Covington is one of the ten smartest cities in Kentucky, at least, according to daily news consumption.
SmartNews, a global news aggregator platform, recently released its first annual Smartest Cities in America list, which ranks the 999 most news-literate cities in the country. SmartNews evaluated per capita daily news consumption across U.S. cities during the first quarter of 2025, ranking them based on time spent reading news within the app.
Joining Covington on the list were Lawrenceburg, Lexington, Madisonville, Paducah, Owensboro, Louisville, Frankfort, Nicholasville and Elizabethtown. Covington was the only city in Northern Kentucky to be included on the list.
“Kentucky has some of the most intelligent people in the country,” SmartNews Chief Communiations Officer Jason Alderman said in a news release. “There has long been a friendly rivalry between the cities in Kentucky about which is the smartest, and now SmartNews has settled the debate with this definitive list.”
The ranking reflects news consumption patterns from millions of SmartNews users nationwide and is not influenced by ideology or socioeconomic status.