Evolving Principles and Philosophies
Alongside changing revenue models and developing journalistic practices, some small-market newspapers are also responding to digital disruption by reevaluating their approach to local journalism. This goes beyond simply changing what they do, to embrace how and why they do it, too.
During our interviews, we heard about how some previously long-held journalistic tenets and behaviors were potentially being challenged, as local journalists put their profession under the microscope.
In this section we explore five of the most interesting ideas to emerge from our conversations.
The value and prominence of partnerships
Historically, the local newspaper industry has not been great at collaboration. According to Tom Glaisyer at the Democracy Fund, part of the reason for this is that the sector has always been “rooted in a cultural independence.”
“Part of their strength was in being independent,” he said, but this is beginning to change.
Although this is unfamiliar territory for some publishers, there are some success stories. In addition, funders such as the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and news incubators such as J-Lab134 have often made partnerships between publishers a prerequisite for financial support.
“Everything we did in New Jersey was rooted in partnerships,” said the Democracy Fund’s Josh Stearns, who previously oversaw Local News Lab, an initiative from the Dodge Foundation to help local news sites develop new and sustainable business models. The nature of those partnerships included information sharing, joint ad sales networks, and collaborative reporting.135
In Virginia, a partnership between the hyperlocal news website Charlottesville Tomorrow and newspaper The Daily Progress has resulted in over 2,000 stories written by Charlottesville Tomorrow staff published in the Progress. According to its website: “Charlottesville Tomorrow produces more than 50 percent of the newspaper’s content related to growth, development, education and local politics.”136
As Brian Wheeler, executive director at Charlottesville Tomorrow, recounted to us:
In 2009, The Daily Progress newsroom had shrunk dramatically, from about forty-five people to about eighteen. The managing editor approached us. He was looking for other things they could have on their website . . . and they finally reached the point where they said, “We could do more in partnership with you than trying to work against you.”
So, the partnership was a simple one-page, back-and-front memorandum of understanding between myself and the editor. There were no lawyers involved. And it was, in 2009, the first of its kind in the country where a nonprofit was doing beat reporting for a daily newspaper.
At the present time examples like this are the exception rather than the rule, but they offer an interesting precedent that others can follow. Moving forward, we believe that small-market newspapers will increasingly see the value that partnerships with local, regional, and national entities can potentially bring.
One area ripe for collaboration is greater links between local newsrooms and national nonprofits. As Jane Elizabeth, senior manager for the Accountability Journalism Program at the American Press Institute, reflected, partnerships between local news outlets and nonprofits like ProPublica and The Marshall Project would be especially beneficial. There are some national publications reaching out to local newsrooms, Elizabeth said, “but I sense that there’s hesitancy in the local newsrooms” that don’t always see how they would benefit. “I think that’s a big opportunity that a lot of local newsrooms are missing out on.”
In sum, although partnership requires a culture shift on both sides, it’s a direction many newsrooms are already heading in.
Engagement
Engagement was the media buzzword of 2016137 and a key topic of conversation in our discussions with industry practitioners. There’s no standard definition of this term, although it’s a label which can be applied to a variety of offline and online publisher-audience relationships.
For many of our interviewees, their understanding of engagement goes beyond traditional measurements such as subscribers, unique users, or time on site. Instead, it’s part of a wider dynamic in which they are reassessing their journalistic role.
Some newsrooms are already recognizing that this relationship needs to be more two-way, going beyond historic norms. Engagement in this context is about more than just outreach. It involves active listening and more of a focus on impact.
J-Lab’s Jan Schaffer talked about the importance of small-market newspapers needing “to figure out how not just to cover community, but to build it as well.” That, Shaffer suggested, means papers listening to the community and looking to do more than just find a great quote or angle for a story. “The engagement that counts,” Schaffer said, is, “wow, we helped our community fix a problem, do something better. And I think that’s still a skill to be learned.”
This skillset requires a shift in approach and practice, but it is in line with the “good neighbor” role that research has shown audiences value.138 139. We believe that engagement can be one of the ways in which small-market newspapers can reassert their relevance in the digital age.
As Lauren Gustus admitted, titles like the Coloradoan need to “demonstrate the value of a local news organization and that it goes beyond the printed product.” To help achieve this goal, she reconfigured her thirty-person newsroom to create a ten-person engagement team charged with finding opportunities to “further our relationship with our readers in a meaningful way.”
