Rick Thames ’75, an alumnus of Pfeiffer College, has written a book that should interest anyone who cares about the declining state of local news in the United States and what can be done to address it.

The book has a working title of Why Local News: A Memoir and Plea to Help Rescue an Endangered Form of Journalism, and McFarland Books will publish it within a year. It’s a response to some alarming trends in an industry that employed Thames as both a newspaper reporter and editor between 1978 and 2017, the year he stepped down as Executive Editor and Vice President for News at The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, a position he had held since 2004.

“There are now at least 55 million Americans who have little to no access to local news in their communities, and it’s growing by the day,” he said, citing the most recent information (2024) available from The State of Local News Project, an ongoing examination by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The Project’s website also mentions the loss of more than 3,200 print newspapers since 2005, “news deserts” across hundreds of counties as well as precipitous drops in newspaper employees and circulation.

The Project’s collection of data amounts to “a very good report,” Thames said. “Unfortunately, it’s also a very grim report at this point.”

Thames also expressed concern about the Rescissions Act of 2025, which Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law this past July. The act “clawed back” all the $1.1 billion in federal funding originally appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to spend in fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

Before CPB was defunded, its grants provided financial support for more than 1,500 public television and radio stations across the country. Now many stations, particularly small ones in rural areas that depended heavily on CPB funding, will likely see program cutbacks and staff layoffs. Or they will cease operations entirely; if that happens, primary sources of local news and emergency alerts will disappear.

Thames, until last year the Knight-Crane Executive in Residence and Visiting Professor of Journalism at Queens University in Charlotte, N.C., will share many invaluable insights in his coming book, including his thoughts on 10 elements of journalism; these are part of a series of lectures he’s developing for people who are new to journalism.  

Thames remembers very well how Pfeiffer helped him identify the gifts that would serve him for his entire career. During the beginning of his time at Pfeiffer, he attended a career fair-like campus event that aimed to match students with majors that would be the best fits for them and professions they were interested in pursuing. Thames remembers walking about all the subject booths and thinking, “I don’t see anything here that I could imagine making me happy the rest of my life.”

A sociology professor, sensing that Thames might need a little guidance, struck up a conversation with him. “He could tell I looked perplexed,” Thames recalled. “He said, ‘Sit down and talk to me. Tell me a little bit about yourself.’”

After learning that Thames liked to write, was a good English student, and had an interest in current affairs, the professor thought for a moment and asked Thames if he’d ever consider going into journalism — a suggestion that left him feeling “kind of shocked.”

“I had not thought about journalism,” he said. “Even though I had been editor of my high school newspaper, I had never met a (professional) journalist, and nobody in my high school had suggested that that could be a career opportunity.”

Thames became intrigued and did some research on the field. “The more I looked at it, the more I thought, ‘Well, this looks like this could be fun. I might enjoy this.’”

After Thames declared English as his major, he began thinking that he should transfer to UNC Chapel Hill to attend its journalism program. The late Dr. J. Griffin Campbell, an English professor at Pfeiffer and Thames’ advisor, persuaded him to stay put. He argued that Thames could earn an A.B. degree in English from Pfeiffer and then attend a graduate-level program in journalism. The program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville was floated as a possibility; Thames would earn an M.S. degree in Communication from that institution in 1978.

Thames said his book will cite highlights of his work as a journalist to illustrate the impact of a strong local news source. While a reporter for The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer (1978-1980), for instance, he wrote a series of articles showing that the misuse of certain parachutes at Fort Bragg led to the deaths of the paratroopers who became entangled in them when they were used in mass jumps. The generals involved “insisted that it was just a training problem and that it could be fixed” despite independent recommendations to the contrary.

By the time Thames wrote the series, which relied on documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, five paratroopers had died, and two more died after the series ran.

“I was able to get the right documents to show that this terrible mistake had happened and no one was stopping it,” Thames said. “It just showed me that even a person like me with little experience could make a difference in my community.”

Thames’ prowess as a reporter continued to emerge during a stint in the 1980s at the now-defunct Miami (Fla.) News, where, among other things, he covered Miami’s public schools. He wrote a story about a middle school where the theft of items such as typewriters (used in typing classes) and band instruments had become rampant. The education of students was being shortchanged.

“When I wrote the story, suddenly the cavalry came in and things were fixed and the school was made safer from burglaries,” Thames said. “Students again could learn, but until the story ran, nobody was doing anything about it.”

So, what does the future hold for local news? Thames believes there’s reason for hope: “Newspapers are disappearing, and maybe public radio stations are at least diminished, but there are people out there still trying to do this work.” They’re doing so in Substack newsletters or in nonprofit news outlets, and Thames’ book will include profiles of several of them.

Thames points with pride to news outlets that have sprung up in the Carolinas, ranging from Qcitymetro, aimed at Charlotte’s black community, to Border Belt Independent, which serves southeastern North Carolina. He’s encouraged by the more than $500 million that the MacArthur Foundation and many other funders have invested in Press Forward, which describes itself as “a national effort to strengthen communities by revitalizing local news and information.” He supports proposed federal- and state-level legislation that would provide tax incentives for advertising in local news outlets.

Lastly, he thinks that regular citizens have a role to play in the future of local news. “The one thing that every person should do in their community is to look around and see who in their community is still in the business of reporting local news,” he said. “Take a hard look at that person or individual or organization and decide for yourself if that’s someone you should be supporting.”