The Evolution of Local Journalism
This is Chapter 2 from a new report “Local Journalism in the Pacific Northwest: Why It Matters, How It’s Evolving, and Who Pays for It,” published last week by the Agora Journalism Center, University of Oregon. You can read Chapter 1 (Why Local Journalism Still Matters) here, as well as the Executive Summary.
“A newspaper is like a buffet. You go to a buffet, [and] there are dozens and dozens of items [to] choose to eat. But you may find something you don’t like at all.
You may find some items that you like very much…. You might put some of these items in a newspaper — like the kinds of foods that you think a patron might enjoy eating — closer to the front where they will see them first….
That evolution is happening today.
We’re more cognizant of the idea that you’ve got to have a good mix of stories so that people will find something they like and then continue to read the paper because of that.”
— Lou Brancaccio, Emeritus Editor, Vancouver Columbian (Washington)
Introduction
Local journalism, like the wider media landscape, has been disrupted by the emergence of new platforms and technologies.[1] This creates both challenges and opportunities for local news providers.
As Dr. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, told a panel[2] at the 2017 International Journalism Festival: “Distribution is no longer confined by transmitter range or how far it’s practical and economical to drive your physical print copies and sell them or where your advertisers want to sell their products.”[3]
The impact of this, Nielsen says, is that “the media economy is no longer tied to space the way it was in the past. Google and Facebook have far greater penetration in almost every local market than any local media organization has, probably greater than they ever had.”
This reality, coupled with “the fact that there’s going to be less money than there was in the past,” is leading some organizations to reconsider their approach to newsgathering, storytelling, and content distribution.
That has meant embracing new approaches to journalism, such as those advocated by organizations like Hearken and the Solutions Journalism Network, as well as experimenting with opportunities for storytelling and engagement through platforms like Snapchat and Facebook Live, and the means to tell stories using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
A number of content producers — in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere — are also doubling down on more traditional outputs, such as podcasts, newsletters, and events, and placing a greater emphasis on these activities.
Establishing and renewing relevance with audiences will be fundamental to the creation of a successful and viable future for local news providers.
Sharon Chan, vice president of innovation, product, and development for the Seattle Times, noted that for her organization, this means focusing on “building that deeper relationship with people and showing that there’s value to having a newspaper, a legacy newspaper.”
It’s a sentiment that’s applicable to digital-only and other legacy providers as well.
As Morgan Holm, senior vice president and chief content officer at OPB (Portland, Oregon) — which reaches “more than 1.5 million people across the Northwest each week through television, radio, online, and via mobile and social platforms” — observes:
You know, Google and Facebook are doing a darn fine job of squeezing out a whole bunch of people already. So we’ve already got a fight on our hands, but there’s still a chance to, you know, get an audience to be aware of your existence there and to see you as a trusted source.
Given (and perhaps because of) this backdrop of continued financial challenges, and unprecedented levels[4] of political antagonism toward the media, here are three thematic areas where local journalism in the Pacific Northwest is continuing to evolve.
1. Multimedia Journalism Is Standard
The digital revolution has created new opportunities by allowing media outlets to branch out to other platforms.
As Willamette Week’s Mark Zusman comments, “We can compete with TV and video. We can compete with radio on podcasts. We’re not limited to one platform.”
Papers like the Medford Mail Tribune (Medford, Oregon) now have verticals for local video content as standard, the Daily Astorian (Astoria, Oregon) and others have their own YouTube channels, and photo galleries, maps, graphics, and data visualizations are increasingly part of the portfolio of content offered by local media outlets.
Image: Map of active wildfires in Oregon[5] published by the East Oregonian in summer 2015
Clark Talks, the Vancouver Columbian (Washington) newspaper’s weekly podcast, offers an insight into news and topics from across Clark County.
It is hosted by reporters Dameon Pesanti and Katie Gillespie with appearances from their Columbian colleagues.
Recent episodes have explored the Affordable Care Act, school funding, the centennial of the Interstate Bridge, and some of the town’s newest breweries.
GeekWire, which offers “tech news, commentary, and other nerdiness covering Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, Internet, startups, mobile, geek culture, [and] more,”[7] is another local provider with an audio outlet. The weekly GeekWire Podcast airs at 8 p.m. Saturdays and 1 p.m. Sundays on KIRO Radio (97.3 FM) in the Seattle region and reaches a potentially global audience as a podcast distributed via iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher.
