covering areas with military installations are located in just six counties. The vast majority of bases are exclusively dependent on newspapers.
As with base sizes, the distribution of military personnel around the country varies widely by state. California is home to by far the largest population of service members and dependents, followed by Virginia and Texas. Collectively, these three states account for more than a third of the total military community, but due to their large sizes, military families amount to only a small fraction of the overall population—less than 1% in California and Texas. In other states, the ratio is much higher: in Hawaii, for example, military personnel make up nearly 7% of the state’s population. These unequal distributions have resulted in further disparities in journalistic access. The two states with the highest numbers of military personnel per capita, Hawaii and Alaska, also have the lowest per capita number of journalists, at just 4 and 5 journalists per 1,000 military community members, respectively.
“You need to get to know the people who are there, the people in those lower ranks in particular who may not have a voice or who may be concerned that if they speak up then there may be repercussions.”
Erik Slavin, editor in chief of Stars and Stripes
States with a large military presence have also witnessed large declines in journalism jobs in the first part of the 21st century. North Carolina, for example, has the fourth-highest military population out of U.S. states, largely driven by Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune. Since 2013, North Carolina has lost more than 70% of its journalism jobs, the sixth highest of any state. The state that has lost the most jobs, Kentucky, which has seen nearly three-quarters of its journalists vanish in the last 13 years, is home to the 10th largest military population. As both news outlets and journalists have disappeared in large numbers from counties with military bases, it has left the personnel stationed at these installations increasingly bereft of local news. The outlets that do remain must operate with smaller newsrooms and reduced budgets, often leading to the reduction or even outright elimination of many reporting beats. For local military reporting in particular, the beat model of journalism is often essential. “You need to know who the base commander is, who the public affairs people are,” said Jacob Brooks, managing editor of the Killeen Daily Herald located near Fort Hood, Texas. According to Slavin, there is also the importance of cultivating trust: “You need to get to know the people who are there, the people in those lower ranks in particular who may not have a voice or who may be concerned that if they speak up then there may be repercussions.”
Due to the decrease in many beat positions, either through the reduction in journalists or the reduction of newsrooms altogether, the quantity and consistency of local military reporting across the country have consistently diminished in recent years among some traditional print newspapers. As part of this study, Medill researchers collected archived aggregate headline and story data from 20 of the largest newspapers in the counties containing military bases, stretching back for the past decade. This data was then examined for articles referencing the name of the local military installation.
Overall, stories about local military issues constitute a relatively small portion of these papers’ outputs—on average, only about 4% of all stories published by these papers since 2016 have concerned the local military base. Beyond this total percentage, there has also been a steady decline in the number of these stories—since 2016, when they averaged close to 5%, the number of newspaper stories about local military bases has dropped by more than 40%.
Of these 20 papers, the majority are owned by investment entities or are part of large chains, and among such papers, the average proportion of content about local military issues is consistently lower. Among independent outlets, the ratio averages more than 5%, while investment-backed outlets average just above 2.5%.
The local military reporter is to shed light on “these stories of national and really global importance effectively in our backyard.”
Andy deGrandpre, Deputy national security editor for the Washington Post
On some bases, there are military-produced newspapers for servicemember audiences: in Hampton Roads, for example, home of Norfolk Navy Base, the Navy Mid-Atlantic Region staff publish The Flagship, a weekly paper distributed in the area. At Fort Bragg, personnel can read The Paraglide, a digital newsletter. Meanwhile, other outlets have found different ways to cover military issues. The Whidbey News-Times, for example, just north of Seattle, Washington, carries some content about Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, but also publishes a small monthly, the Whidbey Crosswind that focuses on the base and its personnel. Many of these outlets, however, have small circulations and infrequent publication schedules, and they too have not been immune to changes within the newspaper industry. The Paraglide, for example, used to be printed as a weekly by Gatehouse Media until 2019, when it began transitioning to a digital news source.
These deficiencies can leave residents of military communities uninformed about issues that range from mundane, such as traffic jams, to deeply impactful. According to Brooks, “the impact on the community from an Army decision can be significant.” During the buildup for the Gulf War in 1990, for example, more than 25,000 troops deployed from Fort Hood, putting significant strain on the local economy virtually overnight.
Beyond covering these direct impacts, local journalists in military areas also play a vital role in promoting transparency in an institution that is, according to Andy deGrandpre, “set up to not facilitate accountability.” DeGrandpre, the deputy national security editor for the Washington Post and a former city editor for the Jacksonville Daily News in North Carolina, said “independent journalism is superbly important in these types of communities; people who can challenge or ask questions about decision making that affects people’s lives [are] crucially important.”
Of course, local military journalism regularly extends beyond local audiences. What local journalists do, as Slavin puts it, “is critical to the greater media food chain” in elevating local issues to national attention. According to deGrandpre, the job of the local military reporter is to shed light on “these stories of national and really global importance effectively in our backyard.” Yet the job also involves illuminating the everyday life of military personnel. Perceptions of military personnel can often be distorted, and this can lead to a number of problems, from challenges in recruitment to discrimination. “It’s important that we don’t end up with a separate caste in America,” according to Slavin. “There’s less familiarity with what the military does, and [journalists] help humanize that. They help bring a lot of what they do to the public.”
As newsrooms contract and disappear, and the beats of military reporting become rarer within the ecosystem of local news, military audiences are left standing on the edges of two increasingly widening journalistic gulfs. On the one hand, military communities are underserved by reporting that covers issues and decisions immensely impactful to their lives. At the same time, civilian audiences around the country are further bereft of information and context about military personnel and their experiences. This dual divide emphasizes the importance of local journalism in keeping our nation both informed and connected.
Methodology Note:
This research was conducted by researchers at the State of Local News Project, part of the Medill Local News Initiative, in consultation with The War Horse. The data for U.S. military base populations is derived from the 2019 Department of Defense Military Community Demographics Report, the last of these annual publications to list personnel counts by installation (subsequent data releases only delineate populations by state). Data on veteran populations is sourced from the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Data on news headlines and story content was collected from NewsBank Access World News, and aggregated from the following outlets:
State | Paper | Base |
CA | San Diego Union-Tribune | Camp Pendleton, San Diego NAVSTA |
CO | Colorado Springs Gazette | Fort Carson |
FL | Florida Times-Union | Jacksonville NAS |
FL | Tampa Bay Times | Macdill AFB |
FL | The Destin Log | Eglin AFB, Hurlburt Field |
GA | The Augusta Chronicle | Fort Gordon |
HI | Honolulu Star-Advertiser | Schofield Barracks |
IL | Lake County Journal | Naval Station Great Lakes |
KS | Junction City Daily Union | Fort Riley |
KY | Kentucky New Era | Fort Campbell |
NC | Fayetteville Observer | Fort Bragg |
NC | The Daily News | Camp Lejeune MCB |
NV | Las Vegas Sun | Nellis AFB |
NY | Watertown Daily Times | Fort Drum |
OK | The Lawton Constitution | Fort Sill |
SC | The State | Fort Jackson |
TX | San Antonio Express-News | Lackland AFB |
VA | The Virginian-Pilot | Norfolk Naval Base |
WA | News Tribune | Fort Lewis – McChord |
WA | South Whidbey Record/Whidbey News-Times | Whidbey Island NAS |
