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This story is worth your time. Note the ties between government help, civic life, and information access. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/crime-poverty-pandemic-cleveland.html?referringSource=articleShare
Note this, for example:
Local news has never been perfect, but it did provide a common fact sheet for users. The limited choices pre-Internet meant it was an obvious place for people to go if they wanted to keep up with what they need to navigate life in their community.
We call these community information needs. Everyone has them. My sense of what has changed as local news has collapsed and been subsumed by national news primacy is people are less aware of the community information needs they don’t know they have.
The screenshotted anecdote is a good example of what’s wrong. The person had a need, and there was help available, but they hadn’t seen the news coverage about it. So how do you fix the problem?
At work here is lack of news engagement and assumptions there is no help.
At work here is lack of news engagement and assumptions there is no help.
We talk a lot about fixing local news. I consider that a long-term problem/project. What do we do right now to give people this kind of information when they need it? How can the city of Cleveloand, or your own city, fix the urgent information need gap right now?
The fact is localities depend on the public using the news to make these programs effective. It’s not happening, even as local news is collapsing all around them. They are not in a position to wait for the local news reinvention while people are suffering.
Final note: when you consider the demographics of who still uses local newspapers in particular (generally white people with some education and disposable income), you can see the structural advantages that comes with this.
Information is power. Yes, a lot of what’s in the local paper is kind of blah. But knowing things comes with advantages. It helps you avoid pitfalls, meet deadlines, get in line for things before non-users know about it. Local news reborn needs to be made for underserved people.
Who uses the news has shaped what gets covered, and indeed what is seen as news. Affluent white readers meant coverage was for them. This is a critique that goes back decades.
A reborn local effort doesn’t just cover underserved communities. It works for their attention.
A reborn local effort doesn’t just cover underserved communities. It works for their attention.
Replying in-thread to this because it’s a good point. People think of information on social media as a replacement for news, not a starting point. But if social media spreads good/bad information, main value prop for news is information with a verification layer filter. https://twitter.com/daliaz219/status/1345383957760774145
Also, research shows most people have pretty homogenous social networks. So even if we only shared verified information, it would largely be segregated in ways that would arguably be even worse than a news product read only by the affluent.
Since I’m doing this thread in parts (kids, whew), I’ll finish with this. Most of the “save local news” take focuses too narrowly on how to get more revenue.
The anecdote in the story atop this thread suggests a different way of seeing the problem: distribution and relevance.
The anecdote in the story atop this thread suggests a different way of seeing the problem: distribution and relevance.
That is, the woman in the story could have found that information in the news. This wasn’t a coverage gap issue due to less newsroom resources. It didn’t reach her. Maybe it is a distribution strategy problem, maybe she doesn’t see the news as relevant to her. Probably both.
Most of the vibrant news startups I see these days are attacking the twin issues of information needs and relevance. They are linked. This requires the newsroom to think beyond its preconceptions about what is news and what people need.
This is why I say seeking the attention of underserved communities should be job one in local news reform. All the fancy revenue-generating products in the world won’t solve the problem if people don’t think of your news product as a place to get answers and help.