Meanwhile, on a smaller scale, the Cottage Grove Sentinel (Oregon) partners with local radio station KNND 1400 AM to air a once-a-month talk show.
Editor Caitlyn May explains:
For one hour on the second Tuesday of the month, we chat about the news in the community, and community members can call in with questions. The radio station doesn’t quite reach Eugene [the nearest city 22.5 miles away], but it’s a must-listen for the older demographic in town.
For those who are already plugged into social media and may be a bit younger, we’ve begun streaming these shows on Facebook Live.
In this regard, although they have fewer resources than their larger counterparts, local media outlets are embracing some of the opportunities for multimedia journalism, going beyond their traditional platforms to find new ways to engage with audiences and distribute content.
2. Experimentation with New and Revitalized Formats
As multimedia journalism is now successful embedded in local newsrooms as well as their larger counterparts, it’s interesting to see how outlets in the Pacific Northwest are also innovating with new, established, and emerging storytelling formats.
Two of the oldest digital delivery channels are newsletters and podcasts. Neither are new, but both are enjoying a resurgence.
Newsletters
“Newsletter editors are the new important person in newsrooms,” Digiday argued in 2016.[8] “You can’t kill email, it’s the cockroach of communication,” concurred Logan Molen, publisher/CEO of RG Media Company and the Eugene Register-Guard (Oregon).
The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), just one Pacific Northwest outlet with a healthy range of newsletters, has a mixture of 15 daily and weekly email publications covering everything from sports to opinion, watchdog reporting, and a monthly newsletter, “The Real Dope,” featuring the best of the paper’s marijuana coverage.[9] (Audiences must confirm they are over 21 to subscribe to the monthly marijuana newsletter.)
Podcasts
Podcasting, another old product,[10] is also reaching new audiences,[11] buoyed by “the Serial effect”[12] and the increasing ease with which audiences can listen to this content.
The podcasting format allows for flexibility, in terms of duration and frequency, that a standard radio show does not. Many newsrooms and media outlets are embracing this creative and journalistic freedom.
OPB, for example, launched a weekly podcast in 2016, “This Land is Our Land,” to cover the federal trial following the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
As OPB’s website notes:
“The podcast provided trial recaps, in-depth analysis, and insight into the high-stakes proceedings, as well as the larger political and cultural issues at play.”[13]
With 12 primary episodes and a number of shorter updates, their podcast[14] is an example of how this storytelling platform can be used for deep dives into important topics with a specific shelf life, as well as long-running and ongoing series.
360 Video
Along with augmented and virtual reality, 360 video is one of a series of emerging visual formats that journalists and newsrooms are experimenting[15] with around the globe.[16]
The Klamath Falls Herald and News (Oregon) is just one outlet that has been experimenting with both AR and 360 video content.
Using 360 video, the paper has recently covered sports, the 30th Annual Restoration Celebration in Chilloquin, and a show featuring 14 exotic parrots at the 2017 Winter Wings Festival. Several of these efforts were produced by the Digital Media Design students of Klamath Community College, then published by the Herald and News.
Talking about their early experiences with the format, Managing Editor Gerry O’Brien says:
“It’s been fun. It’s a learning experience, a learning curve, and it’s a little clunky at first. But once you kind of get it down, it gets easier as we go on.”
Interestingly, given the relatively nascent nature of 360 imagery on social media, each piece comes with instructions for the audience explaining how to access the material. For example, the videos for the “Oregon Bird Man” (published in February 2017), which are embedded in the left sidebar of the paper’s website, contain clear directions for use.
Meanwhile, a story celebrating the 30th anniversary of Klamath Restoration Act by Congress in 1986 — a move “which restored the tribes’ condition as a sovereign nation” — contains links to a 360 video show by Klamath Community College students at an event in Chilloquin.
Visit the story’s YouTube video on a cell phone and move the phone to see 360 effect.[19] (You can also search for “kcc dmd” on YouTube to find the paper’s channel, then click on “Klamath County Pow Wow 360 Video.”) — Description of how to access this content on the Herald and News website.
Providing this type of guidance is important, recommends May, editor of the Cottage Grove Sentinel, as “digital advances are cool but are ineffective if your audience doesn’t know how to log on to Facebook [or other tools].”
“Likewise, if there’s a growing desire from your audience to ‘learn’ social media, help them,” she suggests. “Add content to the web in easy-to-use formats. Reader-friendly [as a concept] should expand beyond the newspaper page and onto every platform we use to distribute these stories.”
