The sortable table below has multiple ways to evaluate how well U.S. daily newspapers cover each state. (Also see Counties and our USA Map.)

The estimates go beyond counting counties and papers. By factoring in population and the total circulation for all the state’s dailies, we get clues about the number of readers, the size of the papers, and how many people they serve.

Several columns are ratios of the above: Circ/Pop% gives an idea of what percentage of people subscribe. Circ/Paper approximates the average size of the paper’s news operations. The last column, Cover%, combines these ratios: A higher Cover indicates better per-capita and per-county coverage by larger papers with more readers.

Totals:

• Papers (dailies in each state)
• Population (for state)
• Circulation (sum for all state papers)
• Counties (in state)
• Counties-w/Paper (counties with at least ≥1 daily)
• Pop-w/Paper (population of counties w/ ≥1 daily)

Ratios (larger = better):

• Circ/Pop% (circulation to population percentage)
• Circ/Paper (average circulation per paper)
• Papers/Pop-1M (dailies per million residents)
• Counties-w/% (percent of counties with ≥1 daily)
• Pop-w/% (compared to state population)
• Cover% (weighted average of above ratios)