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This paper introduces the concept of brokerage to the scholarship of local news. Drawing on anthropological conceptions of actors that bridge gaps in social structure and help information flow across such gaps, we propose that local journalists act as cultural brokers in rural towns. Building upon Gould and Fernandez (1989, "Structures of Mediation: A Formal Approach to Brokerage in Transaction Networks." Sociological Methodology 19:89. ), we employ a typology of five brokerage functions to classify relationships between local journalists, their sources, and their audiences. In addition to coordinating, itinerant, representative, liaison, and gatekeeping brokerage, our analysis reveals a novel type of brokerage: relay brokerage. We argue that this typology is useful to conceptualize information relationships in rural communities and to understand how information flows change when local journalism ebbs. Empirically, the paper presents a comprehensive study of staffing at rural newspapers in Alberta, Canada, revealing that local media are stretched so thin in many geographic areas, there is little left to cut. For scholars, this simplified media ecosystem is an environment where relationships between reporters, sources, and audiences may be more easily analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the journalistic role perceptions and role performance of local interloper media practitioners in Finland. The examined media include non-commercial outlets funded by a city administration or other local authorities as well as commercial online-only outlets. The outlets are conceptualised as interlopers because they apply journalistic forms, styles and methods in their content but do not necessarily consider themselves as journalists or adhere to the ethical guidelines of journalism. The outlets' role performance is analysed in their published content, while the practitioners' role perceptions are analysed via semi-structured interviews. The analysis reveals that the non-commercial practitioners primarily perceive and perform the loyal facilitator role, whereas the commercial practitioners serve the disseminator role. The watchdog role is virtually absent among all the examined outlets. The lack of critical perspectives indicates a selective and strategic adoption of journalistic roles aimed at enhancing public relations efforts and appearing more trustworthy and interesting to audiences or advertisers. The investigated outlets and practitioners therefore challenge the monopoly of local legacy news media over local news. Their adoption of certain journalistic roles while abstaining from critical scrutiny of local authorities shows a tendency to disguise political or private ambitions as public interest news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Positive journalism" is always emphasized in China, which is currently named as "ZhengNengLiang" (literally referring to "positive energy"). Such content is hoped to spread confidence, hope, and optimism. During public crises like the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is particularly highlighted. Since "ZhengNengLiang" is a term that is difficult to match perfectly with any existing concept of journalism, this study investigates its connotations by applying qualitative methods and taking Shanghai's lockdown for the COVID-19 as an example. Adopting grounded theory, semi-structured in-depth interviews with 15 practitioners of community media were conducted, and 3016 valid subjective questionnaires were collected from audiences. All materials were coded by applying thematic analysis. It is found that content producers tended to emphasize adherence to mainstream ideology, upholding opinion climate in communities, and promoting neighborly mutual assistance. Audiences' understandings of it were partially in line with the producers', but they placed priorities on practicality. These findings resonate with some established theories like constructive journalism. However, China's political system and cultural traditions make the connotations of "ZhengNengLiang" complex. We suggest policymakers provide content producers at grassroots level more room to create "ZhengNengLiang" content with more practical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the retreat of local journalism and the resulting emergence of "news deserts," where communities lack authentic and civically accountable sources of news, it is important to not only seek new revenue streams for news organizations but also to consider how financial resources and institutional structures secure journalistic autonomy and an abiding dedication to public service. Surveying initiatives to bolster local reporting in multiple countries, this study finds that such efforts frequently rest on an unstated optimism that market failures can be corrected and that new, sustainable business models ultimately will solve the journalism crisis. In contrast to these stopgap interventions, initiatives based on public service media principles found in the world's healthiest democracies—such as providing information across all social groups and fostering civic engagement—are better positioned to rebuild local systems in which news media are structured as enduring social institutions with crucial roles to play in democratic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the proximity of local media to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a case study of Italian daily L'Eco di Bergamo combining two sets of data: a list of initiatives the newspaper took in 2019 and 2020 to be closer to audiences, and interviews shedding light on how staff viewed the paper's relationship with audiences during that time. An analysis of these two datasets shows that the pandemic increased the newspaper's proximity to audiences but did not fundamentally change the way in which it related with audiences, despite significant changes in journalists' work routines. