Preserving Local Journalism
by Nabiha | November 13, 2009 | conference, journalism | Comments Off
Welcome, friends! We’re excited to explore ways to sustain local journalism. This panel, moderated by Adam Yoffie of the ISP, will be presented in two components: dimensions of the challenge and solutions to it.
Dimensions of the Challenge
Paul Starr, Princeton University: Changes in the newsmedia today give us both reason to worry and to be excited. Local foundations of American democracy have been decaying for a while — the crisis of the press will only accelerate this if we don’t do something about this. A strong press at local, state, and federal levels have upheld the underpinning of democracy. Tocqueville’s argument, for example, was that local associations and newspapers allowed Americans to overcome the perils of individualism. This mobilized the people to solve common problems. Toqueville didn’t recognize that the federal government played a significant part in promoting this structure. Because of the federal system, there was an incentive to create broad, chapter-based associations and communities — but this changed this past century. Campaigns began to emphasize fundraising instead of engagement, hollowing out participation at the local level. Apparently, American cities are becoming more homogenous, correlating with political belief. This translates to less diversity with regard to political contestation in geographic areas. There has already been a vitality at the base of American democracy, and the decline of the metropolitan newspaper will deepen this. Three factors affect this:
Financing of journalism: Newspapers provided much of the original newsgathering at the local and state level. Resources are sapped, and without prospect for rapid replacement. At the national level, the potential market is enough to sustain dynamic newsmaking at a sustainable level — this is not the case at the local level. State coverage has dropped by 30% in recent years.
Assembling of a public for the news: Free, niche sites online fill demand, but do not allow for “incidental learning.”
Political accountability: newspapers had the ability stand up to government actors, but internet outlets might not have the resources to do so. This is not necessarily because of investigative journalism, but just constant monitoring.
Some argue that all that has ever mattered is a small segment of the population. But what of the “secession of the affluent”? These individuals are cosmopolitans, not locals. Who will then take a stake in the public? Let’s take New Jersey, for example — a state without a public. Its two biggest cities lie outside of its boundaries: New York and Philadelphia. Where is the coverage of New Jersey? People in New Jersey thus know less about their state than in other states. State newspapers used to compensate, but they are now in free-fall. Papers are shells of what they once were. Investigative reporters, many whom covered important scandals, are among those who have lost their jobs. Income and education are high and correlated with civic engagement, but without media attached to the state, New Jerseyians do not have their own state public. Thus campaigns hinge almost entirely on television programming. The state exemplifies some of the worst pathologies of media and politics. This problem may become the problem of many more states. How can we expect people to spring into action? We will have a shaky basis for popular government.
We must bolster public accountability and an attentive public. This is an unbelievably hard program. There is rot at the bottom of American democracy and we’ve hardly begun to confront it.
Steven Wildman, Michigan State University: Here to present empirical research on coverage of local government by local media. The scope includes TV, radio, cable, newspaper, both daily and weekly, and online coverage of local government institutions for the central city and a suburban city for 120 randomly selected metropolitan statistical areas. The content analysis is based on 9 sample days from early 2009. Identifies news items and editorials relating to eight categories of local news coverage.
Notable patterns in the sample data: newspapers and TV stations dominate in local news coverage while cable TV and citizen journalism sites contribute very little. Weekly papers are huge in suburbs. Many suburbs, though, don’t have their own newspapers. Broadcast media and newspapers emphasize different types of local news. In markets with lots of stations, most broadcast outlets don’t offer news, and even fewer are unique voices. Also, offering news does not equate to offering local news.
The effect of MSA size most pronounced for suburban newspapers. All 120 central cities had daily newspapers and all but one had at least one weekly. Of 119 suburbs in sample, 40% didn’t have a daily paper, and 29% didn’t have a daily or weekly. Number of news radio stations does not increase in proportion to number of stations.
[Stay tuned for electronic versions of the powerpoints -- we'll get 'em if we can!]
Lisa George, Hunter College: What does economics as a discipline have to say about the market for newspapers? How do economists think about the good and the bad, what is better, and what is the problem today?
Economics of newspaper markets includes the high fixed cost of producing content, high variable cost of distribution, vertically integrated content production, advertiser finance, and two sided markets and information externalities.
