Local Journalism in the Digital Age

The woes of
journalism in the digital age are familiar: the advertising and subscription models
that for decades sustained the work of newsrooms have collapsed, news outlets
now compete with every person who has a blog or a Twitter account, and people
who used to pick up their local paper or the Wall Street Journal for stock prices or box scores now go instead
to niche outlets like Bloomberg or ESPN.

While familiar,
these difficulties are no
longer new—what’s only emerging more recently is a pattern: the resources
for producing journalism seem to be increasingly clustering around large media
markets and away from smaller markets. The
Washington Post, for example, reported
in April that Washington DC, Los Angeles, and New York have seen
increases in journalism jobs over the last decade, while everywhere else has
seen a decrease. At the same time, research shows that notable (i.e. Pulitzer-prize
winning) reporters for regional news outlets have taken jobs in the public
relations industry because they could no longer make ends meet working for
their local newspaper. This new pattern
of national consolidation of news, read against the backdrop of longer-term
industry changes, raise concerns about the long-term health of local
journalism.

Let’s step back
for a moment to spell out why is local journalism so important. The health of
local journalism matters because it is the vehicle for citizens to learn about
the institutions vital to their daily lives—such as local government, health
care providers, and schools—that don’t rate national news coverage. Local news
provides geographically-specific information about these institutions and often
holds those with power over them accountable as well. When there are crises
like accidents or natural disasters, people turn to local news for actionable
information, and for that very human need to feel connected to those in the
community who share and understand their experiences.

And here’s where
it has impact on those communities. In a study we just completed of three New
Jersey communities, we learned that when controlling for differences in
population size, a more homogenous, more affluent, suburban community
(Morristown, NJ) had substantially more local news outlets and received
substantially more local news than the more culturally diverse, less affluent,
urban communities that we analyzed (Newark and New Brunswick). Across all categories, the differences in the
quantity and quality of local journalism being produced in Morristown, Newark,
and New Brunswick were substantial.
These patterns also persisted when we looked at the news sites’ social
media output.

This alarming
finding – and others such as what the FCC found in a 2011 report – has sparked a
renewed sense of urgency among academics and foundations, who recognize that we
are in a new journalism age but lack any kind of detailed map of the lay of the
land—making it difficult to know the best way forward. Independent foundations,
as well as centers and institutes affiliated with universities, have stepped in
to fill the gap. Many independent foundations, as well as centers and
institutes affiliated with universities, have undertaken research to find new
funding models, to ascertain how well community information needs are being
served, and to identify ways to get communities more engaged with local news.

That’s why we at
the News Measures Research Project at Rutgers University developed a method to assess
the health of local journalism. Our method for studying the news “ecosystem” of
local communities is both reliable and scalable, with an eye toward discerning
the degree to which the news produced in a community is meeting that
community’s critical information needs.

Studying a
community’s news as an ecosystem incorporates and recognizes some of the
changes to journalism in the digital age, including producers of relevant
information beyond traditional news outlets. Our ecosystem model also
includes digital-native news producers and the social media platforms by which
local news and information are increasingly disseminated—with the ultimate goal
of better understanding the content they produce and the interconnections that
exist between them.

Our research
findings reflect an assessment—using this model—of the journalism ecosystems in
Newark, New Brunswick, and Morristown. First, using a specific three-step
protocol, we identified all existing media outlets in each community (including
print, television, radio, and online). Then, we analyzed the content from each
outlet’s website (nearly all had websites) and social media (Twitter and
Facebook). Of course, not all journalism produced in a community is available
online, but today most of it is; which, we believe, means that the news content
available online can serve as a meaningful, scalable indicator of the journalism
produced within individual communities.

Our work stems
from the premise that the community is the level at which the institutions that
directly affect people’s lives – schools, hospitals, libraries, local
government – function. It is at the level of the community – larger than the
family, smaller than the state –that local news either acts as an effective
conduit of important information, or fails to inform people about critical
goings-on.

We looked at the
extent to which each community’s journalism ecosystem produced news that was
original (i.e. written by someone at a local news outlet), addressed a
“critical information need” (i.e. was about any of a pre-determined list of
eight topics, including health care, education, transportation, and local
government), and was about the community. When tallying the results, we
controlled for the differences in population size across the three communities
by looking at the numbers per 10,000 capita.

If researchers,
funders, or policymakers want to be able to do something about the health of a
community’s local journalism, it is necessary to have some yardstick against
which to measure. By using the community as the level of analysis, were are
able to compare results from one community against another; or even compare the
results within the same community across different periods of time. In
addition, other measures of community health – civic engagement, institutional
efficacy, or educational attainment – can then potentially be linked to the health
of the local journalism ecosystem.

What do findings
such as ours mean for future research and for the people working to support local
journalism? Perhaps most importantly, these findings lend some preliminary
empirical evidence to the growing concerns about “information inequality” across
different types of communities. An analysis of a larger sample of communities
could ultimately help us get a stronger sense of the conditions under which
these information inequalities exist, and where the need for action to address
them is greatest.

Editor’s note: This article is based on a white paper by Philip Napoli, Sarah Stonbely, Katie McCollough and Bryce Renninger.