Category: Community Journalism Journal

Jeremiah Opiniano, Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas, Mia Rosienna Mallari and Jhoana Paula Tuazon

This case study examines the current state of community journalism in the Philippines. This paper builds from previous studies, especially those by Filipino community journalism scholar Crispin Maslog, on the community press in the Philippines. The focus of this paper is the community newspaper and online community news websites. This case study includes interviews with leading stakeholders in the community press sector of the country. Pertinent documents surrounding the community press were collected and analysed. 

The Philippines is one of the freest press and media systems in the world. Amid the steep financial requirements associated with running a news organization (both for commercial and non-profit purposes), journalists from the Philippines have showcased areas of journalism that have made the country a global and regional model in this profession. One area of note is investigative journalism — especially done with limited aid from technology. At the first Asian Investigative Journalism Conference (AIJC) held in Manila (22 to 24 November 2014), the Global Investigative Journalism Network (or GIJN) commended the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) for pioneering efforts on investigative reporting in Asia.

This case study examines the current state of community journalism in the Philippines. This paper builds on previous studies, especially those by Filipino community journalism scholar Crispin Maslog (1967, 1971, 1985, 1993, 2012a), on the community press in the Philippines. The focus of this paper is on the community newspaper and online community news websites. This case study includes interviews with leading stakeholders in the community press sector of the country. Pertinent documents surrounding the community press were collected and analysed. The paper also collected some 100 community newspapers, with publication dates covering the year 2014, and analyzed their staff boxes in order to provide a snapshot of the editorial and administrative personnel of these community newspapers.

Another creation originating from the Philippines, in the late 1960s, is development journalism — “people-centered” reporting that is said to give “alert news audiences to development problems and open their eyes to possible solutions” (Chalkley, 1968). Following American influences, what also figured prominently in the Philippines is civic or public journalism, where the media in a democratic society not only inform the people but also engage citizens and stir public debate.

PCIJ’s focus is investigative journalism. For development journalism, sometimes referred to as “journalism with a purpose” (Maslog, 2012a), a defunct news service called DEPTHNews (Development, Economic and Population Themes News) run by the Manila-headquartered Press Foundation in Asia blazed the trail in producing development stories that were shared with mainstream news media in the Philippines and across Asia (Xiaoge, 2009; McKay, 1993). The non-profit Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD) collaborated with an association of newspaper publishers, the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), bringing civic or public journalism to communities outside of the Philippines’ capital region. CCJD was, in fact, the only foreign group featured in a list of resources on community journalism contained in the US-published book Foundations of Community Journalism (2011). The geographical reference to CCJD in the book is Southeast Asia.

Some scholars have noted that internationally, the Philippines also figures prominently in community journalism. Research on community newspapers from the Philippines had been recognized as among the first studies worldwide (Hatcher, 2012), with a study as early as a 1967 survey on the Philippine community press (in Maslog, 2012a). The Philippines is an archipelago with 7,107 islands and 79 provinces, many of which are not as economically robust as the seat of power, Metro Manila (or the National Capital Region). But the geographical dispersion of Filipinos became a natural setting for community journalism to thrive while Metro Manila houses nationally circulating newspapers and broadcast stations that have a nationwide reach.

Previously published studies on community journalism in the Philippines include qualitative profiles of community newspapers and their editors (Markham & Maslog, 1969; Maslog, 1971; Mejorada, 1990); the managerial aspects of publishing community newspapers (Maslog, 1985; 1993); ethical issues facing community journalists (Chua, 2012); and lately the welfare of community journalists given the spate of media killings hitting Filipino journalists nationwide (Braid, Tuazon & Maslog, 2012). While research on community journalism is slowly growing, international experiences and examples remain wanting for even the most basic documentation of how community journalism prevails in different countries (Hatcher, 2012).

This manuscript begins with a look at the role of the community press and of community journalists. Next, the authors present an updated status of the Philippine community press, including the current socio-economic and political challenges facing this sector of the mainstream news media. Finally, prospects on the immediate future of community journalism by Filipinos are presented.

THE PHILIPPINES: LOCAL ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING

This Southeast Asian archipelago has long been lagging behind neighbors in the region such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand (Virola, Astrologo & Rivera, 2010). However, since the global economic crisis in 2008, Philippine economic growth has been on the uptick — with analysts labelling the Philippines an “emerging economy” (Schuman, 2014). Government fiscal managers have reportedly done their job in maintaining solid macro-economic fundamentals (e.g. steady inflation, manageable levels of national debt vis-à-vis gross domestic product, combating corruption at national government agencies) (World Bank Philippines, 2014). Meanwhile, consumption continues to drive the economy; by sector, the Philippines is predominantly a service economy. Billion-dollar remittances from Filipinos working and living abroad have been a major economic resource — the number one source of revenue for the country. These economic developments in the last five to six years have prevailed despite slumping agriculture and a stagnant growth in the industrial sector.

Recent growth in the national economy may have cascaded into the country’s regions, affecting both urbanized and rural regions. The Philippine Statistical Authority, in 2013, said 13 of the 17 regions of the country are predominantly service-based; only one region, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (or ARMM, the country’s poorest region), is predominantly agricultural while three regions are predominantly industrial: Calabarzon (Region 4a, found east and south of Manila), the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR, north of Manila), and Central Visayas (in the central islands of the country) (Philippine Statistical Authority, 2013). All regions of the country are steadily growing in terms of their gross regional domestic production.

Overseas remittances sent to families of Filipinos abroad residing in these Philippine regions have also driven regional and local economic growth (Institute for Migration and Development Issues, 2008). Shopping malls were once found in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao. Today, even first- to second-income class municipalities in Philippine provinces have hosted these malls and supermarkets. Interestingly, across regions, the number of middle-income class families is steadily increasing.

The discussion on the macro- and meso-level economic performance of the Philippines helps us contextualize the operations of community newspapers. For obvious reasons, buoyancy of local economies means good news for the community news media —with particular reference here to regions outside of Metro Manila. Looking at the membership of just one coalition or network of newspaper publishers, there are even more community newspapers that are members of the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) in the second poorest region —Eastern Visayas (the one struck by typhoon Haiyan, the world’s strongest weather system to hit landfall)— than in developed regions such as Calabarzon (Region 4a), Western Visayas (6), Central Visayas (7) and Davao (11). Levels of local economic growth in these poorer regions have not deterred publishers from publishing printed publications of all types — be they published by local entrepreneurs-cum-journalists, local government units, or even the Catholic Church. This reveals that levels of local economic growth are not a stumbling block to the establishment of community newspapers.

FILIPINO JOURNALISTIC CULTURE

In the absence of empirical research (especially quantitative data) on the journalistic culture of Filipinos, there is the view that Filipino journalists are “torn” — divided between being advocates (a product of the birth of the Filipino nation) and being “objective” journalists, given the implanting of journalism into the country by the Americans in the early 1900s (Teodoro, 2001). The early national newspapers of the Philippines during the American period (1898-1946) imbibed the Libertarian tradition of the U.S. press to the point that even “nationalistic” Philippine newspapers faced threats from American colonizers.

Since the Philippines became an independent country, Philippine journalism has flourished, with 1946 to 1972 being referred to as the “golden age of Philippine journalism” (Braid & Tuazon, 1999). It was also during this period, at least for national newspapers, that newspaper publishers had to collaborate with top businesspeople to sustain the operations of newspapers. But it was also during this period that Filipino journalists embraced watchdog roles. In fact, this watchdog role led to the killing, in May 1966, of a publisher of a community newspaper, Ermin Garcia, Sr. of The Sunday Punch (in Pangasinan province, north of Manila). At that time, there was also concern about improving Filipino journalism and upholding press freedom, leading to the formation of groups such as the National Press Club (NPC) in 1952, the old Federation of Provincial Press Clubs (FPPC) in 1963, and the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) in 1964 (Tuazon, n.d.). FPPC and PPI included community newspapers in their membership rosters, showing that the community press has been around for some time.

But the imposition of martial law by then-strongman President Ferdinand Marcos changed the complexion of Philippine journalism. Marcos was suppressing press freedom and closed newspapers said to be critical of his regime. The activism movement, amid real threats such as political detention, began to show itself during the 1970s. At around this time, DEPTHNews initiated its work on “development journalism,” but the stories did not include criticisms against government given Marcos’ attitudes toward media.

In the 1980s, Filipino journalists tried to go underground and set up newspapers that were regarded as the “mosquito press” by allies of Marcos. But when Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., was assassinated at Manila’s international airport on Aug. 21, 1983, the Filipino nation was awakened — as were its journalists. Marcos was thrown out of power and Aquino’s wife, Corazon, became president and restored democratic institutions, including press freedom.

While a research on the history of the community press in the Philippines remains wanting, papers as early as Maslog’s in 1971 carried some information and findings that revealed a profile of community newspapers. The community press was described as the “forgotten sector” that is “weak and anemic” to fill information gaps that national media cannot (Maslog, 1971). While the FPPC and PPI were formed during the 1960s, at that time there was confusion as to the number of community newspapers. A communication school in central Philippines, Siliman University, conducted a survey of rural editors. Of 112 target respondents, a total of 52 community newspapers replied. That survey enabled Maslog and Siliman University to make an initial profile of the Filipino community newspaper and its editors:

• Typically, the community newspaper was a weekly tabloid in English. Owned by an editor, these newspapers were seen as “politically independent;”
• The average community newspaper editor was middle-aged, married, a Catholic, had a college degree, had not travelled abroad, occasionally worked in public relations or advertising for other people, was active in community work, and worked only part-time for the community newspaper; and
• The community newspaper earned “reasonable” profits, even as one out of ten newspapers admitted the newspaper “was losing money” or was “barely breaking even.”

