Consortium wants to make local news landscape studies more efficient, less costly
Academic collaboration aims to use automation, common standards to make future research more accessible
When the University of Maryland recently released their first local news ecosystem study in April, it provided an impressive qualitative and quantitative analysis of local news in the state. The only problem? These kinds of studies—while crucial to understanding the landscape of local news in communities across the country—can’t be easily replicated. Plus, these studies are costly, making it difficult to assess a community’s ongoing news and information needs.
To mitigate that, a group of academics at six journalism schools around the country formed the Local News Impact Consortium (LNIC) with the goal of standardizing the methodology for these studies while creating tools that any local researcher could use to generate their own analysis. That would lower the cost for reports, enable apples-to-apples comparisons in different markets, and allow researchers to do the work without having to reinvent the wheel each time.
“The crisis in local news is too large to be studied or solved from afar. Agency must be given to the people and institutions most directly affected by and defined by the unique characteristics of their own communities,” wrote the Consortium. Knight will provide a planning grant while LNIC seeks additional investments.
It’s important to understand how different landscape studies work. Some, like the news deserts map now at Medill, are a “census” study that aims to map the existence of news outlets in communities. This might include the format (newspaper, digital), the owner, county location and more. Then there are qualitative surveys that try to understand the quality and tempo of news produced at each outlet. The Maryland study actually included both.
While the research can be very time-intensive, it’s also possible to accelerate the work through a news crawler and artificial intelligence. Along with Matthew Weber at Rutgers and Ben Toff at the University of Minnesota, Damon Kiesow from the Missouri School of Journalism is helping to lead the LNIC and sees potential in creating standards and automating some of the data collection.
“Collecting stories from news outlets has almost always been done manually, usually by grad students,” said Kiesow. “It’s great but expensive and time consuming. We have built a web crawler that collects digital content and uses machine learning trained to do the content analysis. That’s where the efficiencies can be. We reduce the cost of the quantitative research and focus on getting out to communities to talk to people to understand their news gaps and information needs.”
The Consortium, which is also being led by researchers from the University of Oregon, University of Texas-Austin and Northwestern Medill, has already started to collect local news ecosystem studies in one place, and plans to continue meeting to set up standards while running research tests in two new markets. We think the standardized approach to local landscape studies makes a lot of sense, especially as new Press Forward local chapters pop up and community foundations need to understand the scope of the problem.
If you are a funder, academic, or stakeholder interested in supporting this important effort, please get in touch with me at luu@kf.org.
Other news around the horn…
Launches
☤ Healthbeat launching this summer to boost health care coverage. With many nonprofit newsrooms merging lately (e.g. CalMatters and The Markup), why not start a new nonprofit as a collaboration? That’s the plan behind Healthbeat, a collaboration of the Civic News Company (which produces Chalkbeat for education and Votebeat for elections) and KFF Health News. Launching this summer with initial local newsrooms in New York City and Atlanta, along with national reporting, Healthbeat will aim to fill the gaps in public health coverage. The local newsrooms will work with KFF Health News editors and reporters to localize national stories, and KFF will publish and distribute stories with national significance. “Healthbeat will also help counteract the politicization of public health that began during the pandemic and allow communities to engage with issues that affect health and health equity by providing reporting on the science, politics, policies, and businesses that impact health,” Civic News Company said in a statement.
📈 News Revenue Hub launches Growth Plan for smaller newsrooms. The News Revenue Hub has one big focus: driving revenues for local news publishers. How they do that varies according to the size and resources of the news outlet. While they have been focusing more on smaller newsrooms with the free News Revenue Engine, and the lower cost RevEngine Core (for $200 per month), they are now offering a Hub Growth Plan that includes wrap-around services for publishers using Core. The 12-month program includes support from Hub staff with assessments of SEO, calls-to-action and newsletters along with relevant training. “The Growth Plan gives newsrooms a good taste of what is possible and gives them a good foundation for success in terms of understanding the methodology behind membership, why value propositions and calls-to-actions are crucial, and the basics of goal-setting,” said Graham Watson-Ringo, the Hub’s vice president of customer success and growth.
Research
🌇 Few people pay for local news in Chicago. Press Forward will. A recent survey of folks in Chicago seemed to echo the Pew-Knight Initiative survey about how people view local news outlets. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of those surveyed say they access local news frequently on smartphones, surpassing TV (52 percent). Only 19 percent said they pay or donate money to local news outlets, while 70 percent are not very concerned (or concerned at all) about the financial state of local news outlets (see chart above). Luckily, the funders at Press Forward Chicago are concerned about the financial state of local news in the Second City, and announced $1.6 million in grants to 13 news organizations. They include Borderless Magazine, Injustice Watch, La Raza Chicago, Invisible Institute, South Side Weekly and more. “These inaugural grants represent a commitment to providing vital access to stories that matter to communities and foster informed dialogue about issues impacting people’s lives,” said Andrea Sáenz, president and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust.
