Skidaway Abigails present Susan Catron, Managing Editor of The Current, who will discuss the growth and spread of local news deserts. We'll look at rural (and some city) local news deserts and where they are, how they manifest and why the voids matter if you don't live in one. News deserts exist on several planes -- the absence of an established media, the lack of action on the part of existing media, and the nationalization of local media. In news deserts, research has found very real consequences: Citizens lose touch with local government and don't know how it works and do not engage with it, bond ratings for cities go down because of lack of oversight, voter turnout drops. New business models address the new needs, and we'll talk about a few of them.