According to Reporters Without Borders [RSF], of which I am a supporting member, seven journalists have been murdered in Mexico so far in 2026.
Every one of them worked for a small local or regional news outlet. None were international celebrities. None anchored national television broadcasts. They reported on municipal politics, police activity, organized crime, and corruption—the daily workings of power in communities that most Americans have never heard of.
Roxana Berenice Guzmán Ramírez was a journalist from Nanchital, in southern Veracruz, who founded and directed the hyper-local digital outlet Pulso Informativo del Sureste. She reported primarily through a Facebook news page with around 20,000 followers on community affairs, citizen complaints, public services, municipal politics, and public security issues in her hometown. Her signature method was live-streaming directly from the community via social media, giving weight to local grievances. On June 2, 2026, armed men abducted her from her home in Nanchital; her body was identified in early July [RSF].
Violence is only one way journalism dies. Economics is the other.
Mexico’s bullets and America’s economics are different mechanisms producing the same democratic erosion.
In Mexico, local journalism is silenced by bullets. In the United States, it is increasingly silenced by bankruptcy, media consolidation, hedge-fund ownership, and the collapse of advertising revenue. The methods differ dramatically. The civic consequences do not.
Why should we citizens of the United States care?
The suppression of local journalism changes how power actually operates in a community.
Accountability erodes first, and it does so in measurable ways. Studies consistently show that communities losing local newspapers experience lower political participation and diminished governmental accountability. When the Cincinnati Post closed, fewer candidates sought municipal office, incumbents were more likely to win re-election, voter turnout declined and campaign spending fell.
Civic participation contracts in more subtle ways as well. Lee Shaker’s studies of Denver and Seattle found measurable declines in civic engagement following the disappearance of major newspapers. Research in Illinois counties similarly found that the presence of local newspapers increased municipal election turnout. This is not simply an abstract discussion about an “informed citizenry.” It means fewer people are willing to serve on school boards, city councils and local commissions because fewer citizens even know what those institutions are doing.
Political identity changes, too. MIT Sloan researchers have shown that as local journalism declines, voters increasingly rely upon national partisan identities when making local political decisions. Local elections become extensions of national ideological battles rather than judgments about the actual performance of local officials. Community politics gradually loses its connection to community facts.
Trust eventually erodes as well. When local journalism disappears, citizens increasingly rely upon national media and social media, whose business models reward outrage rather than accountability. The daily work of the local reporter—covering zoning meetings, school boards, county commissioners, prosecutors and police departments—rarely attracts national attention. Yet it is precisely this unglamorous reporting that sustains democratic life.
This is why the murders of journalists in Mexico matter to Americans.
The Mexican story is not separate from our own. It reveals, in its most brutal form, what happens whenever a society loses its local watchdogs. In Mexico, criminal organizations attempt to eliminate accountability through violence. In the United States, economic forces often accomplish much the same result without firing a shot. In both countries, local power becomes less visible, less accountable, and less answerable to the citizens it serves.
The difference between a bullet and a balance sheet is morally enormous. Their effect upon democracy is not.
Hyper-local media, such as the one Roxana Berenice Guzmán Ramírez founded in Veracruz, have stepped into this media desert in many areas of the United States to deal with local issues. Windmill Media explicitly describes its mission as filling the gaps created when rural Illinois newsrooms have closed or been cut back. In Chicago we have the hyper-local media: Block Club, Inside Publications and several neighborhood papers.
Also, we in Chicago remain fortunate to have vigorous independent journalism, supported by organizations such as Press Forward Chicago, under the leadership of our own Tracy Baim, and the Chicago Independent Media Alliance. We enjoy the reporting of the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Sun-Times, The TRiiBE and our own Windy City Times. Their reporters continue to perform the difficult work of asking inconvenient questions, exposing corruption, and holding powerful institutions accountable.
In writing this column I was reminded of this truism: When journalists are silenced, it is not only the messenger who dies. A community’s memory, accountability and capacity for self-government die with them.
Support your local journalists while you still have them. Their work is not merely about reporting the news. It is about preserving the civic institutions upon which democratic self-government depends.
Nick Patricca is professor emeritus at Loyola University Chicago, member of PEN International San Miguel PEN Centre, MX and an active member of the Dramatists Guild of America.