Community Journalism 2018 Abstracts
Bringing the community to the journalism: A comparative analysis of Hearken-driven and traditional news at four NPR stations • Mark Poepsel, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Jennifer Cox, Salisbury University • Hearken is a news engagement organization providing tools to help publications better provide community journalism by soliciting story ideas from citizens and taking them along on the reporting process. Hearken promises different types of stories that engage the community and boost revenues. This study examined all 2017 Hearken content from four U.S. public radio stations and compared it with a matching number of traditional content produced by those stations for a sample of 406 stories. This study revealed significant differences in the types of content produced and number and types of sources used, with Hearken content geared more toward local news on lifestyle/living topics reported using a high frequency of non-official sources. The results of this study show Hearken is fulfilling its community journalism objectives by engaging with citizens and providing valuable information that produces audience engagement.
Pursuing Civic Capital: Journalistic, Economic, and Political Goals at a City Magazine • Joy Jenkins • This study examines the representational practices of staff members at an award-winning city magazine, D Magazine in Dallas, Texas. The study used field theory to address how external and internal social, political, economic, and technological influences informed staff members’ perceptions of D’s local function. The findings suggest that staff members balanced journalistic- and economic-oriented editorial emphases through reinforcing a city-magazine mentality that dictated and legitimized content approaches. The study also recognized how D attracted and engaged various forms of capital while also shifting its focus to amassing civic capital as a means of manifesting its local agenda in tangible ways.
Assessing Local Journalism: News Deserts, Journalism Divides, and the Determinants of the Robustness of Local News • Phil Napoli, Duke University; Matthew Weber, Rutgers University; Katie McCollough, Augustana University; Qun Wang, Rutgers University • The economic challenges confronting local journalism have been well documented. However, there has been relatively little research that has sought to systematically examine the nature of local journalism across a large sample of communities. This paper seeks to address this gap. The goals of this paper are threefold. The first is to present a rigorous, replicable methodological approach to assessing the robustness of local journalism in a way that scales to the analysis of a large number of communities, and that can be used to assess differences in the state of local journalism either across communities or over time. The second goal is to provide descriptive data on the robustness of local journalism that will provide an indication of the extent to which local communities are receiving journalism that is original, local, and that addresses critical information needs. The third goal is to explore whether there are any relationships between the characteristics of individual communities and the robustness of the local journalism that is available to those communities, in an effort to determine whether certain types of communities are particularly vulnerable to the declines affecting local journalism.
The Galapagos Syndrome of Korean Local Television News: How Regulatory Restrictions Alter the Norms and Routines of Local Television News Work • Sung Yoon Ri, Syracuse University; Keren Henderson, Syracuse University • Like the Galapagos tortoise, local television news in South Korea has evolved under harsh and isolated conditions. Strict governmental regulations have weakened Korea’s local journalistic autonomy, gatekeeping function, newsgathering processes, and credibility. This qualitative study analyzes how governmental regulations have distorted traditional journalistic practices of local Korean TV newsrooms. The results suggest that with interactive news storytelling and local-friendly attitudes, these newsrooms have altered their norms and routines in order to cope and thrive.
Exploring Options to Build Trust Between Journalists and Audiences in Collegiate Community Journalism Education • Melanie Wilderman, Gaylord College, University of Oklahoma • This case study research explored options for improving trust between journalists and their communities within the boundaries of collegiate community journalism education. Data collected from students who completed a community journalism class, their instructor, and journalism professionals who engaged with the class was analyzed using qualitative text analysis. Conclusions from findings indicate: student journalists understand that trust is not easily gained, and they understand reliability and credibility as related to trust, but have less of a grasp on the element of responsiveness; students want to implement community journalism practices across multiple platforms; political divisiveness continues to shape how journalists think of trust; students often blame audience members for shortcomings in the journalist/audience relationship; and seasoned professionals and educators may not fully understand how generational differences in the media landscape have shaped the younger journalists’ thoughts about trust and relationship with audience.
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