Maslog concluded that the view that community newspapers’ potential for national development was great, but this sector “needs to be developed first” before such role can be fulfilled (Maslog, 1971).

This historical retracing of Philippine journalism finds relevance in showing, at least through historical accounts, the journalistic culture of Filipinos. Hanitzsch (2007) theorizes journalism culture as “a shared occupational ideology among newsworkers” — spanning the cultural diversity of journalistic values, practices and media products. Such discourse had been tested by Hanitzsch and collaborators in a two-round, multi-country study on journalism cultures (round 1 of study: 2007-2011 and round 2: 2012-2014). Among the concepts tested were four milieus of journalistic cultures:

• Populist disseminator, with a strong leaning toward the audience (of providing the audience with “interesting” information). These journalists do not intend to take on active and participatory roles in reporting;
• Detached watchdog, with an interest in providing political information to audiences. Here journalists have relatively high regard for their role as a “detached observer of events,” and they are least likely to advocate for social change, influence public opinion and set the political agenda.
• Critical change agent, which is driven by interventionist intentions. These journalists are critical toward government and business elites, and advocates for social change through agenda-setting measures; and
• Opportunist facilitator, in which journalists are constructive partners of the government. Here, journalists are most likely to support official policies and convey a positive image of political and business leadership.

As to be explained in succeeding portions of this paper, community journalism in the Philippines is a tale of two faces: the face of a critical change agent and the face of a business venture. Similar to the Metro Manila-based national newspapers, community journalism may be adopting a business model that encourages the role of the journalist as a critical change agent. These two faces of the community press operate in a milieu of press freedom (now guaranteed by the post-Marcos Philippine Constitution of 1987), in a period of changing habits of media usage by Filipino audiences, and in a current environment in which journalists’ safety and welfare are both under attack.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMUNITY PRESS

Audience profile

Updating data on media consumption habits by Filipinos remains a challenge. For purposes of this paper, the authors cite data from the market research firm AC Nielsen that did the Nielsen Media Index. As of the 2010 Index, the reading of newspapers is third behind television watching and radio listening across the major island groupings. What is also interesting is that low incomes did not reduce for media consumption — especially for newspaper reading, particularly for the poverty-stricken Mindanao province. This can be a function of pass-on readership, as well as the purchasing of nationally and locally published tabloids whose prices are cheaper than the broadsheet. Especially for Mindanao, the rising numbers of the middle-class families may have spurred the use of media including newspapers and the Internet. This development augurs well for the community newspaper sector.

Growth of Philippine community newspapering

Nearly five decades since the Maslog surveys (1967, 1971), Philippine community newspapers have grown in terms of the number of publications that are circulating. Amid the Internet’s rise as a medium and the national reach of broadsheets and broadcast networks based in the National Capital Region, communities outside of Metro Manila still find the publication of community newspapers relevant. Community newspapers have turned out to be profitable ventures, apparently leading other publishers to open their own community newspapers.

Established community newspapers, such as The Sunday Punch (Pangasinan in Ilocos region) or The Bohol Chronicle (Bohol in Central Visayas region), persist to this day. There are also long-running chains of community newspapers, such as the SunStar Group, which started out in Cebu province and now publishes SunStar community newspapers in 11 provincial cities plus a news service in Metro Manila. There are also younger chains of community newspapers in Mindanao such as the Businessweek Mindanao group of newspapers. The reach of the newspaper copies for some community newspapers is expanding; the Mindanao Gold Star Daily now covers 24 provinces (including 20 cities) in Mindanao. Newer, independent community newspapers are also coming up. Metro Manila’s national newspapers have either bought majority shares of community newspapers (e.g. The Freeman of Cebu, which Philippine Star bought) or have set up community newspapers as part of the national media’s newspaper groups (e.g. Cebu Daily News of the Philippine Daily Inquirerand Daily Tribune Mindanao/Mindanao Insider of the hard-hitting Daily Tribune).

It is also worthy of note that the recent growth of the community newspaper industry, particularly in rural communities, seems to be driven by same factors that drove Filipino community newspaper success in the past: citizens’ need to know what is happening in local communities, educated readers in a country whose families value education, and participatory interest in the community, according to Rina Afable-Locsin, assistant professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City (personal communication, November 2014). This participatory interest from members of newspapers’ immediate communities, especially in communities with less-dense populations, continues to make community newspapers distinct from national news media. Social media have reinforced this community-level participatory interest. But in some communities, word-of-mouth still remains effective, according to Red Batario, executive director of the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD) (personal communication, November 2014).

‘EVOLVING’ ROLES AND TRENDS IN PHILIPPINE COMMUNITY JOURNALISM

Change agents or opportunists? Hanitszch’s discourse on journalistic culture (2007) offers a guide for discussing the current dynamics of community journalism in the Philippines. A survey of community newspapers or community journalists does not enable us to see if Filipino community journalists are populist disseminators, detached watchdogs, critical change agents or opportunist facilitators. But, depending on the disposition of these Filipino community newspapers and community journalists, economic survival is tied to these.

The growth of community newspapering in the Philippines may be tied to there being critical change agents or opportunist facilitators. Some community newspapers are critical change agents in the sense that journalists — many of them with roots in rural communities — know what prevails locally and feel compelled to report these community-level developments (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014). Some other community newspapers are opportunist-facilitators in the sense that these newspapers, given people’s relationships with each other, relate with the powers-that-be so as to collar not just political ties but possible revenues from local coffers. Popular sources of revenue of community newspapers are judicial notices from local trial courts, advertisements from local government units (e.g. announcing enacted ordinances, public bidding opportunities) and political advertising during triennial local elections (or even months earlier from those electoral exercises). So a Filipino community newspaper, on one hand, may have the motivation to publish stories that contain community concerns and find revenue streams along the way; on the other hand, a community newspaper publishes weekly editions to draw in advertising revenues to the point of not being wholly conscious of the “journalistic” standard that this newspaper is supposed adhere to  (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).

Roles. The roles of these community newspapers and community journalists remain the same: as purveyors of community-related information; as instigators of discussions given stories (or kuwentong bayan, as this is referred to in some Philippine communities) affecting local citizens; and as monitors of community issues, sometimes in partnership with identified stakeholders like civil society organizations or cause-oriented citizens. These roles for community journalism in the Philippines reveal the evolution of the concepts, from development journalism in the 1970s (wherein the journalists report on local socio-economic issues that are underreported) to today’s civic journalism (wherein journalists, while maintaining their independence, report on issues and engage with audiences that allow citizens to discuss issues).

Community journalism in the Philippines is closely associated with civic journalism: It is connected to a specific geographic setting and embraces a reciprocal relationship between journalists and community members. From 1996 to 2007, the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) called its annual awards for outstanding community newspapers the “Community Press Awards.” Since 2008, PPI has called these awards the “Civic Journalism Awards” (Philippine Press Institute, 2014).

Veteran Manila-based journalist Vergel Santos (2007) calls civic journalism “the same journalism, only more localized.” Civic journalism as a concept also “supplements” the content of community journalism. Santos explains why the concepts community journalism and civic journalism suit each other:

It [civic journalism] suits journalism to community conditions in ways that national or cosmopolitan practice, since it is intended for much larger and more diverse audiences, does not. [Civic journalism] attacks local gut issues with such focus and thoroughness as it engages every sector of the locality. In other words, civic journalism turns the news media into a catalyst for community action, thus promising the community a distinct identity and sense of self-reliance. (Santos, 2007, p. 15)

Civic journalism’s introduction into the community press is an innovation Philippine journalism has produced. In many respects, the use of civic journalism techniques in community journalism is what the development journalism movement in the 1970s envisioned. On the part of the individual community journalist, since he or she is “homegrown,” executing roles is done “in a homegrown manner” — reporting from the lens of the journalists’ personal experiences and their own take on what the community needs (R. Afable, personal communication).

More than community engagement or facilitation, civic journalism stresses the production of credible news content, according to Ariel Sebellino, executive director of the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) (personal communication, November 2014). In an ideal setting, the community newspaper starts off the process of doing civic journalism by reporting initially on an issue. What follows are activities in which the journalists or community newspaper bring together stakeholders to discuss such issues. Afterwards, the views from these people that were mentioned in the newspaper-facilitated activities (e.g. dialogues) are sources in follow-up stories or special reports. If executed properly, these stories can deter the powers-that-be from making decisions that may be “detrimental” to local residents (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014). In this respect, the community newspaper is ascribed a role in “societal transformation” (A. Sebellino, personal communication, November 2014) — that the newspaper can be “aggressive” in framing stories that challenge people to have a stake in local issues affecting them. Natural disasters are an example where a community newspaper’s stories challenge the community to take action.

Adoption of civic journalism techniques in community newspapers is, however, seen in a limited number of newspapers – primarily news publications that see the value of the concept of civic journalism after, for example, participating in a training activity on civic journalism. A visible majority of the community press in the Philippines are still motivated primarily by profit, which is not entirely bad in itself. But blending the market orientation with community journalists’ capabilities and understanding of how journalism is supposed to operate — from reporting to publishing, and carrying the trait of independence from factions — remains a challenge. Even a casual observer can easily see which newspapers publish credible content. But other newspapers whose personnel may lack the training in journalism still find a visible place in local communities, and they may thrive as business ventures.

