Judy Woodruff:

The past couple of weeks are showing once again just how tough the news business is right now, with layoffs by digital upstarts and by the country's largest newspaper chain, Gannett.

BuzzFeed laid off 15 percent of its staff, while The Huffington Post and Yahoo News cut hundreds of jobs under their new owner, Verizon.

Many in the field are more worried that a hedge fund-backed group known for gutting newsrooms might buy Gannett. That would potentially be an even bigger hit to local coverage nationwide.

All of this has led to the growth of so-called news deserts, places where there's limited access to news outlets.

For a look at the fallout from all this, we're joined now by Steve Cavendish. He's editor of The Nashville Banner. That's a nonprofit news start-up that he's in the process of relaunching after the paper by the same name folded in 1998. And Penny Abernathy of the University of North Carolina, she's written a major report about the shrinking of local news organizations and how it increases our country's political polarization.

Welcome to both of you. Thank you for joining us.

Steve Cavendish, I'm going to start with you.

You wrote the other day that what's going on right now for journalists is a bloodbath. Is it really that bad?