In addition to these efforts with 360 video, the paper — which is published six days a week and has a circulation of more than 12,000[20] — has partnered with Klamath Community College to produce regular augmented reality content. This work is explored in Chapter 3.
3. Fresh Approaches to the Role of Journalism
Along with embracing new formats for journalism and storytelling, local journalists in the Pacific Northwest — and elsewhere — are re-examining some of their approaches to and philosophies about the practice of journalism.
Notably, we are witnessing discussions around topics such as advocacy/politics and the end of objectivity, and engagement with new styles of storytelling such as solutions journalism. This section — which is by no means exhaustive — provides a snapshot of some of the discussions I had with interviewees about emerging issues related to the exercise of their craft.
Objectivity/Distance
The idea that journalists need to be detached from their community — lest it influence their reporting — is beginning to change.
One journalist who discussed his evolving stance on this issue is Brancaccio, editor emeritus of the Vancouver Columbian. He explains, “I used to believe that people in the newsroom should keep their distance from the community.”
Brancaccio’s rationale, which was by no means unique,[21] stemmed from a recognition that it might be difficult (or perceived to be difficult) to criticize people and organizations you are close to. Similarly, journalists may also be open to criticism that positive coverage and analysis is the product of close personal and professional relationships, rather than journalistic objectivity.[22] He says:
I gradually figured out that I had a life to live as well and that I just had to make sure that I uphold my principles and that my credibility was still the most important thing to me. And, you know, Mayor Leavitt of Vancouver is a friend a mine, but I’ve beaten him up plenty of times when I thought he’d done stupid stuff. It’s just the way it is.
Some other journalists and outlets have, historically, been more relaxed about these types of relationships. John Costa, president and publisher of the Bend Bulletin (Oregon) noted how “the founder of this paper, near the end of his life, gave the stock to his children, but he gave the rest of his estate to the Oregon Community Foundation in his name.”
This act imbued the spirit of the paper, whereby many people — on both the editorial and business side of the newspaper — are actively involved in their local community.
“The numbers of people in this building who are out doing something that is without any compensation, that is aimed at making it a better society, is staggering,” Costa says.
According to Costa, staff at the Bulletin are involved in everything from health programs for unwed mothers to court assistance initiatives, fundraising for good causes, and organizations like Rotary, the Bend Chamber of Commerce, and Little League teams.
“I spent an awful lot of time and energy on the original committee that started the construction [and] that brought OSU Cascades [Oregon State University’s Bend campus] here…. My wife was on symphony boards.… We’re all part of organizations that really get out there and try and do things,” Costa says.
Solutions Journalism
Shifts in journalistic thinking and practice can also be seen in the emergence of solutions journalism.
In a 2013 blog post, Courtney Martin, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, “an independent, non-profit organization working to legitimize and spread the practice of solutions journalism,”[23] addressed the question: “What is Solutions Journalism?”
Solutions journalism is rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. It investigates and explains, in a critical and clear-eyed way, examples of people working toward solutions. It focuses not just on what may be working, but how and why it appears to be working, or alternatively, why it may be stumbling.[24]
“It’s not about making people feel good or advocating for a certain policy or balancing out the “doom-and-gloom,”” she wrote. “Instead, solutions journalism is about what journalism has always been about: informing and empowering people.”
What’s different, she suggests, is that “we’re just asking journalists to do that in a more complete way, by investigating what has worked just as rigorously and relentlessly as what hasn’t.”
One major proponent of solutions journalism in the Pacific Northwest is the Seattle Times, which works with the Solutions Journalism Network on its Education Lab project. Education Lab reporter Claudia Rowe has argued that with solutions journalism, “the idea is not to change minds; it’s to show possibilities.”[25]
Sharon Chan, vice president of innovation, product, and development at the Seattle Times, identifies one example of how this approach was brought to a story about “school discipline that doesn’t deprive students of their education.”
As she admits, “the more traditional way to write it now would have been to write about these formal racial disparities in the way discipline is applied.” Instead the paper took a different approach. Chan explains:
We went out and covered promising approaches, and then we had two events: One was a solutions workshop with 40 stakeholders, and then we had a town hall with about 200 people. Both of those [events] heavily featured the voices of educators themselves, students themselves, principals themselves, as opposed to us getting up on stage and talking.
The impact of this work “resulted in two major pieces of legislative action at the state level,” Chan says.