TRENDS IN THE PHILIPPINES MEDIA LANDSCAPE

There are other developments that can be seen from the community newspaper sector in the Philippines:

1. Elaborate staff compositions in the community press. Staffing in community newspapers was initially a family affair or was made up of a few dedicated personnel who took on editorial, administrative and marketing roles. While there are still community newspapers with limited staffing, there is now the realization of expanding personnel as investments for the aspired profitability of the community newspapers. This trend (see Table 1) can be seen in a cursory look at this year’s staff boxes of nearly a hundred community newspapers. The development may be a reflection of the evolution of the community newspaper as a business venture, recognizing the ingredients necessary in the value chain of a newspaper.
2. The competitive nature of the community newspaper sector depends on the dynamics of local communities. In areas such as Metro Cebu (in Cebu province, central Philippines), Baguio City (in Benguet province, north of Manila), Cagayan de Oro City (in Misamis Oriental province in Mindanao) and Davao City (an independent city also found in Mindanao) community journalism thrives given residents’ thirst for community-level information, perhaps encouraging more aspiring publishers to try out this business. But this is not the case in other local communities, even those with visibly buoyant local resources. This may have to do with differing media or news preferences by local audiences. What should also be considered is that compared to Metro Manila, the target markets of community newspapers remain small; as an example, a scant few provincial communities in the Philippines have community publications that already have specialized publications such as lifestyle magazines and community-level business newspapers. Some areas have tried to emulate the vibrant situations seen in other Philippine provincial communities, but local audiences may not be responding to such moves by community newspapers (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).
3. Within community newspapers, division still prevails. The disposition of the community newspaper publishers toward journalism — from the basic knowledge of how journalism is done to the role of the community newspaper in local communities — is a starting point of the community newspaper sector’s division. Community newspapers that are critical change agents are one group while others that are considered either as detached watchdogs or opportunist facilitators are another group. One network of newspaper publishers admits to being selective in inviting community newspapers to be members since the network focuses on the “quality” of the newspapers’ journalism.
   There are also many other community newspapers that are either members of a newspaper publishers’ network, the Publishers Association of the Philippines Inc. (PAPI), or are not members of any of existing national coalitions of newspaper publishers. In some local communities, regardless of affiliation or disposition in terms of journalism culture, camaraderie among journalists prevails in local-level press clubs for the simple reason that members are kindred souls: journalists. Another factor that has probably united differing groups of community newspapers, at least in principle, is the slaying of community journalists, to be explained in more detail below.
4. The Internet is threatening economically challenged community newspapers. This observation especially goes out to rural areas with limited Internet connectivity and less-developed telecommunications infrastructure, as well as to community newspapers with limited financial resources to set up a news website and have personnel regularly uploading and circulating content worldwide. In general, the use of the Internet and social media by community newspapers remains behind when compared to the national newspapers in Metro Manila.
   Only a few moneyed community newspapers, such as the SunStar Group, have opened dedicated news website services that disseminate news from the published newspaper editions and breaking news, and that share stories through social media platforms. The majority of community newspaper stories online, based on a perusal of the community newspapers and the newspapers’ available news sites, appear to come from stories in their newspaper print editions. For others with no resources to open a regularly maintained news website, some community newspapers bring to Facebook their stories and the PDF files of their weekly newspaper editions. Sensing that community-centered news via the Internet remains lacking, some independent news producers open up Internet news websites such as MindaNews, Mindanao Examiner and Northern Dispatch (NORDIS) — to which their stories are being syndicated (with associated fees) to the community press. It also seems that younger, educated audiences may have driven community news organizations and newspapers to go online and be visible in social media (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).
5. A profitable community press? Community newspapers envy the national newspapers that receive the attention of big-ticket advertisers. In the past, a Manila-based intermediary accounts group received advertisers from Metro Manila on behalf of community newspapers, and the intermediary got a share from advertising intake.
   Community-level advertising persists as the main source of advertising revenue for the community press. But the amount of revenues then depends on the level of economic growth in local communities, the presence of local enterprises and the aggressiveness of community newspapers’ advertising and marketing personnel to reach a part of the market. National-level data show that a big number of enterprises are micro-enterprises and these mostly thrive in rural areas.
   Local community advertising intake differs, again being a function of local audiences and local economic dynamics. The leading regions for Philippine community journalism are fortunate in these respects. In other communities, community newspapers rely on their standing in the community or their longevity such that local residents know these papers to be trustworthy and independent  (R. Reyes, personal communication, October 2014).
   Given differing situations surrounding advertising intake by community newspapers, few are expanding and many are subsisting, even on a daily basis — a trend that had been seen decades ago (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014; A. Sebellino, personal communications, November 2014). The Internet as the next source of revenue for the community press remains in its infancy, though community newspapers are banking on the community connection, especially given community members based abroad who reconnect with their rural birthplaces. Publication of judicial notices remain as an easy revenue earner for the community newspaper. Community newspaper publishers are also owners of printing presses (R. Locsin, personal communication, November 2014), lowering the cost of publishing a community newspaper. The printing press helps lessen the high risk of maintaining a community newspaper.
6. Old issues persist. Economic conditions of community newspapers still lead to the continued presence of other issues affecting journalism: media corruption, journalists’ co-optation with sources (Tuazon, 2013; Chua, 2013), observations of “lower quality” reportage, media bribery, and limited human and financial resources to conduct enterprise reporting.
   Inasmuch as some of these community newspapers want to become independent, community newspapers try to balance their desire to be independent with their attachment to the community. In small communities audiences can easily determine whether a community newspaper has lost its credibility or not. The community newspaper also understands that the community connection is hard to dissociate, this being the business model of community newspapers (R. Reyes, personal communication, November 2014). As such, citizens’ perception of community journalists still carries a huge bearing, with these journalists still being “part and parcel” of the community (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).
7. The impunity that threatens community journalists. Media killings are easily the single biggest threat to Filipino journalists. This was made evident in the massacre of 32 community print and broadcast journalists (part of a total 58 people killed) by a powerful local political clan (the Ampatuan), in Salman village, Ampatuan municipality in Maguindanao province, Mindanao on November 23, 2009 (Quinsayas, 2012). The slaying of community journalists is not a new phenomenon; Maslog (2013) noted the “early martyrs of Philippine journalism” such as Cebu community journalist Antonio Abad Tormis of the defunct daily paper Republic News, killed in 1961; Ermin Garcia, Sr. of The Sunday Punch in Pangasinan province in 1966; and Jacobo Amatong of The Mindanao Observer in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte province, in 1984.
   This culture of impunity made the Philippines one of three countries in the world that had become the most dangerous for journalists (Reuters, 2014). The Philippine situation is unusual in that it is a democracy, and the media killings have not been associated with war or civil conflict. As of this writing, 217 Filipino journalists have been killed since 1986, with 145 of them killed in the line of duty (See tables 2 and 3). Under the current regime of reformist President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, which began July 1, 2010, 25 journalists have been slain (Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, 2014). Radio journalists, with radio being their primary and solitary media affiliation, are the most killed, followed by print journalists. In all provincial regions of the country there are recorded murders of journalists, especially in developed regions (Central Luzon [Region 3], Calabarzon [4a] and Davao [11]) as well as in the region where the Maguindanao massacre happened, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (see Figure 1). Some do hope that if local communities are conscious of the role of journalism in a democracy in these immediate provincial communities, the people themselves will help protect the journalists (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).

Continued challenges facing the community press

Obviously, the killing of journalists is Philippine journalism’s single greatest challenge. But many of the challenges facing community journalism are decades old. Many community journalists remain less equipped, especially since journalism is not their primary academic training. Media corruption persists even with the culture of media impunity as the backdrop.

There may also be issues, though not admitted to in public or through research papers, in the way that community journalists manage the entrepreneurial side of their work. While publishers with strong business acumen do not find problems managing these newspapers, journalists who are not trained entrepreneurs juggle both editorial and entrepreneurial responsibilities, perhaps making community journalists more open to employ unethical media practices.

CONCLUSION

Community journalism in the Philippines remains glued to the geographic reference of the concept (Maslog, 2012). As shown in this paper, a Southeast Asian archipelago’s geographic dispersion is a natural setting for community newspapers to thrive and for communities to continually prefer reading local news. Metro Manila media remain an influential segment of overall Philippine journalism, but journalism may provide a way to link national and community newspapers: News, especially when well contextualized, connects Filipinos in general (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014). This connection occurs not just when tragedy strikes in local communities, and operationalizing this connection between Manila (too national) and the provincial communities (too local) may require a rethinking of community journalists’ editorial approaches to stories. Then again, the economic viability of this editorial approach to community journalism is yet to be seen.

Nevertheless, and amid the prevailing weaknesses and challenges confronting community newspapers, Philippine community journalism is currently enjoying a window of opportunities from not just the Internet, but also from visibly felt local economic growth and the gradual rising of the middle-class in provincial communities. These economic opportunities offer an opportune time for civic journalism, if practiced by community newspapers, to reconnect journalists with their communities. These provincial communities may continually resort to old ways in using media and in consuming news, as community newspapers then embrace new ways of producing and disseminating news. But one may wonder if there already prevails a disconnection between the community newspaper and the community and its members. A ramification of this development, even with today’s penchant for civic journalism, is that audiences may not understand the community newspapers’ stories, or do not care about these stories (R. Batario, personal communication, November 2014).

Connectedness with people in local communities remains the editorial and business model of community journalism in the Philippines. Filipino community newspapering is also slowly becoming more professionalized not just in terms of the stories being written, but also in the editorial and business expansion measures these papers take on. The role of Filipino community journalism has evolved, especially for newspapers that are serious in showcasing journalism’s important role in democracy. There are threats that come from within these newspapers and from the prevailing geographic environment, yet these underpaid journalists and their under-resourced community newspapers have been taking on the challenge to continually find viable economic formulas fed by the conduct of credible, independent journalism.

