Audiences relationships to the places of news (and power) have changed
Another post-take out from my monograph written for Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs, pre-peer review. (whoops, waves at blind reviewer). This lays out some of the thinking for my forthcoming book, News from Somewhere, about the relationship between place and audiences and trust in journalism. A previous take-out on digital economics can be found here. The book, well, that’s coming, but here’s the thinking. References.
Anti-media sentiment is popular and it is amplified by the most powerful person in the US. This anti-media sentiment has a strong place-based undercurrent; though not new, the old trope exemplified by the Goldwater critique of “eastern liberal media,” has been reborn as critiques of journalists as “coastal elite.” In particular, right wing media critiques journalists for not just being liberal, but also for being not just woefully out of touch with the lived experiences of ordinary Americans who don’t reside in the beltway bubble (disregarding the internal contradiction that many of these right-wing journalists also live and work in these places). Media credibility research has not adequately considered the where audiences are when they respond to questions about whether they trust the media, and only rarely differentiate this question by local and national. The studies that do examine this local/national question show local news is more trusted than national news, especially local TV (Lakshmanan, 2018). The importance of connecting places of news production to the places of audience news production when these questions about trust is critical.
Partisan rhetoric aside, it is empirically substantiated that audiences’ direct experiences with journalists and journalism has diminished and that journalists are likely to be overrepresented in large coastal cities. The relationships audiences have with journalists has changed, and the proximity of journalists to audiences has shifted as well. This rift can be analyzed through a place-based approach that considers the effect of these geographic realignments, the cultural and relational changes between journalists and audiences, and the relative impact of these changes on larger power structures (e.g. journalists’ claims to cultural authority and rationale for their domain over “place trust.”)
Shifts in proximity of audiences to journalists
Some scholars argue when local newspapers were more vibrant, journalists and newspapers were more visibly emplaced in communities, and as a result, the direct experiences ordinary people had with journalists helped bolster trust in journalism as a whole. As Madison and DeJarnette (2017) argue:
During the height of family newspaper ownership, in the early 20th century, newspaper owners ….were likely to bump into readers at the grocery store or serve alongside them on the boards of local civic organizations.
This may be reason that local television news may still receive high marks for trust, though media consolidation may undermine the connection between “local” television and television news that shows local stories from around the country (Ali, 2017). Where journalists are located matters relative to their audiences matters because, as noted, the places of news are not geographic location but set in motion important cognitive schemas for values, norms, and news priorities for journalists.
Postol (1995) argued that newspapers built themselves up as critical to communities beyond just content. One strategy newspapers used to embed their cultural importance in a community were youth newspaper carriers. Young people got a taste of independence working for a newspaper, while subscribers would find it hard to cancel their subscriptions if they had to tell young Johnny in person that they would not be paying for the newspaper anymore. As distribution methods changed (not to mention child labor laws), this effect diminished. The presence of local news media companies as sponsors of local charity and educational efforts was arguably more pronounced then they are now, with their names placed prominently as boosters for everything from the county fair to baseball stadiums. Decreasing profits may well have limited this kind of connection between branding, place, and community.
More recent newspaper history provides other possible starting points to consider the effect of physical presence and declines in trust. As metro and regional newspapers flourished between the 1980s to early 2000s, zoned editions became a mechanism for raising additional advertising revenue. These zoned editions were specially targeted print newspaper editions for a specific geographical region. These editions provided a pre-digital version of hyper-local content for audiences about events and issues that were geographically proximate. In addition, many newspapers had residency requirements for their reporters. For example, the journalist charged with covering River Parish in Louisiana for The Times-Picayune had to live there, too. For journalists coming from outside Louisiana, this was not necessarily a plum assignment when the downtown office was in New Orleans, but even though these journalists were from elsewhere, when they weren’t working, they were still physically present in the community, spotted at grocery stores and school events.
Similarly, the effect of diminished print newspaper distribution on trust has not been considered. When formerly statewide newspapers stop circulating in print statewide, the presence of the print newspaper emplaced at local stores and found in coffee shops just disappears in these areas. This often happens first in rural areas with poor broadband access, meaning that people who formerly had easy print access to the newspaper may not have such on-demand access as might be presumed. Journalists at The Omaha World-Herald have noted that those in the western part of Nebraska where circulation has been cut say they now feel abandoned by the newspaper and no longer feel their concerns are being adequately covered.
Some news organizations have relocated and centralized their physical production staff, meaning that copy editors and page designers are essentially outsourced staff working remote from the newspapers they serve. For example, Gannett and GateHouse have regional hubs for news design and copyediting. This means people who have never visited the cities whose newspapers they work for are asked to do the task of some of the most important jobs: planning the front page and copyediting. Some early research has suggested that that the error rate between local copyeditors is no different than the error rate of distant copyeditors, however the success of these remote partnerships tended to depend on interpersonal relationships (Martins and Martin, 2016). More research is needed in this area, particularly about how the separation from production centers to their local community might affects audience perceptions, and, possibly trust.
On the other hand, the impact of journalists reestablishing themselves as emplaced in communities is part and parcel of the movement of engaged journalism. However, the role of place as an active agent in this process of rebuilding trust and reconnecting with audiences has received less attention. Journalists are now going to community spaces and are investing efforts in the co-production of news in some of the types of marginalized geographical areas they have in the past under-covered. A subtheme of engaged journalism involves going to residents and involving them in the process of news making, and while much of this may be instantiated digitally (Batsell, 2015), there are also new questions raised about the importance of physical proximity to journalism and to journalists.
