Special Report: Montana’s Media Landscape
Local news outlets are critical to many aspects of life in small towns. New research from LOR maps where these local news creators can—and cannot—be found across the state, and digs into some of the factors that might contribute to how Montana's media landscape has developed.
Introduction
As an organization dedicated to helping local people improve quality of life across all kinds of issues, LOR regularly sees the critical role local news outlets play in rural communities. Small-town newspapers, radio stations, newsletters, and websites keep folks informed and engaged across a wide spectrum of local issues—in Montana, things like the impacts of wildfires, road construction, tourism, and the rising cost of housing. These local news outlets also serve as essential community connectors, often highlighting the efforts and accomplishments of local people, and they support rural economies by giving businesses a place to advertise their services.
Seeing how important local news outlets are to rural places, LOR wanted to better understand Montana’s media landscape. After all, with just about a million residents spread across 146,000 miles, Montana isn’t just America’s “last best place,” it’s also one of the country’s most rural, behind only Alaska and Wyoming in people per square mile (seven). So in the summer and fall of 2024, the LOR Foundation carried out a unique exploration of Montana’s media environment—vetting its findings with on-the-ground sources in all 56 counties—to understand just who was creating local news around the state.
The results were surprising: While we found more than 220 news outlets across the state, more than half of Montana’s counties have only one or zero outlets creating original local news for their communities. We also took a close look at some of the factors that might contribute to how Montana’s media landscape has developed—things like population, household income, digital access, and education. What we found there might surprise you, too.
We invite you to explore the map, media inventory, and unique methodology in this report. Our hope in creating and sharing our approach is not only to better understand Montana’s news environment, but also to pilot a tool that others might find helpful—be that for future research or to tell stories using the data (or support those who are). Collectively, the inventory, map, and analysis represent a critical step previously not taken in Montana—and we know it won’t be the last.
Map: Montana's Media Density
Using LOR’s unique methodology, we identified 235 local and regional news creators (those producing original news content) and curators (those repackaging original news content) in Montana. But we only placed news creators with a local focus (112) on this map. Our reasoning is tied directly to the media’s role in meeting critical information needs: While both creators and curators provide critical information to residents, curators could not exist without creators, so we want to make sure we’re aware of counties where there’s a risk of potentially losing the only local source of original news content. Similarly, we did not include regional outlets on the map because if regional outlets only cover a particular area some of the time, residents of that place can’t count on the outlet to regularly meet their critical information needs.
The media density map shows the number of local news creators by county, broken out into four groups.
None: Counties where there are no local news creators.
One: Counties where there is only one local news creator.
Some: Counties where there are two or three local news creators.
Many: Counties where there are four or more local news creators.
Using This Map
To view some of the other factors related to Montana’s media environment that are discussed in the Analysis section, select an option from the map’s factor navigation, then select a county for more specific information.
Key Takeaways
The headline: Access to original local news is highly location-dependent across Montana’s 56 counties. Where residents of major cities have diverse channels and numerous news creators, in rural places, access is much more limited, or even nonexistent. Other important takeaways:
- Five Montana counties have no local news creators. These are extremely rural counties, and less than one percent of Montana’s population lives in these counties.
- 28 Montana counties have only one local news creator; roughly 14 percent of Montana’s population lives in these counties.
- 17 Montana counties have two or three local news creators; 24 percent of Montana’s population lives in these counties.
- Six Montana counties have more than four local news creators; 61 percent of Montana’s population lives in these counties.
- Western, and especially northwestern, Montana has the greatest density of local news creators. Eastern Montana has far fewer.
A Word About Words
When selecting terms to describe the four types of local news environments, we opted for a generic approach (“None, One, Some, and Many”) to avoid vocabulary choices that might come with what feels like judgment to some.
Our Approach
Background
Given local news and information outlets’ vital role as civic pillars in communities, losing them can have meaningful consequences for community engagement, accountability, and decision-making among residents. That’s a big part of why LOR undertook this research project—a critical inventorying step that provides a snapshot of local news outlets at the county level as of September 2024. Our approach borrows from media ecosystem mapping efforts in other states including Oregon, Colorado, and Wyoming. Like these studies, and many others, we have benefited from existing frameworks including those from Impact Architects, Montclair State University, the News Measure Research Project, and Medill’s Local News Initiative. Their feedback, along with conversations with local media stakeholders and groups like the Local News Impact Consortium, helped us construct an approach that worked for Montana’s media ecosystem.
How LOR’s Approach Is Different
(1) We cast a wide net when considering what is meant by “local news and information outlets.” We included print, digital, radio, and broadcast outlets in our inventory—as well as innovative and nontraditional models like longform podcasts and curated newsletters. (We did not include Facebook pages, though. See the full methodology for why.)
