This thesis examines how Nerikes Allehanda’ s coverage of Nora municipality changed after the closure of the local editorial office and the centralisation of news production to Örebro.

The study is based on a quantitative content analysis of 193 articles published in 2017 and 2025. By comparing coverage before and after the closure, the thesis analyses changes in volume, genre, topic selection, text length, byline, interviews and indicators of local journalistic presence.

The theoretical framework combines perspectives on local journalism as democratic infrastructure, journalism’s democratic functions and the concept of distance decay. These perspectives make it possible to analyse not only whether Nora is still covered, but also how the character and democratic function of the coverage have changed.

The results show that Nora has not disappeared from Nerikes Allehanda’ s news flow. However, the coverage has become less reporter-driven and more dependent on external forms of content, such as reader submissions and automated texts. The number of articles written by Nerikes Allehanda reporters decreased from 98 in 2017 to 48 in 2025. The study also shows fewer articles with interviews and fewer articles with images taken by a reporter in connection with the news event. At the same time, the share of longer articles increased, and municipal politics received more attention in 2025 than in 2017.

The findings suggest that centralisation does not necessarily lead to a total news desert, but to a more selective and uneven form of local coverage. While the forum function is partly strengthened through more debate articles and reader submissions, the reporter-driven news and scrutiny functions appear to be weakened. The thesis therefore argues that the democratic significance of local journalism cannot be measured only by whether a municipality is covered, but also by how the journalism is produced, whose voices are included and which parts of local life are made visible.