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptualization of proximity as a dynamic balance between three structuring dimensions (gatekeeping, social and commercial), with a focus on audiences as a plural figure determined by news organizations' strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when local journalism is under threat, regional newsrooms can play a crucial role in working with communities to confront shameful truths and profound failures. The regional city of Ballarat emerged as an "epicentre" of clergy sexual abuse through Australia's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017). This article examines how the regional city's newspaper, The Courier, bore witness to these crimes and their impacts within its local community. A content and thematic analysis of coverage of child sexual abuse from 2010 to 2019 documents how The Courier's locally produced journalism revealed to its audience the extent of abuse, helping to acknowledge and face crimes that had occurred in Ballarat's local institutions. The interlinked themes of revelation, reckoning and recovery demonstrate how local journalism can work with its community to address traumatic events that occur within its geosocial space. Local media bore witness on multiple levels, as both the amplifier of stories told by survivors and the facilitator of community processes of reckoning and recovery. We refer to this special form of local journalism as "proximal" media witnessing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism innovation, according to service innovation theory, is about providing new journalistic services that create value for audiences, society, and the news organisation itself. This study explores how local news media responded to the Coronavirus crisis in terms of service innovation. Based on interviews with editors and top management representatives at two local newspaper groups in Norway (N = 20), we show how local newspapers developed new digital services in response to audiences' need for guidance, overview, and a sense of togetherness, and how the media operations generated revenues in the process. Theoretically, the study identifies two key innovation dynamics in local journalism during a crisis: A social-economic value creation dynamic which captures how local newspapers appropriate their business model to accommodate new service offerings and balance social and economic value creation considerations; and a service system-audience experience dynamic which captures how innovation in journalistic offerings are linked to concurrent innovations in journalistic production processes. This research enhances the understanding of journalism innovation as a value-creating phenomenon and the factors that stimulate such value creation during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local news media are seen as key to local democracy and communal cohesion. This article asks how the community role of local journalism is understood and assessed by journalists and political actors. The study builds on 26 in-depth interviews with local journalists and local political actors involved in conflicts over localisation of hospitals in two different regions in Norway. Theoretically, the article draws on research into the roles of local news media and the place-making features of local journalism. We conceptualise the community role as an overarching role of local journalism, where characteristics related to, e.g., the watchdog and advocacy roles of local journalism may serve a community function. Our analysis shows that local patriotism is regarded as a key aspect of local journalism, where local news media are expected to report through specific spatial lenses to the benefit of the local community. Yet although local journalists and local political actors largely agree on key ideals of local journalism, they advance different perspectives on what form of local news reporting is in the best interest of the community. In sum, local patriotism is considered both a force and an obstacle when journalists are serving the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperlocal media is a form of citizen-led, online community media serving at neighbourhood level. Frequently deployed on social media and resulting in high levels of audience participation, we might assume that such spaces enable residents in a civic and activist mode. This article ethnographically explores hyperlocal audiences to investigate the potential for spaces of public sphere. In studying two Facebook Pages in the West Midlands, UK, I found that, whilst public opinion was formed over civic matters, often in critique of police or the local councils, the ideal of mobilising to directly challenge such authorities was rarely followed through. I therefore question the value or agency in talking about authority rather than to them. The citizen editors do attempt to encourage activism, but I suggest that audiences become too reliant on their efforts and revert to more passive "clicktivism". The article also raises concerns that such online spaces offer authorities opportunity for covert monitoring of citizens, at odds with the public sphere ideal. This article therefore informs wider understanding of the nature of participation. Hyperlocal spaces clearly offer functional and social value, but the idea that this equates to a powerful public sphere is challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a moment when many U.S. news organizations are reckoning with their relationships with communities of color and attempting to build relationships of trust, this engaged research project uses a communication infrastructure theory framework to assess the information needs and assets of a majority Black neighborhood that has historically been stigmatized by media coverage. It draws from nine focus groups, as well as diaries and interviews with residents to assess the local storytelling network and explore how residents conceptualize trustworthiness factors of perceived accuracy, perceived motivations, and representation in local media. Through discussions and participant observation over the course of 17 months, it follows the collaborative process of designing and piloting a community-centered journalism