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In journalism, local news refers to coverage of events, by the news, in a local context that would not be of interest to another locality, or otherwise be of national or international scope. Local news, in contrast to national or international news, caters to the news of their regional and local communities; they focus on more localized issues and events.[1] Some key features of local newsrooms include regional politics, weather, business, and human interest stories.[2]
Local news readership has been declining in recent years, according to a recent study.[3] As more and more television consumers tap into streamed programming, local news viewership is declining.[4] Nikki Usher, an associate professor at the College of Media at the University of Illinois, argued in "The Complicated Future of Local News" that "critical and comprehensive local news is a recent invention, not a core element of the history of American democracy."[5]
Conversely, citing Alexis de Tocqueville in the second volume of Democracy in America (1840),[6] political scientist Robert D. Putnam noted in the first edition of Bowling Alone (2000) that differences between the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation in the United States versus Baby boomers and Generation X in local civic association membership rates and various forms of civic and political engagement was significantly associated with generational differences in news consumption broadly and of newspaper subscriptions especially,[7] such that Americans born before 1946 reported in a Yankelovich Partners survey at the end of the 20th century that they derived belongingness from local newspapers at more than twice the rate of Americans born after 1964.[8]
- ^ Franklin, Bob (1998). Local Journalism and Local Media : Making the Local News. Taylor and Francis.
- ^ Meyer, Kelly M.; Tang, Tang (2015-10-02). "#SocialJournalism: Local News Media on Twitter". International Journal on Media Management. 17 (4): 241–257. doi:10.1080/14241277.2015.1107569. ISSN 1424-1277. S2CID 167628979.
- ^ Wadbring, Ingela; Bergström, Annika (2017-02-01). "A Print Crisis or a Local Crisis?". Journalism Studies. 18 (2): 175–190. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2015.1042988. ISSN 1461-670X. S2CID 143343732.
- ^ "The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
- ^ "The Complicated Future of Local News: On Nikki Usher's "News for the Rich, White, and Blue"". Cleveland Review of Books. Retrieved 2021-11-23.
- ^ de Tocqueville, Alexis (2004) [1840]. "Book II. VI. Of the Relation Between Public Associations and Newspapers". Democracy in America. Translated by Reeve, Henry. New York: Bantam Classics. pp. 633–634. ISBN 978-0553214642.
When men are no longer united amongst themselves by firm and lasting ties, it is impossible to obtain the cooperation of any great number of them, unless you can persuade every man whose concurrence you require that this private interest obliges him voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the rest. This can only be habitually and conveniently effected by means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. … Thus hardly any democratic association can do without newspapers. … Thus it is in America that we find at the same time the greatest number of associations and of newspapers.
- ^ Putnam, Robert D. (2020) [2000]. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2nd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 216–221, 250–254. ISBN 978-1982130848.
- ^ Putnam, Robert D. (2020) [2000]. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2nd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 274–275. ISBN 978-1982130848.