Columbia Journalism Review: Taking On The Year That Changed Journalism
Fixing broken relationships with audiences from the ground up with local news.
Background
When Kyle Pope signed on as editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review (the leading publication covering media news and trends since its foundation in 1961) in September 2016, a tumultuous time for journalism was just beginning. In the months following Pope’s hire, the media’s relationship with its political and public audiences would find itself in uncharted territory, with the rise of fake news, alternative facts and the unanticipated impact of social media, all having an impact.
The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has been long regarded as “an essential venue not just for journalists, but also for the thousands of professionals in communications, technology, academia, and other fields reliant on solid media industry knowledge.”
Since the 2016 election, CJR has seen a substantial increase in subscriptions to the publication and applications to the Columbia School of Journalism.
In response to the public’s heightened interest in — and sense or urgency around — media, CJR has set out to address the most pressing issues for news in the US in their biannual magazine.
The spring edition of CJR, and a topic our class discussed at length during our visit to their office, is “The Future of Local News.” In our meeting with Pope and his team at the CJR, we explored the main challenges faced by local news, the consequences those difficulties have on our society as a whole, as well as a number of takeaways to consider as many of us start (or have already started) our careers in local arenas.
The Rise of Digital
It hasn’t been a mystery that the local news industry in America has been struggling to keep up in the digital age. Information democratization and saturation, made possibly by the Internet and social media, has pushed local media aside as the essential platform for communities to get their news.
Meanwhile, the decline of print and advertising sales has depleted the resources small independent papers, increasing the difficulty of competing with national and international outlets.
The Formation of “News Deserts”
This chain of reactions has caused the formation of what Pope calls “news deserts,” areas across the nation, where little to no local media exists.
After the election, many are looking towards these growing geographical media gaps as missed indicators for the unexpected results of the race. Pope says this, about news deserts, in the latest CJR’s Editor’s Note:
“It’s clear that the media’s coverage failures in the lead-up to the election were compounded by the lack of a local reporting infrastructure. This is not just a problem for journalism; these issues have real-world, global consequences.”
Lack of Representation, Lack of Trust
One of the reverberating consequences of this infrastructural decline (and the one underlying the major cultural upset the media now finds itself in) is the lack of trust that has defined current attitudes towards the press. Our class spoke at length with the CJR team about how they would solve this mistrust issue beginning with local media.
Here are three of their suggestions:
1. Listen More
The CJR team could not stress enough that trust with audiences is built on communication and transparency.
Senior editor Christie Chisholm referenced how “town halls” between communities and journalists may help bridge this gap by asking the question: “you don’t trust us, tell us what we can do about it.”
She also mentioned that while the news has a complicated relationship with social media at present, journalists could be using these technologies as “listening posts” to connect with communities over Slack, WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
2. Break Down the Newsroom Walls
Another way journalists could easily increase trust with audiences is by lowering the iron curtain between the newsroom and readers — a simple picture of the journalist to accompany their piece is enough to increase the trust between reader and writer.
3. Don’t Write Off Local News
“There’s a lot of local news that ‘Trumps’ things coming out of the White House.” — Justin Ray, CJR Digital Media Editor.
Local news is suffering because local news is not prioritized.
Stories produced by local media can get lost in the saturation of content from large media organizations on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
People forget that national stories often start as local stories.
One such example is the emergence of the tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The formation of Silicon Valley began as a local issue, but was dropped by the San Jose Mercury when national media outlets began extensive reporting on the emerging industry.
While the San Jose Mercury is a local outlet with fewer resources than publications like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, their proximity to the story could have made them the foremost authority on a major beat of international importance.
Conclusion
The problems afflicting local news may have a lot to do with perceived journalistic apathy, among some audiences, about their lives and the issues which matter to them. In reality we know it’s more complicated than that. It’s hard to be a local journalist in an age of endless information.
But phenomena like “news deserts” — and the current state of audience/journalist relationships — make it clear that a healthy media landscape requires a network of active local news outlets to represent all facets of the population.
Our time at the CJR taught us that in order to rebuild these broken bridges, and that as journalists, we have to listen, encourage engagement between reporters and communities, and give local news a chance. After all, you never know where the next big story could be hiding.