(2) We verified our information with knowledgeable on-the-ground sources. In each county, we had at least one conversation with a community stakeholder who had knowledge about local news and information sources (think: a librarian, a county clerk, a staffer at the chamber of commerce), and often more, to make sure that we were gathering a list of all possible news and information sources in a community.
(3) We differentiated between news creators (outlets whose content is largely originally reported) and news curators (outlets whose content was largely repackaged information from a variety of local sources). Both kinds of news outlets play a role in meeting critical information needs, but curators couldn’t exist without creators, so we only included news creators on our media density map.
Those are the highlights. A more detailed methodology is available for those who are interested in digging deeper.
Results
Key Takeaways
In our inventory, we identified 235 outlets that were either news creators (producing original news) or news curators (repackaging news from a variety of local sources).
- Of the 235, about 48 percent were news creators, meaning in Montana’s 145,509 square miles, there are approximately 112 outlets producing original, local news.
- Most of the news creators and curators—223 of them—were local outlets, meaning they regularly covered the specific community, county, or other small area in which they were based. The other 12 were regional outlets covering a larger region or the state.
- In terms of medium type (print, radio, etc.), the 235 outlets broke down as follows: 115 were radio stations, 80 were print newspapers or newsletters, 29 were web-based producers (including websites, podcasts, and digital newsletters), and 11 were TV stations.
- In terms of ownership models, 81 were owned by a national corporation, 75 were owned by a local organization or individual, 62 were owned by a statewide corporation, 13 had a nonprofit model, and four had a public media owner.
Montana Media Database 1.0
Below you’ll find our database of all 235 outlets, including characteristics like medium, ownership type, and coverage area. The codebook we used to collect and classify Montana’s outlets can help explain how we thought about all of the data and includes definitions for many terms (e.g., ownership type, content type). Download the full methodology. We recognize, of course, that there might be disagreement about how we came to some of these classifications. If we missed an outlet, overincluded, or you disagree with how we categorized a particular outlet, please reach out to us at connect@lorfoundation.org. We’ll make updates to the database based on this feedback, on March 31, 2025.
Analysis
Overview
An inventory might tell you what news outlets exist, and a map can show you where they exist, but neither provides a great deal of insight into the why behind the media ecosystem. To better understand the conditions that might contribute to how Montana’s media landscape has developed, we looked at a number of factors related to potential revenue and audience that might affect the local media environment. This initial assessment is by no means comprehensive, but it does reveal a few trends that might explain the distribution of local news creators across Montana.
Factors Related to Revenue
Population Size
Population size is often proportional to the number of media outlets, with larger markets generating higher advertising revenues, enabling them to support more outlets and owners. Our analysis confirms this: Counties with zero outlets have an average population of 1,802 residents, and even as few as just 496 residents, while counties with many outlets have an average population of 110,226. These more populous counties with denser media ecosystems not only support a greater number of local news creators, but they are also likely to support different types of news outlets, such as TV stations and publishers with more narrow audience, function, or coverage niche.
Median Household Income
Higher household incomes are better positioned to support local news creators through subscriptions and donations, creating a larger potential revenue base. Our analysis of Montana’s counties tracks with this: Counties with three or fewer outlets (the none, one, and some counties) have median household incomes that are about 10 to 12 percent lower than the Montana average. Moreover, those incomes are significantly lower than those in counties with four or more news outlets.
Private Businesses
Since nearly all of the outlets we identified use advertising as part of their business models, we inspected the number of private businesses in each county to estimate the potential size of the advertising market. Looking just at the number of private businesses (not their industry or size), we found that there are roughly 56,000 private businesses in Montana, about 1,000 per county if they were evenly distributed. As our data show, however, they are not: Counties with no local news creators have on average just 76 private businesses compared with an average of 6,297 in counties with many news creators.
A Tale of Two Counties: Yellowstone and Liberty Counties
When you combine all of these factors, you start to see why they are drivers of the number of local news creators. Yellowstone, where Billings is located (five local news creators), and Liberty (zero local news creators) counties provide a clear—if somewhat extreme—example of how the combination of market factors can explain the state of local media markets. Yellowstone has 164,731 residents and a median household income of $72,300; Liberty has 1,959 residents and a median household income of $48,047. Further, we found that in Yellowstone County there are roughly 6,042 households with a median household income higher than $200,000. Contrasting that with just 50 such households in Liberty County gives you a sense of how the volume of high-net-worth donors and subscribers in Yellowstone County can collectively sustain numerous local news creators, while that is less likely to happen in Liberty County. Additionally, Yellowstone County has 7,834 private businesses, compared with 91 in Liberty County, meaning there are 87 potential advertisers in Yellowstone County for every one in Liberty County. Looking into the future, these disparities may increase: Population growth estimates from 2023–2030 suggest Liberty County will experience population contraction, while Yellowstone County will experience population growth.