Fixed costs include high first copy costs that limit the number of papers that can survive in any market. Large cities have larger papers with higher readership. Notably, groups with minority tastes may be poorly served. Technology and transformation lowers the cost of producing content, and also opens the market for supply of content. More competition for journalists and newspapers. Technology and welfare also reduces the advantage to large markets and can also provide content satisfying minority tastes. Niche tastes don’t have to rely on the mass market.
Distribution costs are particular to newspapers that take gas, labor, and paper to be transported. Digital information, by contrast, is free — marking a drastic change in the market. Zero distribution cost enlarges markets, leading to more viewpoint differentiation. This means more voices, but if readers become more selective, this leads to reading of better content. This means more potential for “superstar journalists”. When everyone can read everything, you only need what you find desirable or necessary. You choose the best, not the local. This means that there are direct connections between writers and readers, creting a market for superstars with high risk and high reward. Readers, not papers, will make the superstars. The content type determines vertical integration.
Advertisers value access to targeted consumers. Newspapers long earned monopoly rents from ads, and the incentives to produce content preferred by elites. Distortions caused by the advertising model benefited the elites as a result. Now, new entrants are good at bundling and targeting, driving down the price. Distinguishing bundling value from content value central to new business models. Consumer value of bundled content grows as sources proliferate, and thus so does advertiser value for targeted readers. Newspapers still have a geographic organization, not by topic bundles.
Information externalities, or how what you read affects what you do. Technology changes this. We see a shift from local to national media leading to a shift from local to national externalities. This is localism vs. globalism, and we’re seeing benefits in globalism. A shift to integrated markets reduces probability but raises consequences of corruption.
Possible Solutions
Peter Shane, Executive Director, Knight Commission on the News Needs of Communities: Questions to consider, stemming from an Aspen Institute meeting: what are the information needs of communities in democracy? Are they met in America today? If not, what can we do about it? Our democracy is organized geography: if there’s a breakdown between geography and media, the consequences can be severe. We must concentrate on the information needs, not just news needs, of a community. The media ecology of local communities makes available relevant, credible information necessary for governing in kind. Conversations about access: to broadband, to skills, to tools that allow them to be effective actors. How do we consider civic engagement? How do we get people to believe they’re implicated so they should act? The recommendations addressing these questions only narrowly deal with business models. Journalistic institutions do not need “saving” as much as they need “creating” — there are far more localities than local newspapers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of localities have scant or no news coverage. Many communities get no coverage at all. Potential buyers of news will underinvest because a lot of the product is late, or not of interest, or disturbing to what we believe. There are also potential free rider problems. We can’t only rely on those who are enthusiastic about it to fund it. There is also a cultural problem: antagonism towards intellectual authority, and that is part of the model of professional journalism. The idea of public interest is mocked as being incoherent and irrelevant to the political and media environment. Technology furthers this, allowing for an unbundling of services — we don’t pick up incidental learning in the way we would in newspapers. Let’s imagine a world in which local journalism is part of the DNA of University education at all levels.
Paul Bass, New Haven Independent: If news is dying, then why are so many people covering this? News is not dying. This is the most exciting time to be a reporter — you can tell stories unlike ever before, you can do more than ever before, and there’s a lot more monitoring to pressure you to be better. The only thing that’s dying is the bad media model that tries to decrease newsmaking while increasing profit. On blogs, you can see development of story in real-time with back and forth about real information. News should be like a utility you pay for, and maybe the pay model is just bad. Your readers were participants, not consumers. This isn’t so bad! With the internet, you have all sorts of participants — the students, the teachers, other visitors. You can have transparent dialogue or discussions on pertinent public events, like neighborhood perceptions or traffic safety. These discussions have raw but interesting insight into where to go next — and that’s journalism. Readers are cross-referencing sources, finding discrepancies, and developing thoughts and recommendations from that. This is why we have journalism. We get grants and funding to this. Competition is back. There is no one answer or one model, there’s a lot of creative construction at the moment. Part of the fun is how to figure out the revenue models and trying different answers. This includes collaborating on space, getting local funding, external grants, expanding the legal notices — the experiences are broad. What you see in the communities is that you’re seeing different forms of newsgathering, and they’re going to compete while reporting increases. Don’t fret!
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