[New Report] Building a Stronger Local Media Ecosystem: The Role of Media Policy

How can media policy support local journalism in the USA?

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

Released on Thursday, is a new report for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism that I produced with Dr. Nick Mathews. It is based on five webinars that I hosted exploring the role of media policy and how it can support local journalism in the USA. Fifteen experts from across academia and industry joined us for these sessions. This report is a distillation of the key ideas to emerge from the series. Below you can read the Executive Summary of the study.

Building a Stronger Local Media Ecosystem: The Role of Media Policy
By Damian Radcliffe with Nick Mathews

This report plays out against a backdrop of continued closures and diminished local news reporting across much of the United States. It explores the role that media policy can and should play in supporting local journalism.

In examining this topic, we investigate three fundamental questions:

1. What is local media policy?
2. What are the key existential issues and/or problems local media policy must wrestle with?
3. What potential solutions to the local news crisis can media policy potentially help address?

The core of our response to these questions is derived from a series of five public webinars hosted by the Tow Center. Through these events, we invited a range of industry and academic experts to share their perspectives on areas related to these major themes.

Our conversations explored the scope of media policy, barriers to implementation, opportunities for policy to make a difference, and some of the unique characteristics that shape U.S. media policy and attitudes toward potential policy interventions.

To this, we have added further context and updates on some of the latest policy developments, based on a literature review and our continued interest in this subject.

Why this matters

Although we have seen experimentation and the emergence of new players in the local news space, the overarching narrative of the past two decades is one of a slow and steady decline. The result has been the emergence of news deserts and ghost newspapers, as well as the rise of partisan pink slime websites and online misinformation. This has resulted in reduced accountability and information deficits in many communities across the United States.

To tackle these issues, by arresting this decline and rebuilding local news and information ecosystems, will require fresh thinking and engagement from a broad range of stakeholders.

Media policy can play a crucial role in shaping this future. It can directly influence the means and models that are responsible for the creation and distribution of local news and information. Moreover, through means such as tax incentives, it can also encourage the consumption and creation of local news by supporting activities related to subscriptions, advertising, and payroll.

This breadth of policy possibilities is important given the state that local news is in, and the role of local journalism in contributing to a healthy democracy and active communities. This includes journalism’s role in providing critical information at a local level, functions that incorporate watchdog reporting, and acting as a good neighbor by helping to build — and create — a sense of community. Local journalism also plays a key role in identifying stories (and industry talent) that are later picked up by regional and national outlets.

Here are some of our key findings from the project:

Opportunities

• There was a consensus across our five panels that the status quo is a broken system. Fresh approaches are needed to tackle issues such as sustainability, funding for journalism, and meeting information gaps. We see an opportunity to reset and redraw the local news map.
• We are beginning to see more state-led efforts to support local news and information. This includes direct funding, research and mapping to identify local needs, and policies that promote media diversity in terms of ownership and target audiences.
• New models are emerging for funding and delivering local news and information. This includes nonprofits, community foundations, and new philanthropic players, as well as fresh formats and delivery mechanisms.
• Media policy can be used to help redress long-term imbalances and inequities. That applies to both the supply and demand side of journalistic work. Populations in rural environs, communities of color, and less affluent constituencies consistently have failed to have their information needs met. They remain among the most vulnerable to the impact of cuts and closures being seen today across the local news and information ecosystem.
• Policy often feels focused on the supply side, with the demand dimension overlooked. Media policy should also support who consumes news and information, as well as who creates and shares it. There is a key equity dimension to the production, as well as distribution and consumption of news and information, which needs to be more explicitly reinforced.
• Support should be platform- and ownership-model agnostic. The future of news might not look like the past. The commercial model for local news may be difficult to sustain, leading some new and existing organizations to explore nonprofit models as a more financially viable alternative.
• Policy makers have a plethora of instruments at their disposal to help support local news and information. This does not just mean direct public funding, but also looking at ownership models, advertising budgets, and opportunities to encourage partnerships and subscriptions and directing more advertising to local outlets.
• Multiple agencies and stakeholders can play a role in contributing to this future. It is not the proviso of any one single entity, which is both a challenge and an opportunity.