Not surprisingly, the Philippine case presents many possible areas for future research on community journalism. These can cover culture’s and local identity’s role in community journalism; managerial aspects of newspaper publishing; the psychology of community journalists’ behavior in dealing with news sources who are from the community; and ethics in community journalism. If the community press in the country espouses the tenets of “civic journalism,” do their stories reveal such?

But what can international community journalism learn from the Philippines? On the editorial side, analysis of international community journalism can probe deeper into the attempts of these stories to connect journalists with communities (especially if there are efforts to include a multitude of community voices, not just the usual suspects such as local officials and local experts). In terms of journalistic culture, how does being a critical change agent or an opportunist-facilitator impact business operations? Local politics vis-à-vis journalism is another dynamic for further analysis. While development journalism as a concept in the 1970s had evolved into current-day civic journalism, community journalism by Filipinos may continue to have a role in local development.

Maslog (1971) said that the community press provides alternative information to Filipinos that the national news media cannot provide, especially since national news media cannot report happenings in local communities. Could the current socio-economic situation of the Philippines help community journalism realize the potential that Maslog (1971) envisioned? The old habits, or beliefs, of Philippine community journalism prevail. But new approaches to community journalism may help Filipino journalists to become, or remain, relevant locally.

WORKS CITED

• Braid, F. & Tuazon, R. (1999). Communication media in the Philippines: 1521-1986. Philippine Studies, 47, 291-318.
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APPENDIX

TABLE 1: COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS AND THEIR NUMBER OF PERSONNEL

Role/s and position/s in the community newspaper	No. of community newspapers
One-to-two staff	Three-to-five staff	Six staff members and above
Publisher and editorial board members	27	19	4
Section editors	5	1	1
Reporters, correspondents and photographers	5	7	16
Marketing, advertising and administration*	28	6	2
Technology	8	—	1
Legal	13	—	—

*This classification includes financial managers, circulation personnel and business managers.

TABLE 2.

TABLE 3.

About the Authors

Jeremaiah Opiniano is an assistant professor and coordinator of the journalism program of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), Southeast Asia’s oldest journalism school.

Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas is a third-year journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas.

Mia Rosienna Mallari is a third-year journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas.

Jhoana Paula Tuazon is a third-year journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas.

 

Barbara Selvin

Like other traditional aspects of weekly newspapers, editorial writing faces pressure as staffing cuts shrink newsrooms. This cross-cultural reporting project found agreement among editorialists, publishers, newspaper associations and academics in Australia, Canada and the U.S. that the practice of editorial writing is in decline, particularly among chain-owned weeklies. Editors may attempt to substitute personal columns, but columns often fail to provide the “institutional voice” that starts or shapes community conversations.

Barry Wilson was cajoling the crowd at the membership meeting of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors’ 2104 annual conference in Durango, Colo., talking up the group’s meeting two years hence in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia.  Wilson allowed that he was planning for the 2016 ISWNE event to coincide with the annual conference of the Victoria Country Press Association, the trade group for weekly newspapers[1] in the Australian state of Victoria, for a deeply felt reason.  He was hoping, he said, that ISWNE’s emphasis on editorial writing would rub off on the Victoria contingent.  Too few editors of Australia’s country newspapers, Wilson said, regularly write hard-hitting editorials that live up to the opening words of ISWNE’s mission statement: “The object of this organization shall be to encourage and promote wise and independent editorial comment, news content and leadership in community newspapers …” [emphasis added] (ISWNE, 2014).  There is nothing in Australia’s state-level Country Press Associations’ activities like the editorial critiques central to ISWNE conferences.  The critiques, which take months of planning and occupy a full afternoon during the conference, “are what I keep coming for,” Wilson, the group’s current vice president, said (personal communication, June 27, 2014).

Editorial writing hasn’t vanished from Australia’s weekly newspapers, but it’s not occupying a central role in the industry, either.  Among Country Press Australia and its six affiliated associations, only two groups, in New South Wales and South Australia, give annual awards for editorials (Country Press Australia, 2004). In contrast, weekly newspaper groups in North America, to which Wilson has traveled five times for ISWNE and its editorial critiques, consistently celebrate editorial writing.  The National Newspaper Association, a U.S. community newspaper trade group with 2,200 members compared to ISWNE’s 265, gives three annual awards for editorials, plus honorable mentions, in four circulation categories, plus the same number of awards for editorial pages in two circulation categories (National Newspaper Association, 2014).  ISWNE gives 13, its “Golden Dozen” and its top award, the “Golden Quill” (Grassroots Editor, 2014); in fact, the organization was born at a 1955 conference of weekly newspaper editorial writers (Long, 1977).  The Canadian Community Newspaper Association gives nine prizes each year for local editorial writing—first-, second-, and third-place prizes for newspapers in three circulation classes (Canadian Community Newspaper Association, 2014).

At weekly newspapers in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., three nations linked by a history of expansive European settlement and the establishment of weekly newspapers in frontier towns, changing technology and staffing cuts have challenged the tradition of editorial writing.  To use an ecological metaphor, editorials at weekly papers aren’t extinct, nor do they belong on journalism’s endangered-species list, but they could reasonably be called threatened. Interviews with weekly newspaper editors and publishers, academics and officials of press groups in these three countries found agreement that the practice of reporting and writing weekly editorials that take stands on local issues has lost ground, particularly when chains acquire once-independent newspapers.

SCHOLARSHIP ON EDITORIALS IN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS

Journalism scholars have devoted little time to studying editorials in community newspapers. Looking at newspapers overall, scholars have explored editorials on events such as the Iraq war (Nikolaev & Porpera, 2007; Mooney, 2004); examined the impact of political endorsements (St. Dizier, 1985; Counts, 1985); and studied the role of editorials at various moments in history (Strom, 2004; Tanner, Burns & O’Donnell, 2012; Thornton, 2014). Waldrop (1967) wrote that the newspaper editorial serves a vital role in fostering deliberation in a democracy while holding public officials accountable:

For the newspaper, the editorial page is: (1) a source of personality, of “conscience, courage, and convictions”; (2) a means of demonstrating that “A newspaper is a citizen of its community,” a statement which appears in the editorial masthead of the Eugene Register-Guard; (3) “a leaven and a guide to the whole newspaper operation.” (Waldrop, 1967, p. 9)

Most of the published scholarship on editorials examines influential daily newspapers. No research could be found documenting how many newspapers, daily or weekly, run traditional editorials, or the correlation between circulation size and editorial pages or between type of ownership and editorial pages, on a national or international basis.

In an unpublished study presented at the 2008 National Newspaper Association convention, Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, and Elizabeth K. Hansen, then a visiting scholar at the institute; examined 102 Kentucky weeklies in September 2007. That month, 28 of these weekly newspapers had no editorial page at all, 53 ran an editorial page each week, and the remaining 21 fell somewhere in between.  The larger a paper’s circulation, the more likely it was to run editorials.

ARE EDITORIALS IN DECLINE?

In the absence of data, nevertheless, there is a sense among editorial writers and some scholars that the glory days of weeklies’ editorial pages are over, replaced by personal columns or noncontroversial statements from a newspaper chain’s regional office that fail to address local issues head-on. Gone, they say, are the days of driven country editorialists such as William A. White of Kansas and Australia’s legendary E.C. Sommerlad.

White (1868-1944) owned The Emporia Gazette from 1895 until his death and was nationally known for hard-hitting editorials such as “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” (1896) and “To an Anxious Friend” (1921), a paean to free speech (University of Kansas, n.d.) Sommerlad (1886-1952) wrote that it was “a thrilling experience deliberately to set about achieving a certain end through the use of the press, and to feel your reading public react to the lead given them. To me it is like sitting at the controls of some mighty machine …’” (Sommerlad, as cited in Kirkpatrick, 2013, p. 12). New South Wales named its annual journalism awards after Sommerlad (Country Press Australia, 2004).

“When he was editing the Glen Innes Examiner, Sommerlad would sometimes put a banner across the front page, below the masthead, declaring, ‘The “Examiner” Does Not Shirk a Clear Cut Editorial Opinion,’” Rod Kirkpatrick, a journalist, academic, and historian, wrote (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p. 12).

In an email, Kirkpatrick himself minced no words on editorials’ decline: “Australian country non-dailies (weeklies, bi-weeklies and tri-weeklies) publish editorials on an irregular basis and even when they do publish them, the editorials say little,” he wrote (personal communication, December 2014). “They are motherhood statements. They basically say the obvious: isn’t it a good thing that we are having a festival this weekend to tell the world how interesting our little town is; isn’t it bad that the [name your facility] is closing.”

Asked in a subsequent video chat to name anyone in Australia’s provincial press who consistently produces powerful editorials, Kirkpatrick was silent for a long moment.

“There’s just enormous pressure,” particularly at chain-owned newspapers that have experienced major staffing cuts, “just to get the jolly paper out, just to get it filled,” he said at last (personal communication, December 2014). “If you’re the journalist in charge, you’re doing all the news,” leaving little time for the research, writing, and revision a good editorial needs.

Kathryn Bowd, a senior researcher in media at the University of Adelaide, said in a video chat that Australia’s top-down, centralized government—states and territories, not local communities, run the public school and hospital systems and provide police services—makes it easy for editorialists to condemn, even to campaign against, decisions made in Canberra and the capital cities (personal communication, December 2014). “The regional impact [of such decisions] can be quite severe,” Bowd said. “Campaigns around federal or state issues often get a strong response.” Issues of local concern frequently get short shrift to avoid antagonizing powerful local interests (Bowd, 2007).