Factors Related to Audience
Inspecting county-level social characteristics helps us understand more about who has access to many local news creators (and who has access to fewer). Our findings show that counties with higher education rates, greater digital access, and younger populations, on average, also have a greater number of local news creators in their counties. That means, conversely, that counties with lower education rates, less digital access, and older populations are, on average, relatively underserved in Montana. While these data represent important social characteristics of local populations, they are certainly not the only ones. Future research can more closely inspect other characteristics to see which populations may have limited access to local news.
Education Status
Education levels can predict news consumption habits, and we theorized that college-educated individuals are more likely to demand and support deeper coverage of local topics, which suggests that places with more college-educated individuals will also have more local news creators. The data confirm these results, but it’s worth noting that urbanized places (which have many local news creators) not only have a greater percentage of college-educated residents, but are also home to most of the four-year degree-granting institutions in Montana, so there are reinforcing factors that can explain the discrepancy.
Median Age
Like educational attainment, age can play a role in how residents consume news and information. For example, younger populations might demand more diverse news and information, while older populations may be more reliant on traditional forms of news and information. Our findings suggest that counties with many local news creators have a substantially younger population, on average, than other counties.
Digital Access
Since nearly all of the news outlets we identified in the database have a digital site (and in some cases only have a digital site), we looked at two factors that assess the ability of residents to access digital news. First, we inspected the percent of households with a computer; we then looked at the percent of households with a broadband internet subscription. (Of course, having a computer with a broadband signal doesn’t necessarily guarantee access to a digital news site, and neither is it a prerequisite since folks also can use their cell phones.) Our data suggest that both are positively associated with the number of local news creators, and that counties with many local news creators have much greater access to digital tools.
Racial Composition
While Montana is roughly 86 percent white, it is also diversifying. Additionally, in Montana, more diverse populations, especially Hispanic and multiracial residents, make up a larger relative proportion of urban communities, while Native American populations are generally clustered in more rural counties. For that reason, we did not find an association between racial composition and the number of local news creators. (Note, this inventorying process did not find any Spanish-language, or any other non-English news and information outlets.)
A Tale of Two Counties: Missoula and Sheridan Counties
To understand how factors related to audience might help explain the differences in the number of local news creators, we compared Missoula County (seven local news creators) and Sheridan County (one local news creator). Looking first at educational attainment, we note that Missoula County has an average college education rate of 44.5 percent, close to double that of Sheridan County’s rate of 25.5 percent. Some of that difference can be explained by the presence of the University of Montana, with nearly 10,000 students. (And, we note that the Montana Kaiman, while technically a college newspaper, did meet our local news creator criteria.) Both counties are predominantly white, but Missoula County is much younger, with a median age of 36.7 versus Sheridan County’s 43.8. This also is likely explained by the prevalence of the student population in Missoula. While residents of both Missoula and Sheridan counties have good access to computers and broadband, the percentage of Sheridan County residents without a computer (eight percent) or broadband connection (16 percent) is roughly double that of Missoula County (where only four percent of residents don’t have a computer and only eight percent don’t have a broadband connection). Still most households in both counties can access digital news sites, like the digital-only Pulp, as well as other important channels of civic and community information. All of these characteristics combined may contribute to a more fertile environment for local news creation.
Next Steps
We hope this landscape analysis serves as a resource for researchers, media, community members, and funders who might want to use it to launch other work, like some of the ideas below. And we’re happy to help! After all, research is often most powerful when it’s applied in the real world.
(1) Conduct deeper analysis. The database we crafted can act as the baseline for a longitudinal tracking of the openings, closings, and changes to Montana’s news and information outlets, which can tell us about how the overall landscape is evolving. Building off this inventory, researchers might evaluate outlets’ content (think: newspaper articles, TV news segments, podcasts, etc.) to understand the patterns, themes, and overall distribution of journalism in Montana. Doing so will reveal coverage trends, and importantly, offer insights into the peoples, places, and topics that are currently undercovered or underrepresented. Researchers might also be interested in how Montanans use and perceive local news. For example, in 2019, the Greater Montana Foundation sponsored the Montana News Media Preferences and Issues Survey. Refreshing that understanding of Montanans’ information needs could help outlets better align their content, strategies, and delivery methods with audience preferences.
If you’re interested in conducting further research, contact LOR research analyst Daniel Read, who led this landscape analysis.
