A new photography collection spotlights the last refuges of America’s dwindling local newspapers.
Photojournalist Ann Hermes traveled to the offices of the Ipswich Local News (Massachusetts), the Juneau Empire (Alaska), and 50 more newsrooms in between to document the endangered local journalist’s increasingly dim and drafty habitations. More than 3,000 papers have folded since 2005, as smaller staffs, never glamorously appointed, have been relegated to ever-more marginal bureaus: These are hybrid spaces, where, unlike larger outlets, white-collar editorial staff bump elbows with manual workers like printers and typesetters.
It’s all perfect fodder for Hermes, whose photographs capture the “ghostly depth” of these “beautifully abject” outposts, The New Yorker wrote.