But Kristy Hess, senior lecturer in journalism at Deakin University’s Warrnambool campus, struck a note of optimism. In a video chat, Hess said she has seen a resurgent interest in editorial writing among practicing community journalists who study at Deakin each year as part of Australia’s largest university-industry partnership for regional newspaper reporters (personal communication, December 2014). She has administered this program since 2008. “The ideal fell by the wayside” as weekly papers struggled with the challenges of the digital age and endured an exodus of senior writers with deep community knowledge, she said. Now, though, “There absolutely is the desire of these newspapers to run editorials.”

Like Hess, Vern Faulkner, a prize-winning editorialist in New Brunswick, Canada, mourned the experience lost to buyouts and layoffs and what that has meant for strong editorial pages as well as news coverage. “Today’s newsrooms have largely been gutted of veteran talent,” he said in a telephone interview (personal communication, December 2014). “The newsrooms are filled with young people. I’ve seen papers where they have letters in the editorial spot. The old-school readers are going, ‘What the heck?’”

Another threat to the locally written editorial may come from readers who prefer bylined, often first-person columns to editorials that use what John Thompson, editor of the Yukon News in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, called, “the stilted, affected ‘we.’”

“The most widely shared stories on big newspaper sites are never the editorials,” Thompson said in a phone interview, adding, “and if you were to ask readers on a wide-ranging poll what their favorite part of the newspaper is, I don’t think editorials would be very high on the list” (personal communication, December 2014).

In 2014, Thompson won the Canadian Community Newspaper Association’s top prize for a local editorial at a weekly newspaper with a circulation between 4,000 and 12,499. His winning entry, “New Meaning to Low Standards,” chastised members of the Liard First Nation for choosing as their leader a man who had served a prison sentence for an hours-long violent assault (Canadian Community Newspaper Association, 2014). The piece fulfilled a definition that New York University Professor Hillier Krieghbaum proposed for editorials in 1956: “a critical interpretation of significant, usually contemporary, events so that the publication’s typical reader will be informed, influenced or entertained” (p. 21).

Thompson offered his own definition: “At a community newspaper, an editorial is something you do on the corner of your desk when you’re not being interrupted.” Though modest about the general popularity of editorials, he added, “I like to think people find mine interesting now and then” (personal communication, December 2014).

In community newspapers like the Yukon News, the popularity of editorials among the readership may in fact be greater than at big-city papers. “In these smaller communities, editorials are still very relevant and very meaningful,” Alan Bass, a professor in the Thompson Rivers University journalism program in Kamloops, B.C., said in a telephone interview (personal communication, December 2014). “People writing editorials in these small communities are writing about people they’re likely to meet in the supermarket. … You can live in Toronto and never run into the people who are written about” in the Toronto Sun or The Globe and Mail.

Further, at smaller newspapers, editorials are usually written by one person, not by a faceless, anonymous editorial board, Bass pointed out. And at many smaller papers, including the Yukon News, editorials are initialed or signed.  When people know whose opinion the editorial is expressing, he suggested, they are more likely to want to see what that person has to say.

“It’s almost more like an individual column,” Bass said (personal communication, December 2014).

EDITORIALS VERSUS PERSONAL COLUMNS

Bass was making an important distinction between traditional editorials and columns, a distinction that observers from one side of the globe to the other see as essential. Kirkpatrick, the historian of Australian rural weeklies, was so critical of columns replacing editorials that his harrumph practically burned through the computer screen (personal communication, December 2014).

“Some editorials in our local daily (in Mackay in north Queensland) are written in the first person and sound like an item for a chatty column about ‘my schooldays’ or ‘when I had my first bike riding lesson’—something like that,” he wrote (personal communication, December 2014).

In St. Stephen, New Brunswick, about 20 miles inland from the mouth of Canada’s Bay of Fundy, Faulkner fulminated with equal passion. “I have judged community newspapers in Canada for the nationals and in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in my career,” Faulkner, editor of the St. Croix Courier, said in a telephone interview (personal communication, December 2014). “That gives me a chance to see what other people are writing about. A lot of writers don’t understand the difference between a column and an editorial. A column is personal. So when I’m looking at editorials, I see a lot of ‘I,’ ‘me’ … That’s not to say that an editorial shouldn’t have emotion. But an editorial should have a calm, rational analysis,” or what Bernard L. Stein, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for his work at The Riverdale Press, a Bronx, N.Y., weekly, called “writing in an institutional voice” (personal communication, March 3, 2015).

Faulkner said he prefers to base his own editorials on a structured, numerical analysis, bringing emotion to play when appropriate but remaining dispassionate. “People should be made to feel smarter when they pick up a newspaper,” Faulkner said, “and a persuasive essay is one of the ways to do that” (personal communication, December 2014).

CHAIN OWNERSHIP

Faulkner works for one of the three independently owned community newspapers in New Brunswick, which has a population of more than 755,000. The other 23 community papers are owned by Brunswick News, a privately held company, according to Newspapers Canada, a joint initiative of the Canadian Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association (Newspapers Canada, 2014).

Kim Kierans, a journalism professor and vice president of the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, links chain ownership to the failure of many provincial newspapers to hold companies and government officials accountable. Kierans wrote her 2004 master’s thesis, “Endangered weeklies,” on three weekly newspapers in the Maritime Provinces, looking in part at “the effects of corporate ownership and how that limits democratic debate” (Kierans, 2004). Brunswick News owns the New Brunswick paper that Kierans studied.

The billionaire Irving family, which owns Brunswick News, is reportedly the second- or third-richest family in Canada. The Irvings also hold major interests in oil, sawmills, paper, transportation, and other industries and employ an estimated one out of 12 residents of New Brunswick (Valdmanis, 2014).

“There is a real sense that anything connected to their business is not being looked at in a critical way” by Irving-owned papers, Kierans said (personal communication, December 2014). “When talking about local issues, they can have some good editorials, but there’s a lot of boosterism, without that sense of wanting to hold people accountable.”

On environmental issues, for example, she senses “a certain kind of self-censorship,” she said.

Across the country, Black Press Group, owned by businessman David Black (no relation to Conrad Black, the convicted former media magnate), holds a looser grip on the scores of weekly papers it owns in Canada’s western provinces. Thompson of the Yukon News, which Black Press purchased from a family owner in 2013, said that readers constantly question him about interference from company executives (personal communication, December 2014).

“That’s the one question I get from people today: ‘So, what meddling do they do? I’m surprised your editorials are still good,’” Thompson said (personal communication, December 2014). “I can’t speak for Black Press, but I think they’re happy as long as Yukon News is still making money.”

Thompson said a perception that Black Press interferes with editorials stems from an incident in 1999 when David Black issued an eight-point directive to his editors ordering that they not run editorials in favor of a government land-claim settlement with the Nisga’a Nation (personal communication, December 2014). Other elements of the directive made clear that Black Press papers could publish letters and columns supporting the treaty and that news reporting should not be affected. Still, the British Columbia government filed a complaint with the British Columbia Press Council, a self-regulating industry group. The council found that the papers had carried a diversity of opinion and that “the ultimate obligation and right to direct editorial policy rests with the owner” (British Columbia Press Council, 1999).

In Kentucky, researcher Al Cross pointed to Landmark Community Newspapers, a company owned by the Batten family that publishes daily and weekly papers throughout the U.S., as a model corporate owner, one that encourages editorial writing but leaves its journalists alone (personal communication, Dec. 11, 2014).

Benjy Hamm, editorial director of the Shelbyville, Ky.-based company, said that Landmark’s philosophy is one of editorial independence, even leaving it up to local staff whether to brand a particular paper as Landmark-owned (personal communication, December 2014).

“We do not dictate from the central office what they cover or what they write on the editorial side,” Hamm said in a telephone interview (personal communication, December 2014). “We do not get involved except for the basic elements of fairness and how you are addressing the needs of the local community.”

Some of Landmark’s 18 Kentucky weeklies are tiny, with circulation as low as 500. Most have circulations between 3,000 and 9,000. Some of the smaller papers, Hamm said, may run an editorial only every other week, alternating with a personal column by the editor.

A PASSION FOR EDITORIALS

The role of the locally focused editorial is “to either join the conversation or start the conversation,” Stein, the Pulitzer-winning weekly editorialist, said in a phone interview  (personal communication, March 3, 2015). Weeklies’ editorials do best, he continued, when they cover a local topic, or a national or international topic that has a local angle.

“For example, the editorial that got us firebombed,” he said, referring to a 1989 attack that destroyed the paper’s offices, “had a local hook” (personal communication, March 3, 2015). That editorial chastised national bookstore chains as cowards for pulling Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” from their shelves and praised an independent shop in Riverdale for keeping it after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini urged followers to kill Rushdie and threatened others involved in the book’s publication.

“It was a local editorial in the sense that I was comparing the courage of the local store versus what I saw as the power of the chains,” Stein said (personal communication, March 3, 2015).

Tim Waltner, a former ISWNE president and publisher of the Freeman Courier, a weekly newspaper in the farming and manufacturing town of Freeman, S.D., population 1,300, has been called “the conscience of ISWNE” (G. Sosniecki, personal communication, October 5, 2014), and he has organized and championed ISWNE’s annual editorial critiques every year but one since 2007.

“I am passionate about the importance of community newspapers in helping drive discussions and conversations in the community,” Waltner said in the first of two phone interviews (personal communication, October 9, 2014, December 6, 2014).  “If we don’t do it, no one else will, or it will be left to Facebook and coffee talk.”

