Ministry backs digital shift for local newspapers, aims to raise journalism standards

The government will support the digital transformation of local newspapers and raise the quality of regional journalism.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced Friday its "8th Three-Year Local Newspaper Development Support Plan (2026–2028)," centered on those goals.

The local newspaper development support plan is a policy blueprint drawn up every three years under the Special Act on Local Newspaper Development. Since the act's enactment in 2004, seven such plans have been established and carried out.

The eighth plan sets "strengthening the foundation for sustainable development of local newspapers" as its overarching goal, responding to new challenges including an AI-driven restructuring of the news ecosystem and declining print readership. To that end, the ministry has laid out three strategic pillars: the phased internalization and expansion of digital transformation; enhancing the public role of local journalism and deepening community ties; and streamlining the support framework while strengthening tailored assistance.

On the digital transformation front, the ministry will step up support for innovation projects at individual local newspapers, including AI-based news production, reader data analysis and the development of personalized news platforms.

A dedicated regional-issues analysis function will be added to BigKinds, the news big data analysis system operated by the Korea Press Foundation, so local newspapers can make better use of it. The ministry also plans to distribute digital news production tools and subsidize cloud web-hosting costs.

The plan also seeks to strengthen the public role of local journalism. Support for in-depth investigative reporting on local issues will be expanded, and forums linked to community stakeholders will be established to sustain the production of local public-interest agendas.

To improve access to community information, the ministry will continue subsidizing subscription fees for underprivileged readers and promoting local-newspaper-based education programs at elementary, middle and high schools.

The support framework will be streamlined around journalism-focused evaluation criteria. The existing selection standards for fund recipients — which have centered on management and financial soundness — will be revised to place greater weight on reporting capacity and social responsibility.

The ministry plans to raise the share of journalism-related evaluation criteria from the current roughly 30 percent to as much as 50 percent. It will also review whether to set compliance with wage payment obligations, minimum wage requirements and tax obligations as baseline conditions for receiving support. Measures to help promising newspapers enter the pool of fund recipients, taking into account growth potential and regional balance, are also under consideration.

In addition, the ministry will expand foundational journalism support, including hiring news-production interns and providing rental assistance for essential reporting equipment.

The ministry's budget for local newspaper development support this year stands at 11.8 billion won ($8.19 million), a 42 percent increase from 8.3 billion won last year. Under the local newspaper capacity support project, 3.1 billion won will go toward rental support for digital reporting equipment, 2 billion won toward digital transformation support and 1 billion won toward investigative reporting support. Under the community contribution support project, 2.5 billion won has been allocated for subscription fee subsidies for underprivileged readers and 1.5 billion won for local-newspaper-based education support.

"This eighth plan focuses on supporting local newspapers so they can fulfill their role as a core public infrastructure underpinning local democracy amid a rapidly changing media environment," a ministry official said. "We will implement the plan without delay so that local newspapers can take root and become self-sustaining as healthy regional media that capture the diverse realities of their communities."