In a 2025 report analyzing the state of media in Montana, by the LOR Foundation, the authors noted that one of the important next steps would be a content analysis to understand better the patterns, themes, and overall distribution of journalism in Montana. That initial report was critical in developing a database, which in many ways provides a census of the state of media in Montana. A report released today from The Computational Media Lab at Rutgers University and the LNIC, takes that next step and seeks to analyze the breadth and depth of Montana local news coverage with a robust content analysis and builds on prior work examining local news coverage conducted in Minnesota, Missouri, and New Jersey.
Montana continues to be an important state for local news research. The state has just about a million residents across 146,000 square miles, making it one of the country’s most rural states (third only to Alaska and Wyoming) with unique characteristics useful for understanding local news. The LOR Foundation’s 2025 report found 230 news outlets spread across the state but that more than half of Montana’s counties have only one or zero outlets that create original local news for their communities.
The results of the study revealed several meaningful trends when analyzing local news content in Montana. This new report, linked below looks specifically at variables such as population, household income, broadband penetration rates, and education,and considers other factors such as the length of news articles published by outlets, and the types of stories published by those outlets.
Four key takeaways:
- Eight counties account for half of all news content in the state of Montana based on the geolocation of stories.
- Twenty-one counties across the state account for less than 10% of all news content in the state of Montana based on the geolocation of stories.
- Western, and especially Northwestern, Montana has the greatest density of local news creators based on the relationship between media outlet location and the local news content covering each region.
- There is a negative relationship between population and news content production, which is likely the result of ongoing shifts in population across the state paired with a slower shift in terms of changes in news coverage.
Matt Weber of Rutgers and Daniel Read of the LOR Foundation will present the report and discuss the findings on a webinar Friday, November 21, 2025 3:00 PM ET / 1:00 PM MT. Registration is now open, and the session will be recorded and posted on the LNIC website.