Waltner begins organizing the ISWNE editorial critique sessions months ahead of the annual June conferences. His goal is to bring participants together well prepared to offer constructive criticism. Tone, topics, photos, cartoons, design, layout, even font—no subject germane to the reader’s experience of the editorial page is off limits.

He has tried, he said, to make the experience less brutal than it used to be.

At the first ISWNE conference he attended, in 1993, Waltner recalled, “I [had] inherited an editorial page from the previous publisher that included a display ad, and I was roundly, roundly castigated and challenged about that” (personal communication, October 9, 2014, December 6, 2014). The ad was from a prominent local bank, and it took Waltner two years to move the ad to a spot equally satisfactory to the bank president.

And since then, he said, “There has not been a single conference that we have not made some tweak in the editorial pages.”

Waltner, a self-described product of the ’60s who began writing to letters to editors while a teenager, brooks no arguments about lack of time or fear of alienating people as reasons not to research and write editorials. “I’ve said to people: ‘You would not think of not running a photo on the front page. We make time for that. We make room for that. We should make that same commitment to having a community voice, to prod people into thinking in new ways, to provide some context, some analysis to help people think through these community issues’” (personal communication, October 9, 2014, December 6, 2014).

That context and analysis are, in the end, what editorialists say a community loses when editorials disappear from its newspaper. “What it’s losing is a goad to be thoughtful,” Stein, the Bronx newspaperman, said (personal communication, March 3, 2015). What Stein, Waltner and others who hold fast to the virtues of weekly editorials share is a belief that in this age of ever-briefer attention spans and ever-faster media production and consumption, society can ill afford to lose opportunities for considered thought.

Correction: A version of this article published in print in a special joint issue of Community Journalism and Grassroots Editor, and in the online version of Grassroots Editor, misstated the number of annual awards that the National Newspaper Association gives for editorial writing. It gives three annual awards for editorials, plus honorable mentions, in four circulation categories, plus the same number of awards for editorial pages in two circulation categories. The earlier version said erroneously that the NNA gives no annual awards for editorials. 

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• Thornton, B. (2014). The ‘dangerous’ Chicago defender: a study of the newspaper’s editorials and letters to the editor in 1968. Journalism History, 40(1), 40-52.
• University of Kansas, William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications (n.d.). Who was William Allen White? Retrieved from http://journalism.ku.edu/william-allen-white
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• Waldrop, A.G. (1967). Editor and editorial writer, 3^rd ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Co., 4-5.

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[1] For the purposes of this article, the term “weekly newspaper” means a printed newspaper that is published once, twice or three times a week, biweekly or monthly.

About the Author

Barbara Selvin is an assistant professor at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism in Stony Brook, N.Y.

Bill Reader, Beatriz Lovo Reichman, Anand Pradhan, Sleiman El Bssawmai, Yuriy Zaliznyak and Carole Phiri-Chibbonta

Although community journalism is a global phenomenon, it would be folly to assume that the practices and roles of community-focused news media can be generalized across diverse cultures. That may be especially true with regard to the developing democracies, where socio-political divisions remain very much a part of living memory. This monograph brings together essays by media scholars from five different developing nations to illustrate the diversity of community journalism around the world, as well as to provide some baseline information for future study of community journalism in and across those nations.

INTRODUCTION

Bill Reader, Ohio University

The role of community news media in post-revolution and developing nations is an under-studied area of both media research and political science. This article presents “overview” essays of the current state of community journalism in five developing democracies to reflect the inherently pluralistic, culturally relative nature of community journalism around the world.

As noted by Hatcher (2012), scholars who study community media should be wary of generalized assumptions about community media, as “Differences in class, education, ideology, and ethnicity among community members inevitably mean that not all of them enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and access to community benefits. The ramifications of how those differences play out in the relationship between the community and the journalist can be profound” (Hatcher, 2012, p. 132). That can be just as true when comparing community journalism across different nations as it is when comparing such media within those nations. Consider the findings of a multi-national study that found significant differences in the coverage of political speeches in the news media of developed versus developing nations (Waheed, Schuck, Neijens & de Vreese, 2013). Similar differences in the perception of “news values” were found in a study of South African media that compared the attitudes of journalists who had received formal, university-based training and journalists who learned the craft more informally via on-the-job training (Hatcher, 2013). Another comparative study found stark differences in implementation of a “social-responsibility” approach to journalism at a large, traditional news outlet in the mature democracy of the United Kingdom compared to a relatively young news outlet in the tumultuous emerging democracy of Bangladesh (Hossain & Jaehnig, 2011). Those authors concluded that

The socio-political situations are different in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even the South Asian countries have quite different socio-political systems and media landscapes. So the implementation of the media’s social responsibility is relative and will depend on the perspectives of the social institutions and media organizations in a particular nation. (Hossain & Jaehnig, 2011, p. 239)

The issue is further complicated when considering the media landscape in nations that are not far removed from periods of revolution or civil unrest, as Hatcher (2013) found in his study of community journalism in South Africa. Nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, the nation is still operating in the shadow of racial segregation and white-minority rule: “South Africa’s desire to become a more inclusive society poses intriguing challenges for community journalists. … Efforts by media to bridge communities and overcome longstanding stereotypes face daunting obstacles” (p. 61). Other relatively young democracies not only must overcome the old socio-political divisions that remain very much a part of living memory, but other concerns such as widespread poverty, low literacy rates, unreliable or underdeveloped communication infrastructures, political restrictions on press freedoms, and fragile economic conditions.

Before getting to the overview essays, it is instructive to consider that the scholarly analysis of community media in new democracies is by no means a new enterprise. When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the nascent United States in the early 19th century, he made note of the plethora of small, community-focused newspapers in the developing nation, noting “In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper” (Tocqueville, 1835, para. 13). Although impressed by the “almost incredibly large” number of small, local newspapers in the United States at the time, the French scholar was considerably less impressed with the quality of the journalism he found in those community news outlets: “The characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of his readers; he abandons principles to assail the characters of individuals, to track them into private life and disclose all their weaknesses and vices” (Tocqueville, 1835, para. 13). Tocqueville suggested that the dearth of quality was related to the multitude of outlets, “as the competition prevents any considerable profit, persons of much capacity are rarely led to engage in these undertakings. Such is the number of the public prints that even if they were a source of wealth, writers of ability could not be found to direct them all. The journalists of the United States are generally in a very humble position, with a scanty education and a vulgar turn of mind” (Tocqueville, 1835, para. 13). Despite those limitations, Tocqueville argued that such a plebeian news media was crucial for empowering the common people and for confounding and resisting those with aristocratic designs. It was the decentralized and pluralistic nature of the new democracy’s media system, coupled with a decidedly “coarse” and “vulgar” aesthetic that was more reflective of the diversity of the “common” people, that made the press in the developing United States such a powerful influence in government, economics, and culture.

Over the ensuing two centuries, the news media in the U.S. diverged. The “vulgar” community news outlets — which Tocqueville saw as necessary for true democracy and the foil of aristocracy — to this day account for the bulk of news media in the nation (Lauterer, 2006; Reader & Hatcher, 2012). But just about the time that Tocqueville’s Democracy in America was first published, the seeds of various media empires were starting to take root in the U.S., and over time the role of the community press, on a national level, was taken less seriously compared to those increasingly wealthy, centralizing media empires. That has been particularly true over the past four decades, as the mainstream “national” press in the U.S. became much more corporate and “professionalized” — essentially, aristocratic (Croteau & Hoynes, 2006). That trend correlates with an overall decline in the U.S. public’s trust in the content of mainstream media, which stood at about 78 percent in the 1970s but has fallen to below 45 percent in recent years, including an “all-time low” of 40 percent in 2012 (Morales, 2012). That same year, another national survey found that about 72 percent of U.S. adults “are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need” (Pew Research Journalism Project, 2012, para. 1). More robust comparison of those two lines of research should, at minimum, help scholars understand that any study of “the news media” in a specific country should not assume that the study of “big media” is by any stretch generalizable to an entire media landscape.

With that in mind, accomplished journalism scholars from five different countries were asked to write about the current state of community journalism in their nations. Overall, there seems to be relatively little previous research within those countries to help the scholars develop strong literature reviews; as such, these essays are intended to be starting points for continued and more robust research efforts, and much of the information is from the scholars’ own professional observations of media in their own countries. The goal of this monograph is to provide an overview, not generalizable findings.

HONDURAS: THE UBIQUITY OF LOCAL RADIO IN A MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY

Beatriz Lovo Reichman. Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana

Honduras is a country of about 8 million people, and 80 percent of the nation’s terrain is mountainous. The nation has, roughly, a 25 percent illiteracy rate, according to UNICEF (2012). Those factors make radio the perfect medium to reach audiences in rural areas of Honduras, and the radio industry is fragmented such that nearly every town and village has at least one local radio station.

There are 1,070 radio stations under 422 operators in Honduras; 74 stations stream online (Conatel, 2015). The online stations primarily target the Honduran diaspora – people of Honduran ancestry who live in the U.S., Spain, other Central American nations, and other parts of the world. Within the nation, terrestrial radio dominates the media landscape.

Honduran radio not only appeals to the masses. It also encourages individual listeners to contribute. Even national broadcasting stations do some community-journalism programming. For example, some national programs are focused on providing medical and legal advice to members of the public. For more than 20 years, the radio station Radio America has aired “El Medico y Su Salud,” a call-in show featuring well-known health professional Dr. Mario Rivera Vásquez. From 8 to 9 a.m. on weekdays, listeners call from all over the country and ask for remedies to common illnesses and are advised by Vásquez.  The show has two segments; it opens with the physician’s essay about a particular disease or syndrome and its various treatments, and then goes on to take calls from listeners who inquire about different ailments or health problems. That show is followed by “Orientación Legal” (“Legal Orientation”), which uses the same two-segment format — the host, lawyer Henry Chavez, opens with an explanation of a particular legal term, then takes calls from the audience. (Radio América, n.d.)