Events, putting community members on the editorial board, and engaging with readers on and off site across different digital platforms, are just some of the mechanisms the Coloradoan and others have deployed with this goal in mind.
Engagement strategies, both online and offline, also need to evolve and be refined. This is particularly true when it comes to social. Amalie Nash, at the Des Moines Register, highlighted Facebook and Snapchat as two examples of this digital dichotomy.
Noting that in the month prior to our interview, “We got fifty-three percent of our traffic from Facebook,” Nash nonetheless said her newsroom constantly debated where they should place their digital bets:
Snapchat is a great example of that. A lot of news organizations are putting strategy and time behind Snapchat, not making any money, not bringing anyone into your site because there’s no way to link or anything from it. Are you hoping the money follows, or are you doing it just because that’s where an audience that you’re to reach is, and you’re hoping they will hear our message and then come back to your site? What does success look like on a platform like that?
Others highlighted how their approach had changed over time, with the The Texas Tribune’s Emily Ramshaw noting that “two years ago we were streaming all of our own events live and on our website, and now we’re using Facebook [Live] to do the bulk of what we do.”
Opportunities for engagement, built around the inherent proximity to the audience which small-market newspapers enjoy, were among the key reasons why many of our interviewees were more optimistic about the future than perhaps we had expected. These characteristics contributed to the contrasting opinions expressed by many about the future for metros.
As a former editor at a major metro and also a small-market newspaper reflected:
I think there is an opportunity for small newspapers more than the larger ones . . . to actually form a relationship with the community still . . . Because you might know your neighbor, who was in the paper yesterday. And the smaller newspapers do a better job of getting more people in the paper than the larger ones as well.
There are those kinds of opportunities in smaller newspapers that aren’t there at larger ones. So, I think that forming that type of relationship with the community is still there in smaller papers. And I think it’s more difficult in the metro markets.
Objectivity, advocacy, and solutions
Alongside a growing interest in the opportunities presented by partnerships and engagement, a number of interviewees also shared with us some of their evolving thoughts on their wider journalistic philosophy. These conversations touched on a number of issues including objectivity, advocacy, and the emergence of newer journalistic practices such as solutions journalism.140
The physical closeness to their audience enjoyed by small-market newspapers has previously presented challenges for some journalists. One editor described how, in a bid to be detached and impartial, journalists can sometimes live “like a monk” outside of the newsroom.
Nowadays, there’s an increasing sense that this level of abstinence and community celibacy isn’t necessarily needed. Local journalists can still be active in their community and indeed advocate for it, several interviewees argued, without jeopardizing their journalistic integrity.
In keeping with this, we heard a growing recognition—and level of comfort—with the notion that local journalists are part of the community they are reporting on. They bump into readers while getting coffee, picking their kids up at school, or shopping for groceries.
“To pretend that you can’t, or pretend that you don’t live in the community that you cover, and that you’re not affected by the events that you’re reporting on, and that you have a stake in them, it’s ludicrous,” argued Joel Christopher.
In the process of accepting the implications of this dynamic, small-market newspapers are finding they are able to open themselves up to newer ideas such as solutions journalism,141 by not just shining a light on problems, but on potential remedies, too.
The Seattle Times, with its Education Lab initiative,142 has been active in the solutions space for some time.143 Others are following in its footsteps.144
Under Joel Christopher’s stewardship, for example, Gannett’s ten Wisconsin papers embarked on “Kids in Crisis,”145 a statewide examination of mental health issues related to children and teenagers. Alongside traditional reporting methods, the papers “advocated clearly and explicitly for changes that we think that need to be enacted in the state,” Christopher recalled—an editorial approach which he believes is part of evolving journalistic practice at some local newspapers.
“Would we have done that ten years ago? Hell, no,” he said. “I don’t think we would’ve. I have no problem with [this]. I don’t think it in any way changed [the] journalism because of fear of losing objectivity or becoming an advocate. I think it actually focused and strengthened the reporting.”
Impact aside, Keith Hammonds, president and COO at the Solutions Journalism Network, also argued that this model can be more satisfying for reporters:
Reporters and editors in this project have discovered is that doing these deeper feature stories with a solution orientation . . . [are] also more meaningful to journalists. There is a manifest leap that you take from doing the rogue reporting on school boards and police blotter to doing a deeply reported piece that not only addresses concerns in the community, but attaches those concerns to pathways to constructive discussion.