>We assess the impact of newspaper closures on polarized voting, using genetic matching to compare counties that are statistically similar but for the loss of a local newspaper. We identify a small but significant causal decrease in split-ticket voting in presidential and senatorial elections in these matched communities: in areas where a newspaper closed, split-ticket voting decreased by 1.9%.

A 1.9% decrease as a result in a social science experiment does not exactly feel like a lot to me. The paper is paywalled, but I'd love to see their community matching methods and confidence intervals.

EDIT: Found it [0]

The paper tests how 66 communities (defined as only the county that the newspaper is headquartered in) with closed newspapers voted in 2012. The experiment tests for how many people split their vote only among President and Senator. Those communities skew very white (76% vs. 60% US average) and way over-represented the US East Coast + Midwest.

Even taking all of that for granted, when they ran a placebo test on the 2008 election, they found literally the same difference (1.9%), just with a higher standard deviation (so they could call the result not significant).

I don't think Facebook is good for news at all (we probably agree that it is by design polarizing), but local papers are not the salvation many make them out to be.

0: https://joshuadarr.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/8/1/51819147/darr_...