project that attempts to strengthen ties between local media and communities. From this, it explores how residents' ideals for local journalism at times clash with dominant journalism norms and practices regarding objectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists work in a creative profession and often become emotionally attached to "their" medium. Emotions toward their work are an integral part of journalists' career histories. At the same time, working conditions within contemporary journalism are in a state of constant change that could lead to job precariousness and general insecurity. Emotions are also understood to be part of the journalists' engagement with the local media environment: though local newsrooms are experiencing similar changes, peripheral newsrooms have different opportunities to respond. The aim of this article is to investigate local journalists' emotions toward their work during times of change. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative case study based on interviews, this article focuses on how journalists manage their emotions throughout their career histories in the local media environment. The study focuses on local journalists in the VLM group, the dominant local press owner in the Czech Republic, which has experienced permanent losses and staff layoffs over the past few years. The interviewed journalists manifest deepening contradictions in their feelings towards work, the media organisation which employs them and the local community. The increasing volatility of their emotional responses has led to a general dissatisfaction and the growing importance of emotional management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and regional journalism is perceived to aid the functioning of democracy. Yet local publications are increasingly being forced to close due to the collapse of pre-digital news business models. An emerging area of scholarship considers potential funding solutions for local news media. One key enquiry is how local news publishers may attract more revenue from their audiences. This is a difficult task for all news organisations, yet even more so for local news publishers due to evidence news consumers are less willing to pay for local news than other types. This paper contributes by developing a deeper conceptual understanding of factors contributing to people being unwilling to pay for local news. We use data from a 2019 3-month digital ethnographic regional Australian case study to identify several structural and relational factors that contributed to participants being unwilling to subscribe to their local publication. We consider how these findings may be used by local news publishers to maintain and increase their subscription base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's footprint in Africa's media sector over the last decade has reached dimensions that make it impossible to go unnoticed. In South Africa, one of the countries where this imprint is most diversified, Chinese media have been engaged in a varied range of activities, including content production and distribution, infrastructure development, direct investment in local media and training of journalists. Building on previous exploratory studies by the authors, this paper addresses an unresolved question in the study of China's media internationalization: the impact on journalism. Using data from 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with editors, journalists and policy makers, we investigate how much influence Chinese media exercise on journalism in South Africa. We present responses along three dimensions: consumption of and attitudes towards Chinese media, impact on local journalism and views about South Africa-China relations. Our data offer evidence that, despite having substantially increased their presence, Chinese media are far from having a profound impact on media professionals. While some interviewees report the adoption of some Chinese media in their daily news consumption, scepticism towards China, and by extension its media, dominates. We discuss these findings in the context of Chinese state-owned media's attempts to increase their discursive power globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of the traditional news media in the changing digital landscape is a topic of much scholarship and debate as newspaper circulations and advertising revenues plummet across the globe and audiences become increasingly spoilt for choice when it comes to accessing news and information. At the same time there has been a flurry of interest in the role and place of small news outlets dubbed local, community and regional publications. This paper aims to theorise the role and place of small newspapers to connect people with each other. In doing so, it reconceptualises the theory of social capital as it relates to small newspapers. It argues that the small-town press is in a particularly powerful position to actively connect people with each other, across physical and digital spaces and public/private domains. It also argues the need to recognise and study the more subtle ways news outlets foster connections between everyday, ordinary people. I draw on the concept of “mediated social capital” and its associated prisms of bonding, bridging and linking as a way of understanding this in regards to small newspapers. “Mediated social capital”, repositions social capital theory to consider the small newspaper's ability to connect people as a resource of advantage which it may utilise to build or maintain its position of power. The concept provides scope to consider the role of local media to consciously and unconsciously connect people within its networks with one another, across digital and physical spaces, to control the information that connects people, and to benefit from that power. It also acknowledges the inequalities that may arise from this. Importantly, mediated social capital extends beyond discussions about the democratic ideal of the press to acknowledge the role of the news media in shaping the everyday interactions and situations in which people might connect