The Solutions Journalism Network provides a “story tracker” database that offers searchable examples of this type of journalism being produced around the world.
Examples of other solutions-led reporting from the Pacific Northwest region captured by the tracker include a feature on “Why Seattle Cops and Social Workers Walk the Beat Together” from KUOW (a public radio station in Puget Sound, Washington, and Southern British Columbia), a story by Seattle-based tech website GeekWire on “Finding affordable, innovative ways to harness technology to combat homelessness,” and an OPB feature on how “The Answer to Oregon’s $8 Billion Health Problem Lies in 1970s Maine.”
Meanwhile, the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism was one of the first J-schools in the United States to teach solutions journalism,[27] and in summer 2017 it launched the Catalyst Journalism Project to “teach students how to combine the traditional methods of investigative journalism with the innovative practice of solutions journalism.”[28]
What the Analytics Tell Us
The rise of sophisticated data analytics tools, such as those offered by Google, Chartbeat, NewsWhip, Parse.ly, and others, provide newsrooms with phenomenal amounts of data related to their online audience and users.
As a result, argues Elinor Shields, head of audience engagement for BBC News, “there’s no shortage of data and insight. If anything, there’s almost too much.”[29]
Making sense of this data is a priority for newsrooms. A December 2015 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism survey of 130 leading editors, CEOs, and digital leaders from 25 countries revealed: “54% said deepening online engagement was a top priority … and 76% said it was extremely important to improve the use of data in newsrooms.”
Levi Pulkkinen, senior editor of the Seattle PI, argues that a lot of this data is telling newsrooms that their approaches to some types of traditional reporting needs to change. And not’s not an easy message to hear.
“I think there’s a hesitancy in the newspaper industry among reporters to not recognize that what the metrics are telling us is that we need to change the content,” Pulkkinen says.
One clear example of this, he argues, can be seen in standard public affairs journalism. “What we’re finding is that readers have very little taste for incremental coverage, and that’s kind of the bread and butter of local newspaper,” he says. He continues:
There’s kind of a traditional newspaper idea that you do cover the incremental stuff because people are sitting there waiting to know what happened at X meeting, or when whatever committee has advanced a bill, and all that stuff. And I just don’t think there’s an audience for it.
Responding to these cues from the audience won’t necessarily be easy, given how engrained this type of journalism is at many outlets.
Yet it’s not that audiences aren’t interested in this type of story, Pulkkinen suggests. It’s that local journalists need to position their content in new ways. “I think we lose people that could be engaged when we make the news too boring for them to come get it,” he contends.
The challenge for local journalists, Pulkkinen argues, is “to make that adjustment to telling stories that are going to resonate a bit more than this kind of government-heavy, grinding away covering the same story as it moves slowly through.”
Instead, the data seems to imply preferences for a fresh approach. “They like when we can tell them a whole story, or tell them an important story,” he says, “but they don’t need us to just act as a kind of stenographer of government.”
Pulkkinen’s observations hint at some of the wider challenges faced by both local and larger news organizations. New platforms and shifts in media consumption habits mean that the way stories are reported may need to change and evolve.
As a result, there’s a balancing act between preserving core journalistic values and finding new ways to reinvigorate and refresh them for the digital age. Addressing that is a complex matter that’s as applicable to a given news beat (such as public affairs) as it is to the wider, overarching strategy of any news provider.
As Jim Simon explains from the Seattle Times’ perspective, an organization that is espousing new forms of journalism, such as solutions journalism, as well as experimenting on new and emerging digital platforms (see the upcoming Chapter 3):
We still feel what we have to sell is very unique content, and that includes ambitious public service journalism, whether it’s watchdog or high-end explanatory storytelling. The challenge for us — and I think so far we’ve been pretty good at that — is how you do this rapid digital transformation, search for new audiences while maintaining your ability to do that sort of ambitious public service journalism.
Recap and Reflections
Despite (and perhaps because of) continued financial challenges and unprecedented levels[30] of political antagonism toward the media, traditional journalistic values and mission remain fundamentally important to many working journalists.
However, the practice of journalism does not stand still. Journalists need to continue to be alert to the opportunities that new technologies and platforms offer them, as well as other opportunities to refine and revisit the shape of their craft in the digital age.
As a result, we can continue to expect further experimentation with storytelling formats and forms, as well as debates about what journalism should look like — particularly around issues such as advocacy, access to public record/officials, and journalism in the age of Trump — in 2017 and beyond.