Challenges

• For now, the federal media policy boat — and nationwide efforts to help fund journalism — has sailed. While some states are pursuing their own policies, there are concerns that these efforts are focused on blue and purple states, and that others will be left behind.
• Although the sands are shifting, there remains some resistance to the idea of government intervention in local journalism. This is rooted in fears that it could lead to reliance on government funding and a loss of independence for local news outlets. Others may worry that intervention could have a negative impact on freedom of speech, making it difficult for the press to critique their funders.
• Although newspapers remain important sources of news and original reporting, they are not the only format or producers of content that merit assistance. Their voices as lobbyists and historic papers of record often give them an outsize influence in policy discussions.
• Smaller players and organizations can be easily overlooked by funders and policymakers. Yet they often deliver highly valuable and valued work. They need a seat at the table.
• We cannot look at information provision without engaging with platforms such as Google and Meta. Although they have supported local journalism in the form of grants and products, more needs to be done to take on their market power in terms of both digital advertising and the distribution of information. Policymakers are not necessarily willing to take on the platforms in this arena.
• Market-led approaches have historically dominated media policy. However, there is evidence of market failure in this arena. Tackling this will therefore require a new approach that is not in keeping with traditional U.S. media policy models.

Moving Forward

• To effectively address the local news crisis, we need a clear vision of what we want this landscape to look like. Without this, not only will it be difficult to move forward, but it will also be difficult to agree consensus and buy-in for media policy.
• As part of this, we may want to look at what minimum local news and information provision(s) should be and how the success of interventions would be measured.
• Sustaining — and ideally growing — local journalism in the United States looks likely to require significant funding. There may not be the political appetite for this, despite the trajectory the sector is on, and the known consequences of misinformation of the absence of fresh, accurate news. It is therefore incumbent on journalists, researchers, think tanks, and membership organizations to continue to make the case for supporting local news.

The challenges facing local journalism are significant, but there are also many opportunities and tactics that can be deployed to delay — and, ideally, reverse — the slow death of local news in the United States.

Many of our panelists made the case for redrawing the local media map, but we recognize that this may currently be unrealistic. Although we welcome bold action, we must also be pragmatic. A more incremental approach, based on existing conversations and current practices at a state and local level, may be more likely to move the policy needle.

Although not our preferred option, this is better than stasis or the status quo, the current status of too many policy efforts across the country. As a result, we have purposely avoided making explicit recommendations, but instead offer a menu of options, ideas, and considerations for policymakers and funders to contemplate. We encourage stakeholders to consider these ideas and weigh up these different options.

One thing is clear: Inaction is not an option. We need to see policy initiatives at a federal, state, and local level to enable the local news industry to change course, and to help make local journalism in the United States more sustainable and vibrant for decades to come.

Read the full report on CJR

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Damian Radcliffe is a journalist, researcher, and professor based at the University of Oregon, where he is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism, a Professor of Practice, an affiliate faculty member of the Department for Middle East and North Africa Studies (MENA) and the Agora Journalism Center, and a Research Associate of the Center for Science Communication Research (SCR).

Damian is also a three-time Knight News Innovation Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture Studies (JOMEC), and a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). In Spring 2023 he will be a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

With over 25 years of experience in the media industry, Damian has worked in editorial, strategic, research, policy and teaching roles in the USA, Middle East and UK. He continues to be an active journalist, writing regular features for Digital Content Next, the International Journalists’ Network (IJNet), What’s New in Publishing, journalism.co.uk and other outlets. His work focuses on digital trends, social media, technology, the business of media, and the evolution — and practice — of journalism.

As an analyst, researcher and trainer, he has worked with a wide range of additional industry and academic organisations including the BBC World Service, Facebook, FIPP, INMA, Thomson Reuters Foundation, World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the United Nations. He has been quoted on issues relating to digital media and journalism by major outlets such as AFP, BBC News, Business Insider, NPR, The New York Times, Snapchat, Wired and Voice of America.

As a freelance journalist, his work has also been published by leading publications and trade outlets such as the BBC, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), Harvard’s Nieman Lab, HuffPost, PBS MediaShift, Poynter, TheMediaBriefing and ZDNet.