Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post offering “financial runway." This month it gutted its newsroom—more than 300 layoffs. Whatever you think of legacy news, the hard data shows us that newspaper closures hurt Americans. Here's how: 🧵

Studies show that when local news outlets stop scrutinizing government, efficiency drops. Public payrolls bloat. Waste increases. The cost gets passed to you—roughly $85 in added taxes per person after a county loses one of its last few papers.

It also drives up borrowing costs. When no one is watching the public ledger, investors treat cities as higher risk and demand higher yields. Municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points—roughly $650,000 in added cost per bond issue. Taxpayers absorb this.

When a local paper closes, residents switch to national news—which is trending away from costly general reporting, while cheaper opinion-driven (and often partisan) content booms.

The Post’s slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness." That isn't a metaphor: there is more darkness now.