Extracted from: “Local Journalism in the Pacific Northwest: Why It Matters, How It’s Evolving, and Who Pays for It” published by the Agora Journalism Center, University of Oregon: (UO Scholars Bank, Academia.edu, SlideShare, Scribd, Story on UO School of Journalism website)
Endnotes
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/14/facts-about-the-changing-digital-news-landscape/, accessed July 9, 2017
[2] Disclaimer: I chaired this panel on “Reimagining local news for the digital age.” which was supported by the Agora Journalism Center and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
[3] http://mediashift.org/2017/05/international-perspectives-state-local-news/, accessed July 9, 2017
[4] https://www.apnews.com/60a22e93df684f0ebaaaec63e5e68147, accessed July 2, 2017
[5] http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/local-news/20150816/canyon-creek-fire-destroys-26-homes-in-its-path, accessed March 14, 2017
[6] http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/08/john_day_area_fire_grows_to_22.html, accessed March 14, 2017
[7] https://twitter.com/geekwire, accessed July 5, 2017
[8] https://digiday.com/careers/newsletter-editors-new-important-person-newsrooms/, accessed July 5, 2017
[9] http://subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters/, number correct as of March 12, 2017
[10] https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/04/easy-listening, accessed July 5, 2017
[11] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/05/16/by-producing-podcasts-you-can-reach-wider-audiences-occupy-your-niche-and-create-new-items-of-research/, accessed July 5, 2017
[12] http://mckinney.com/news/results-mckinney-survey-revealed-cannes-show-serial-effect-benefits-brands, accessed July 5, 2017
[13] http://www.opb.org/about/, accessed July 5, 2017
[14] https://www.spreaker.com/show/this-land-is-our-land_1, accessed July 5, 2017
[15] See, for example, “The Emergence of Augmented Reality (AR) as a Storytelling Medium in Journalism,” John V. Pavlik, Frank Bridges, Journalism & Communication Monographs,
Vol 15, Issue 1, pp. 4–59. First published date: January 13, 2013.
[16] http://en.ejo.ch/digital-news/augmented-reality-storytelling-journalism, accessed July 5, 2017
[17] http://www.heraldandnews.com/winter-wings-oregon-bird-man-parrot-show/image_8af8442b-d3d9-5481-9909-d988e0de509f.html, accessed 5th July 2017.
[18] http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/check-out-the-winter-wings-parrot-show-in-video/article_10118b04-1958-5f71-818f-42aba8fec12e.html, accessed July 6, 2017
[19] http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/see-the-restoration-celebration-in/article_b7a7ee5c-a002-5043-9141-05556cd691c8.html, accessed July 7, 2017
[20] http://www.pioneernewsgroup.com/locations/oregon/herald-and-news-klamath-falls-or/article_aef4ce80-d48c-11e6-b394-9f06b4f04009.html, accessed July 7, 2017
[21] http://niemanreports.org/articles/reporters-relationships-with-sources/, accessed July 7, 2017. This article from 1999 offers a range of still useful perspectives on this topic.
[22] There is a vast collection of literature on this topic. But, for an interesting starting point, see, for example, “How Close Is Too Close? Conflict of Interest in Journalists’ Relationships with Sources by the Ethics Advisory Committee of The Canadian Association of Journalists”: https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/234707715?access_key=key-J4DGonjox4DBHeTjLJY7&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll, accessed July 7, 2017
[23] https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/3272942/, accessed July 13, 2017
[24] http://solutionsjournalism.org/what-is-solutions-journalism/, accessed July 13, 2017
[25] http://niemanreports.org/articles/is-solutions-journalism-the-solution/, accessed July 13, 2017
[26] http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/your-voices-15-ideas-on-how-school-discipline-could-work-better/, image: https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/postcard7-1020x795.jpg, accessed July 13, 2017
[27] http://journalism.uoregon.edu/news/sojc-faculty-among-first-nation-teach-solutions-journalism/, accessed July 13, 2017
[28] https://journalism.uoregon.edu/news/catalyst-journalism-project-combines-investigative-solutions-journalism/, accessed July 14, 2017
[29] https://www.themediabriefing.com/article/five-reasons-why-engagement-is-so-hot-right-now, accessed July 14, 2017
[30] https://www.apnews.com/60a22e93df684f0ebaaaec63e5e68147, accessed July 2, 2017
