This interview with Harsh Taneja (right), associate professor of new and emerging media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is part of a series of discussions with LNIC researchers conducted by Afrooz Mosallaei, a doctoral student in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. It was edited for length.
In January, the LNIC launched its fifth working group which is focused on the local economic impacts of news. The work is possible thanks to funding from the Joyce Foundation and Press Forward and other founding members include representatives from Rebuild Local News, LION Publishers, INN, and the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. Participation in any of the LNIC working groups is welcome, and more information can be found here.
Q1: Tell me about the focus of your working group and who is involved
We are calling this working group the Economic Impact of Local News. Our focus is to examine whether having a strong local news ecosystem benefits communities at two levels. First, does it benefit small businesses in the community? Second, does it benefit the community as a whole?
At the business level, we want to understand whether association with a local news outlet provides added value compared to relying on platform-based advertising. So, is there greater value in being associated with local news, and does the absence of local news change how effectively businesses reach their communities?
At the community level, we are interested in whether strong local news outlets contribute to a community’s identity, visibility, or reputation—what we are tentatively calling a form of local “soft power.” For example, does New York Times add to New York being New York in some way? The challenge here is how we best operationalize soft power for a community, and then, see the role of local news in it.
The working group is led by Ben Toff and myself. We are fortunate to have the support of and representation from a variety of stakeholders invested in similar questions. This of course includes other core LNIC members but also a variety of experts from journalism support organizations, current and former journalists from media organizations including community and not for profit news outlets.
Q2: What are the key research questions you are tackling?
The key research questions are how, at the meso or the micro level, does the presence of local news impact local businesses and members of the local community, and the second, more macro research question is, how does local news contribute to economic impact or soft power at the community level?
What are the major challenges in addressing these questions?
The biggest challenge is operationalization. This is a very complicated, multi-stakeholder landscape. Even if we are able to operationalize benefit to businesses in a certain way, does that convince nonprofit donors to invest in local news? Maybe, maybe not. The operationalization has to appeal to different types of stakeholders.
Does it convince a city or a county to mobilize resources to continue funding a local newspaper or a local news website? Do the same metrics we use to operationalize value for local businesses convince advertisers to divert some of their spending from larger platforms and directly associate with local news publishers?
Ultimately, a more sustainable funding source for local news is needed. Seed funding may work for one, two, or three years, but the question is what happens afterward. The central challenge is developing an operationalization that is convincing at a multi-stakeholder level.
Q3: How do you think this work will inform local news research moving forward?
One thing we want to work very closely with is the working group on journalism employment trends. This relates to the role of local news as a generator of employment and to the continued ability of local news to attract journalists into the profession.
Even if we are able to demonstrate that local news provides value to external stakeholders, that does not automatically mean journalism will continue to attract people entering the workforce or retain mid-career journalists, rather than losing them to related fields such as public relations or marketing communications. That has been a persistent issue.
This is where collaboration with the other working group becomes important, along with connecting the metrics we examine at the community and local business levels to the kinds of content being produced. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that strong local content is produced in line with what communities want, and that there are enough local journalists and staff to produce that content. If these pieces are not aligned, the impact is limited.
Q4: If you could change something about the local news ecosystem in your own community, what would it be?
In my own community, Urbana-Champaign, we have one newspaper. The positive aspect is that it is independent and not part of a large chain or media conglomerate. However, it is behind a paywall after a limited number of articles per month, which limits its reach.
We also have another local outlet that is digital-first, but it is largely focused on restaurant reviews and community events. As a result, we lack a comprehensive local news outlet that is free and broadly accessible to the community.
Some studies found that local Facebook groups have become an alternative news source for many residents. However, the quality of information in these spaces is highly variable. There is a lot of misinformation, and particular political leanings tend to be amplified, which can lead to incivility.
So, we definitely need a couple of local news sources that are either broader in coverage or more widely distributed and accessible.