with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigated differences between how local and national newspapers framed race in their coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech (VT) shootings. The results showed a local newspaper, with geographic and social ties to the VT community, published more stories about the shootings than did national newspapers and continued to publish articles well after the national newspapers had stopped. Further, national newspapers mentioned the shooter's race more often than did the local newspaper, despite having published fewer articles. The results also showed that national newspapers racialized the shooter more often and more prominently than did the local newspaper, but that the two newspaper types did not differ according to the levels of racialization each used (i.e., attributing the crime to the shooter himself rather than attributing it to his race), according to how racialized discussion of the shooting was, or in their use of implicit racialization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent work highlights the fact that there are clear differences in the quality of the news product offered by different news outlets. What is not clear is why some news outlets consistently produce a more informative and less superficial news product while others do not. Media scholars suggesting an institutional view of the news media have acknowledged the idea that institutions can be multi-layered, and point to the need to understand specific institutional aspects of the media at all levels. Building from the idea that we can benefit from understanding the institutional similarities and differences between local media outlets, this article examines the quality or issue substance in campaign news coverage as a function of the institutional arrangements within media outlets and their economic and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media scholars and journalists expect local media to function as vital institutions for the creation and maintenance of a democratic political and public arena and a general sense of social cohesion and public connection (Aldridge, 2007; Couldry et al., 2007; Franklin, 2006; Rosenstiel et al., 2007). Taking a different angle, this paper tries to understand what kind of social role the audience wants their local media to perform. The material presented here relies on audience research and ethnographic investigation of the largest local TV broadcaster in Amsterdam (AT5), as well as on a basic production study of 17 local broadcasters in Rotterdam. It turns out that city residents of Amsterdam expect their local TV station to perform seven social functions: (1) supplying background information (unbiased, reliable, good-humoured, fast and multi-perspectival); (2) fostering social integration, or giving citizens insight into how the city “works”; (3) providing inspiration; (4) ensuring representation (“voice”, recognition and “mirroring”); (5) increasing local understanding; (6) creating civic memory; and (7) contributing to social cohesion, or a sense of belonging. We argue that local media do not only constitute a precondition for democracy by representing the city to its residents; to meet this standard, local TV broadcasters will also have to become more democratic themselves, in the sense of better representing local residents to the city and each other by supplying more nuanced stories about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As traditional media operations struggle to find their footing in a world of rapidly evolving interactive technology and economic turmoil, media innovators are exploring new ways to identify, collect, and disseminate information. One innovation that is attracting attention is the development of hyperlocal media. Hyperlocal media are characterized by their narrow focus on a handful of topics or geographic areas, but they vary widely in the type and reliability of funding that supports their operations; the training, expertise, and size of their staffs; and their ability to attract an audience. They also follow in a long line of media reform efforts that have tried to fill the gap in public affairs coverage left by the shrinking traditional media, including civic journalism, C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network), and statewide public affairs television networks. And like these earlier reform efforts, hyperlocal media operations face the same dilemma—how to create a sustainable funding model that will allow them to provide the information members of the public need. This paper examines the various funding models used by hyperlocal media operations and assesses whether they are sustainable for the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses the decline of the traditional newspaper as studied at a conference on the future of newspapers sponsored by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Cardiff, Wales. The conference attendees examined a number of factors that will have an impact on the future of newspapers including new technological developments in media, local and community newspapers, the economics of newspaper publishing and changes in newspaper design and format. Also discussed were the living changes that had contributed to a decrease in newspaper readership.

The local/regional press in the United Kingdom is so often overlooked as a subject matter in which to study representation and cultural production, which are normally the preserve of national and/or global media contexts. With this in mind this paper critically engages and assesses how the South Wales Argus, a local/regional newspaper in Wales, reproduces the idea of Gwent through the production of cultural representations in local news discourse. It is argued that cultural representations are "survival strategies" that are produced to maintain a monopolistic market position in Gwent. It is also argued that cultural representation is the product of the paper's perceptions of community and that cultural representation is also a product of myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]