Some news organizations have rethought the way they can use place to reconnect with audiences. For example, for a brief period, The Guardian was running a coffee shop in London and an event space intended for reader events and conferences. The New York Times’s Times Center and The Washington Post Live studio are places that the public can come for talks (sometimes paid, sometimes not). In Connecticut, The Register Guard made news industry headlines for opening up its lobby for the public to come for coffee. The New York Times has launched events around its reporting; for example, holding a panel in Los Angeles on the #metoo movement. Other events feature local businesses, for example a New York Times event in Washington was held at a whiskey distillery. The effect of this kind of place-based engagement, inside and outside the newsroom, might well be worth future consideration and may provide new insights for those studying audience engagement.
Whether the visibility of a news building, easy access to visiting it, or connections with the community facilitated by in-person meetings in places outside the newsroom make a difference in audience relationships with newspapers is unclear and worthy of future consideration. Research on those who have been in news stories suggests that even when they feel they have been represented poorly, the opportunity to have met a journalist gives them empathy for journalists; in fact, these ordinary news sources explain that they understand these journalists aren’t bad people, but that they are just doing a job (Palmer, R., 2017). Overall, the effect of physical distance from journalism — as understood by the physical presence of journalists and newspapers in a community — has not been studied enough and provides a rich opportunity to think about place, materiality, and the cultural and symbolic role of these material, geo-located instantiations of journalism.
Coastal Elitism: The Realignment of Journalists Away from Audiences
The clustering of journalism jobs in large, coastal cities, particularly digital-first jobs, while new job opportunities in journalism outside these areas diminish is clear evidence of place-based realignment happening between journalists and their audiences. As Benton (2016) suggests:
…the shift from print to digital has concentrated the news business more than ever in New York, Washington, and a few other cities with oceanfront views. Of all the messages embedded in Trump’s rise, few are clearer than his voters’ belief that coastal elites are not serving their interests.
In 2016, 40 percent of all digital media job openings were in New York or Washington, while reporting jobs in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles had doubled in 10 years, with 20 percent of all reporting jobs in the country located there (Benton, 2016). As Benton points out, this clustering effects the political and social exposure that these journalists will have with others on a day-to-day basis.
College-educated liberal arts grads who live in cities — a group most American journalists fit into — are more liberal as a group than the American median. And those who live in New York or San Francisco are going to be more liberal as a group than those in Cincinnati or Knoxville
Yes, more journalists are more likely to be at least surrounded by more liberals, and indeed, the charges of eastern liberal media may well be more true than ever before. Moreover, entry and exit opportunities into the field mean that thanks to the rise of unpaid internships field-wide, aspiring journalists who come from places of privilege simply have more opportunities (Dennis, 2013; Oliver et. al, 2017). Journalists as a whole are increasingly different from those not living in large population centers clustered in coastal cities. Myers (2018), the editor of New Orleans investigative non-profit The Lens, argued in Nieman Report that a skills gap was emerging between local journalists and national journalists, with possibly dire consequences:
So what does this shift mean? ….It means you could rack up five years of solid newsroom experience in New York and not know what it’s like to write for the people you’re writing about.
Journalists today are physically distant, culturally distant, and part of the power elite, perhaps more so than ever before in modern American history. Non-profits that see themselves as coming to the rescue of local journalism would do well to consider the effect of bringing young journalists with this kind of training to places that are new to them. Efforts such as Report for America, which aims to bring young journalists to communities where local news gathering has been diminished provides a rich empirical starting point for thinking about place-knowledge, authenticity, and perceived distance.
While problems with Washington journalism is well-trodden scholarly terrain, national political journalism is often the default stand-in when people are asked how much they trust “the media” (Lakshmanan, 2018). A renewed, place-focused inquiry into the cognitive, cultural, and physical distance between Washington journalists and their counterparts in larger cities is merited, in part because of the temporal relevance and in part because new issues have emerged. There are 10x the number of journalists in Washington relative to anywhere else, and they are paid substantially more than other journalists (Perlberg, 2018). The traditional career path that many journalists had to get to Washington, working at local newspapers or TV stations, then larger or more prestigious beats at these papers or stations, and then finally ending in Washington is largely antiquated, given the decline in local journalism. How Washington itself, as a place, plays an agential role in intersection of a journalists’ habitus and social setting/structure may provide important insights into these larger tensions around media trust.
Shifts in proximity between audiences and journalist matter
The relationship between distrust in national media and distrust in local media requires additional attention. Similarly, how the activation of anti-media sentiment as a political tactic emerges in local politics requires systematic analysis, essentially tracking the flow of accusations of fake news from the beltway to the heartland. How different news outlets positioned in different community contexts grapple with the rise in these attacks requires additional analysis.
Thus, the relationship between audiences and journalists and where each group is relative to places of where audiences are have changed- from the physical geography to the habitus that journalists inhabit in their large coastal cities (and in particular, in Washington). Place-based inquiry is needed to understand distrust in national media and distrust in local media. While the beltway versus heartland starting point is not new, the diminished experience ordinary people have with interacting with local journalism in some form provides an additional wrinkle to these place-based fractures. Efforts at repair, such as engaged journalism, which aim to bridge the distance between journalists and audiences can be thought of both metaphorically as well as materially. The distance between where journalists work and journalism can be found and where audiences can generate rich insights into questions about trust in the news media when place is taken as a starting point for analysis.