🦁 LION creates list of journalism support organizations. Every news publisher at some point has wondered, “Where can I get some help?” And whether it’s funding, training, associations or technology support, LION’s Journalism Support Organizations list offers something for everyone. The list is organized by four questions publishers often ask. The question “Where can I find technology and consulting services?” leads to vendors such as BlueLena, Indiegraf, Newspack and more, while “Where should I look for funding?” leads to Arnold Ventures, Emerson Collective, Knight and others. Each entry includes a brief description along with links to each service on offer. While it is not an exhaustive list, it is pretty targeted for independent news publishers, and finally gives folks a one-stop spot to find the help they need.
Impact
🧺 Texas Tribune brings reporting to laundromats, churches, schools. If social media isn’t going to help newsrooms get their reporting seen, then newsrooms will have to bring the reporting out to the community IRL—in real life. The latest nonprofit to do so is the Texas Tribune, which produced a collaborative report with Environmental Health News and the palabra podcast about the Hispanic community of Cloverleaf outside of Houston suffering from toxic air quality. To reach that audience, the Tribune printed 500 flyers and 1,000 postcards in Spanish and English, and brought them to laundromats, school pick-up lines and other places residents gather, according to a story in Nieman Lab. “I hear a lot of the same things as a reporter. Basically what a lot of it comes down to is, ‘How are you going to help me?'” Tribune environmental reporter Alejandra Martinez said. “Thinking about how we would provide information post-publication was really important.” Some lessons learned? Involve your audience team, think about product management, track success (whatever that looks like) and “treat being helpful as your North Star.”
Policy
🎊 New York, Illinois pass huge tax breaks for local newsrooms. One of the funding priorities of Press Forward is “advancing public policies” and now New York State and Illinois are showing how it’s done. Illinois passed a $25 million tax credit over five years for local news outlets, while also creating a rule that local news orgs can’t be sold to an out-of-state company without 120 days’ advance notice. Plus, they launched a new scholarship program that requires students to work in Illinois newsrooms for two years. In New York, the tax break was even larger, at $90 million over three years, but the provision also left out local broadcasters and nonprofits. Even worse, there was a last-minute provision that allowed publicly traded companies to claim a credit if their circulation or workforce dropped by 25 percent over the past five years, meaning Gannett and Lee Enterprises could be eligible. “Nonprofits—including both websites, news services and local public radio—are crucially important parts of the local news ecosystem,” Rebuild Local News honcho Steve Waldman told Gothamist. “We will definitely work to get them included in future revisions.”
Jobs
MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, Co-Executive Director
Learn more here.
Rebuild Local News, Chief Operating Officer
Learn more here.
Local Journalism Initiative (Delaware), Director of Operations
Learn more here.
New Bedford Light, Executive Editor
Learn more here.
Fellowships
$12,000 stipend for 10 months
May 2024 to March 2025
Local Investigations Fellowship
New York Times
One year; fellows stay in their newsrooms
Apply by September 2
Training
Little Key and Jennifer Mizgata
Free, email course
Upcoming Events 📅
Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Days
San Diego
June 11–12
Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA)
Milwaukee
June 12–14
National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ)
Hollywood, CA
July 9–13
Report for America Presents: Growing Statewide Support for Local News in Minnesota
Minneapolis
July 18
Oklahoma City
July 25–27
National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
Chicago
July 31–August 4
Minneapolis
August 15–16
LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit
Chicago
September 5–7
The Association for LGTBQ+ Journalists
Los Angeles
September 5–8
Journalism Women & Symposium (JAWS) CAMP
September 13–15
New Orleans
Online News Association (ONA24)
Atlanta
September 18–21
Local Media Association (LMA) Fest
Chicago
September 24–25
News Product Alliance (NPA) Summit
Online
October 11
JFunders: Journalism Funders Gathering
San Francisco
October 22–23
Quote of the Week
“If you go on Nextdoor [in the ZIP codes where Documented has a presence] and search ‘immigration’ or ‘migrants,’ you will see that most of the content is from Documented. Documented is really the first platform to bring the migration conversation to Nextdoor and this is something I’m humbly proud of, because we are bringing onto this platform—where people usually talk about their lost cat or that they’re looking for an apartment—serious news content sparking a new kind of conversation.”
—Ralph Thomassaint Joseph, Documented’s Caribbean Communities correspondent, in a story on Nieman Lab about the site’s success using Nextdoor.
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Duc Luu, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman
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