Honduran radio also is a conduit for distance education. At least 21 radio stations regularly transmit educational programs that enable youths and adults to study and graduate from elementary school and high school (Conatel, n.d.). Since 1989, “El Maestro en Casa” (“A Teacher at Home”) has served people aged 14 or older who, because of distance, age, time constraints or economic difficulties, can’t access traditional schools. When the courses are completed, students are tested at central or regional offices by qualified teachers. Through the program, students can finish junior high school and can even graduate from high school in humanities or business administration (El Maestro en Casa, n.d.).

Radio in Honduras is also a substitute for church — as many as 133 religious radio stations broadcast news and spiritual programming to Christian communities of various denominations throughout the nation (Conatel, n.d.).

Other national broadcasting stations are dedicated to what they call “social service” programming, which is a radio version of the classified advertising sections of newspapers. With no cost to the caller, those programs allow people to call in to the station to announce their intentions to buy, sell or exchange anything from cars to cattle, but also to allow people to request or offer employment, to congratulate friends and family on anniversaries and birthdays, or give public notice of someone’s death.

For example, via the social-service program of Radio Satélite in Tegucigalpa, a caller makes his or her announcement on the air and the announcer repeats it at intervals three or four more times. Here is an English translation of a death announcement from November 2013: “Pedro Zelaya, who is at Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa, wants to make it known to the families Zelaya-Rivera in Yamaranguila, Fco. Morazán, that Josefa Zelaya died yesterday in this hospital. The body will be arriving tomorrow to her hometown for proper burial” (Radio Satélite, 2013). That same program included typical sales announcements, such as this one (also translated into English, telephone number redacted): “For sale … 2004 Honda Civic, 150,000 km, four door, blue. Those interested may call Mario at 9xxx-2xxx” (Radio Satélite, 2013).

Radio is also the preferred medium for community-development efforts in Honduras, particularly efforts to promote citizen-produced news. The United Nations Development Programme, along with civil-society organizations and local NGOs, have set out to train young people and indigenous citizens in small cities and rural communities to produce their own community journalism. The goal is to empower disadvantaged and remote communities to express their community needs and concerns to local and federal governments. Those journalists, trained through workshops, work almost exclusively through radio (UNDP, 2012).

Some community journalism is carried out by other mass media in Honduras, but it is just not as widespread or noticeable as on radio. There are four national newspapers and 13 small-town and alternative newspapers, several publications and magazines covering different topics and interests, and 44 Internet service providers. Nearly all traditional media have their own websites and Facebook pages, but when looking at them, one can see that those online offerings are not widely followed and often not updated on a regular basis (Conatel, n.d).

Television is the second most popular medium in Honduras, after radio. Whereas radio content is typically produced in-house by each station, providing a rich and diverse community-media landscape, relatively little TV content is produced in Honduras — it is cheaper to import programming from Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, among others. Local TV production is limited to sports, a few game shows, talk shows and newscasts. However, each of the 402 TV stations in Honduras produces at least one in-house newscast. Some stations are ill equipped or have poorly trained personnel for the task, so they rely on the audience to contribute content. Mostly, those low-quality newscasts simply use the call-in format — they allow people to call in and voice their complaints and grievances on the air until the hour-long program is over. Others limit themselves to sharing the news of the day from the print media (they actually read the newspaper on the air). There are some more sophisticated, professional newsrooms that produce credible, trustworthy TV news programs. But whether professional or amateurish, traditional news media in Honduras are truly free to say and show anything, and audiences have direct access to contribute to those media.

As of the end of 2013, the Internet remained a relatively small part of the Honduran news industry. The main reason is based on the fact that only a small percentage of the population has access to Internet — one estimate from 2012 put the Internet-access rate at 18.1 percent of the population (UNICEF, 2012).  As such, social media in Honduras do not have the reach that they’ve obtained in other developing nations. Moreover, social media are primarily used to socialize and build friendship groups, but they have not been used to convey commercial, political, or citizen-interest messages to the degree found in many other countries.

As a result, radio and TV remain the dominant form of “interactive media” in Honduras, primarily through various call-in programs. According to UNICEF, 93 percent of Hondurans own a mobile phone (2012). Everybody and anybody can call a radio or TV station during a newscast and share their complaints or concerns about local or state government. People often complain, on the air, about the lack of trustworthy potable water systems in their communities, and about teacher absences in schools, electrical power outages, politicians’ corrupt practices, and so on. The more serious, professionally produced newscasts conduct follow-up reports on citizens’ complaints that seem worthy of attention, or will call, on the air, the manager of a water company or the director of a school with high teacher absences, so that officials can explain to the audience when and how the problems will be addressed. Other, more amateurish newscasts will only air complains but do no follow-up reporting nor give officials a chance to respond.

Because of a lack of legal and cultural restrictions on what traditional media in Honduras can print or broadcast, it is my belief that social media in Honduras is not widely popular yet not just because of limited Internet access, but because traditional media allow for personal interaction and are easily accessible to their audiences.

Social media are growing, however. At this writing, social media are widely used as advertising vehicles for big brand stores, and many politicians use social media to promote themselves and their activities. But much of that usage has been one-way communication — some politicians do not allow readers’ comments on their personal pages. Radio, however, is filled with citizens’ comments.

Although the Honduras government exercises no prior restraint on the news media, a rising rate of violent deaths since 2006, journalists there increasingly self-censor their views and opinions to avoid being targeted by organized crime or street gangs (Isaula, 2012). Radio will probably remain as the Honduran medium of choice and will continue to be used as a means to educate, to cry out, to denounce, to inform, to worship, and certainly to entertain. Time will tell if other news media, especially online social networks, will experience the same kind of acceptance and use by the masses.

INDIA: MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES CREATE THEIR OWN MEDIA

Anand Pradhan, Indian Institute of Mass Communication

The news media industry in India is expanding at a healthy rate and is expected to continue expanding into the near future. A 2013 industry report suggested that the Indian media and entertainment industry was expected to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 18 percent to reach to 2.245 trillion rupees (approximately US$36.4 billion) by 2017 (CII-PwC, 2013). Although newspapers in many western, developed countries are facing serious crises in terms of circulation and revenue declines, the Indian newspaper industry has a healthy annual growth rate of 9.3 percent, expected to reach to 331 billion rupees (US$5.4 billion) in 2017 (CII-PwC, 2013). Due to its phenomenal growth and expansion, the Indian media and entertainment industry is attracting big foreign and local investors and companies (Khandekar, 2013).

But it is an irony that the growth and expansion of the media industry in the world’s largest democracy seems to be limited to large media conglomerates. Smaller, community-focused news outlets in India are facing an existential crisis. Particularly in the last decade, small- and medium-sized media companies have been finding it difficult to sustain themselves in ever intensifying competition (Thakurta, 2012). That decline of community-focused media is threatening the diverse and pluralistic community-media ecosystem in India, which includes more than 86,745 newspapers in more than two dozen languages and dialects, and with different periodicity — dailies, monthlies, and newspapers that make only occasional appearances.

The Registrar of Newspapers of India (a government department within the  Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) treats all such print publication as newspapers, not just dailies and weeklies (RNI, 2012). Most newspapers registered with the RNI are small- and medium-circulation publications that generally cater to smaller towns and local communities. Their owners and editorial staffs often are from those same communities, and many depend on local advertising revenue and subscribers. Contrary to the bigger and multi-edition newspapers, the majority of small newspapers (and small magazines) cover community-specific issues, events and opinion. Yet bigger, multi-edition newspapers are also entering smaller towns, district headquarters and villages in attempts to increase their reach, boost circulation and tap local advertising. To achieve that goal, bigger newspapers are trying to attract more readers by increasing local coverage in smaller communities (Neyazi, 2011).

But bigger and multi-edition newspapers often lack the community perspective because of their inherent structure, as they have clear objectives to serve large numbers of readers and cater to big and medium-sized advertisers. Their approach tends to homogenize the tastes and demands of the middle and upper-middle classes, which suits their advertisers. Secondly, big and multi-edition newspapers also try to minimize their costs, and to achieve that they try to function with bare minimum local staffing, which ultimately affects the quality of local coverage and connections with community (Vincent & Mahesh, 2007).

Thirdly, the newsroom of big and multi-edition newspapers also lacks the social-cultural diversity of local communities, and are generally blamed for negligible or no representation on their staffs of marginalized and under-privileged communities such as “dalits” (“untouchables” in the traditional caste system), tribal areas, minorities and women (Jeffrey, 1998). “Schedule Caste” (“dalits”) and “Schedule Tribes” communities constitute about 25 percent of India’s population (Jeffrey, 2012).  The same applies to socially and educationally “backward castes,” which are again heavily under-represented in the newsrooms of most of the big and multi-edition newspapers even though they constitute more than 60 percent of the population. Even minority communities, especially Muslims, are also unable to find enough positions in newsrooms despite the fact they constitute about 14 percent of India’s population (Jeffrey, 2012). The number of women journalists is quite small in comparison to their ratio in the population.

That stark “democratic deficit” in the newsrooms of most big and multi-edition newspapers is also true with TV newsrooms, especially Indian language TV news channels. Most of those are owned by big media companies, diversified corporations, political leaders and powerful business owners. The result of the “democratic deficit” in newsroom and growing corporate control of news media is visible in their very limited, skewed and biased coverage of marginal communities (Mudgal, 2011). Moreover, as several scholars and social activists have argued, big and corporate-owned Indian news media generally ignore or distort the real issues of rural, marginalized communities (Ram, 2012).