(2) Use the data in a story. The data informing every visualization is available to download (look for the Get the Data link at the bottom of each visual). We encourage data journalists to use the data to support follow-on stories. For example, we’ve noticed that many newly launched outlets use a digital-only model; perhaps there’s a story in how broadband access relates to the development of these digital-only outlets. The database contains links to more than 230 news and information outlets—consider contacting them to bring their local knowledge to your story.
If you’re interested in pursuing a story, contact LOR communications officer Kasey Cordell.
(3) Invest in underserved areas. Funders can use the data in this report to guide their strategic investments toward the most underserved regions, ensuring that resources are directed where they are needed most.
If you’re interested in providing funding support for Montana media, contact Alex Dunlop, LOR’s chief business development officer.
(4) Use the data to inspire support for your hometown outlet—or start your own! It’s clear from this research that outlets in some parts of Montana might have a harder time finding the economic support required to bolster traditional forms of media. Locals might use this report as a call to action among their peers to support the local outlets they love—or be inspired to start their own. While starting a news site seems like a daunting task, this inventory found innovative entrepreneurs that are already doing it, and there are organizations out there that can help. For example, the Tiny News Collective’s shared resource model can empower local residents to address news coverage gaps.
Key Terms and Definitions
Access point
Secondary distribution channels that provide the same news content as a local outlet or regional outlet with which they are associated, e.g., radio stations broadcasting on multiple translators
Content types
We categorized content into four types.
- Original: Content is largely original news content produced by staff. We relied on the FCC’s definition of critical information needs as our standard for “news content.” That definition includes the following topic areas: emergencies and public safety, health, education, transportation, environment and planning, economic development, civic life, and political life. In the case of Montana, we also include agriculture as a topic area given the importance of this to many local economies.
Curated: Content that consists exclusively (or almost exclusively) of news from other outlets, press releases, obituaries, public announcements, sports coverage, weather, and events calendars.
Lifestyle: Content about the local community that largely does not cover critical information needs (e.g., sports channels, events calendars, or a local history YouTube channel).
Other: Various other types of content that also do not meet critical information needs (e.g., tourism news, sponsored content or advertising, special interest content like home magazines or school or church publications).
Critical information needs
We relied on the FCC’s definition of critical information needs as our standard for “news content.” That definition includes the following topic areas: emergencies and public safety, health, education, transportation, environment and planning, economic development, civic life, and political life. In the case of Montana, we also include agriculture as a topic area given the importance of this to many local economies.
Density map
A map showing the relative distribution of X (in our case local news creators) across a given region. LOR’s density map does not include regional outlets nor outlets that do not produce original local content because neither by itself is a reliable source for meeting critical information needs.
Media density groups/categories
We created four categories to describe a county based on the number of local news creators it had:
- None: Counties where there are no local news creators. Note that counties identified as none might still have access to local information, for example, if another county’s newspaper covers their own county.
- One: Counties where there is only one local news creator. In these counties, the decision of a single business, or even a single individual, to stop publishing would mean that the residents would no longer have a local news outlet.
- Some: Counties where there are two or three local news creators. If one outlet were to close, residents in these counties would still have access to original local news.
- Many: Counties where there are four or more local news creators. These counties, all located in Montana’s major population centers, have the highest number of news creators, so residents can regularly learn about their communities from numerous local sources.
Media landscape analysis
A catalog of all news and information providers in a given geography, paired with an analysis of the factors contributing to the development of that ecosystem. (Another way of saying it, it’s the data and analysis you just read in this report.)
News creators
Outlets whose content is largely originally reported.
News curators
Outlets whose content was largely repackaged information from a variety of local sources.
Outlet locality type
To determine an outlet’s locality, we used the physical location of the outlet and compared it with a scan of published articles to classify each outlet as either local, regional, or nonlocal/nonregional.
- Local outlets are those that regularly cover the local area in which it is based.
- Regional outlets are those that have a statewide or regional coverage niche, even if they sometimes cover a local area.
- Non-local/nonregional outlets that, despite their physical location in Montana, cannot be determined to be a local or regional provider of news or information
Ownership type
This is the ownership business type.
- National Corporate: Outlet is owned by a national media organization that owns multiple outlets.
- Statewide Corporate: Outlet is owned by a Montana-based organization that owns multiple outlets.
- Local Ownership: Outlet is owned by a local organization/individual in or near the community it serves.
- Public Media: Outlet is affiliated with NPR or PBS, or is considered to be a community broadcast channel.
- Nonprofit: Outlet has a 501(c)(3) status, but is not affiliated with a public media entity.
News and information outlets
Physical or electronic outlets that help meet critical information needs for residents. In this study, we also reference these as media outlets.
LOR is happy to respond to inquiries about this research. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions at connect@lorfoundation.org. We’ll also make updates to the database, based on feedback we receive, on March 31, 2025.