That ever-growing feeling in marginalized communities has been instrumental in the launch of many alternative, community-focused newspapers/magazines and other mass communication channels in recent years.  Three such experiments in community journalism are trail-breaking and deserve special attention from community journalism scholars and professionals.

The first is Khabar Laharia (“New Waves”), an eight-page weekly newspaper published by a collective of 40 poor and underprivileged rural women of a socially and economically underdeveloped region of Bundelkhand, part of which is in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. The broadsheet newspaper, initially published in a local dialect, Bundeli, was started in May 2002 with support from Nirantar, a New Delhi-based, non-governmental organization focused on female education and literacy. One of the more unusual aspects of the newspaper is that its all-female team of journalists comprises women from underprivileged and marginalized demographics.

The women journalists of Khabar Laharia have fought against many socio-economic biases, including resistance from powerful upper-caste men in villages, government officials, even members of their own families. The literacy level in the region is very low, particularly among women. As journalist Betwa Sharma (2009) noted about the newspaper,

The publication initially floundered in a society where journalism is a monopoly of “upper-caste” men. Caste-based discrimination is entrenched in Chitrakoot. The banned practice of “un-touchability” is rampant. Married off at an early age, women are victims of illiteracy. Incidents of dowry deaths, where brides are killed for not bringing sufficient gifts and money into their husband’s home, also crop up in these parts. This practice, which usually takes the form of burning, is prohibited by law. (Sharma, 2009, para. 6)

The women who produce Khabar Lahariya have no college or university degrees, and most of them only have been schooled to “eighth-pass” level (the equivalent of eighth-grade educations in the U.S.). Initially, those rural women were trained in a series of workshops organized by Nirantar, in which they learned how to gather information, how to interview, how to write news copy, and how to type and edit articles. In 2002, the newspaper was launched as a single broadsheet, published monthly in one language; by 2013, its circulation of 6,000 had an estimated readership of 80,000 in many communities throughout Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with various editions in about a half dozen languages and dialects (Nirantar, 2013).  In 2013, Khabar Lahariya launched a website that carries news, opinion, and features in many languages/dialects. Khabar Lahariya covers problems faced by local rural communities, as well as issues related to agriculture, public health, education, drinking water, sanitation, economic development, socio-economic discrimination, crime, and both laxity and corruption among police and local officials. According to the managing editor of Khabar Lahariya, Meera Yadav, many mainstream newspapers have also started lifting news stories from Khabar Lahariya, and even local administrators are taking note of and acting to address problems revealed by the coverage (personal communication, December 26, 2013). In 2009, UNESCO awarded its King Sejong Literacy Prize to Khabar Lahariya, recognizing the achievements of the unique newspaper and its role as a newspaper by the community, of the community and for the community, and its help for vulnerable and under-privileged communities in Indian society (The Hindu, 2009).

Another good example of grassroots community journalism in India is CGNet Swara, a voice-based portal operated from one of India’s most poor and under-developed states, Chattisgarh. The tribal population in that state is about 32 percent of the total, much higher than the national average. Mainstream news media (newspapers and television) have relatively low penetration and reach there compared to other states because of widespread illiteracy, poverty, geographical inaccessibility and the violence related to the Maoist insurgency throughout eastern India. It is not surprising that most large news companies are not enthusiastic to expand and reach the remote part of that state, and they seem even more disinterested in covering issues related to those tribal communities.

CGNet Swara initially started as the “CGNet” email forum, but its limitation was very obvious as just 0.5 percent people of the state had access to the Internet (Mudliar et. al., 2012). To overcome that limitation, it shifted to an interactive-voice (IVR) portal allowing anyone to participate and share information using widely available telephones. CGNet Swara allows anyone from the community with access to a telephone (landline or mobile) to call in and record their announcements or comments about local issues, public events, or grievances. The news service allows callers to record their messages in their own languages and dialects, which makes it a fully inclusionary platform open to anyone who can access a phone. Then there is a small group of professional journalists who moderate/edit selected recorded messages and upload them to the website as well as the telephone-delivery system. The moderators also transcribe and upload summaries of a few selected message on the website (CGNet Swara, 2013). The founder of CGNet Swara, Shubhranshu Chaudhary, claims that some of the stories and messages packaged by CGNet Swara have been picked up by mainstream newspapers and TV news programs (personal communication, December 4, 2013).

Two U.S.-based NGOs support the enterprise — the International Center for Journalists and the Knight International Journalism Fellowships program. CGNet Swara explains its motivations this way: “Many of the estimated 80 million members of India’s tribal communities lack access to any mainstream media outlets. This often poses serious barriers to their socio-economic development, as their grievances about government neglect and economic exploitation remain unvoiced” (CGNet Swara, 2013, para. 2). The result fills a communication void in India’s tribal communities – it is not surprising that CGNet Swara’s reach has expanded beyond Chattisgarh and gets calls from residents of other states, including Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh (Farooquee, 2013).

A third example of community journalism in India is Gaon Connection, which dubs itself “India’s rural newspaper” (Gaon Connection, 2013). The weekly newspaper is published in the national language, Hindi, and focuses on rural issues and events. The newspaper was launched in December 2012 from a village in the under-developed, populous state Uttar Pradesh. It is at this writing a 12-page broadsheet newspaper with four pages of color. It publishes news reports, features, interview, columns and commentary on issues related to agriculture, farming practices, notable peasants and rural artisans, rural education and health issues, and other topics neglected by the urban, middle-class mainstream media. The newspaper is produced by a small team of trained, young journalists (many of them from rural backgrounds) and many part-time stringers from different districts of Uttar Pradesh produce the newspaper. It is distributed in print and as an e-edition via the Gaon Connection website.

The Gaon Connection lists four goals in its publicly available mission statement (Gaon Connection, 2013, para. 2): “bring democracy to villages,” “give a voice to rural India,” “provide urbane India a lens into its villages” and “generate white-collar employment.” Its mission statement also states that “Although 70% of India still lives in villages, there is no platform or medium focused entirely on them. … In an era where India’s media industry is booming but increasingly reflects only urban concerns, we strive to give rural citizens a voice of their own” (Gaon Connection, 2013, para. 1).

It is interesting to note that Gaon Connection, while assuring its readers that it would cover rural problems generally ignored by mainstream news media, also stresses that it would publish success stories from rural areas. As such, Gaon Connection is arguably the first newspaper of India’s emerging “rural aspirational class,” which is fighting against strong odds to overcome problems in India’s poor rural communities. For example, the newspaper regularly runs a feature that helps its readers learn the English language, which is viewed in India as a language of upward social-economic mobility. It also includes tips and instruction to farmers about how to use new farming techniques, information that is essentially absent from the mainstream press.

Considered together, those three examples help to illustrate how community journalism in India is multi-layered. Each medium started as a “local” news outlet, but also as a source of information and empowerment for the underprivileged. The rapid expansion of the outlets beyond their initial range promises to connect similar communities from across large regions of India, perhaps across the entire nation and beyond. Each also places an emphasis on recruiting journalists (either amateur or professional) from those same communities, a recruitment and training practice community-journalism scholar Jock Lauterer dubbed as “growing your own” (Lauterer, 2007). The long-term advantage of that is to help young, talented journalists gain experience and an appreciation for community journalism, and raise the profile of that important, growing sector of India’s gigantic and pluralistic journalism industry.

LEBANON: MINORITY COMMUNITIES UTILIZE TRADITIONAL AND NEW MEDIA OUTLETS

Sleiman Bssawmai, The Lebanese University

In the city of Borj Hammoud in Beirut, an old Armenian man named Artin plays checkers all day in his coffee shop and talks to people about Armenian culture in Lebanon. When asked why the Armenians had developed their own media outlets, starting in the early 20th century, he kept silent for few minutes, then answered, “Well, we as Armenians are a minority and we are attached to our culture, as [Armenian media] signifies our identity. Thus, we created our own media that talks in our language and deals with our issues, as a way to preserve our culture and heritage and strengthen it among the Armenians in our second country, Lebanon, rather than simply melting in the Lebanese culture and media” (personal communication, November 23, 2014).

A visitor to Beirut may also chance upon signs of the emerging LGBT community in the country. Although still heavily discriminated against in Lebanese society, LGBT citizens have in recent years created their own media to challenge the traditional society that is ignoring and persecuting them, not only to prove that LGBT people exist in Lebanon but to push for acceptance.

Lebanon is a small, densely populated country. It is smaller geographically than the U.S. state of Connecticut and slightly more populous with an estimated 5.8 million residents (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014). As both a geographic and cultural crossroads for millennia, Lebanon has one of the most diverse populations in the Middle East, and it has long been a haven for refugees from war-torn countries in the region — for example, the United Nations estimates that a million or more Syrians sought refuge in Lebanon during the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011 (UNHCR, 2014). Many of those diverse cultural communities have created their own media within Lebanon. This essay focuses on how two of those communities — the community of ethnic Armenians and the LGBT identity community — serve communities that often are ignored or neglected by mainstream Lebanese media.

The media of Lebanese Armenians: Armenians have been in Lebanon since ancient times through a long series of conquests and migrations. The Armenian presence in Lebanon during the Ottoman period was minimal; however, there was a large influx of Armenians after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In 1939, the Armenians arrived in Anjar and the Bekaa Valley (Diab, 2012). A strong Armenian community remains in Anjar to this day. During the Lebanese Civil War of the late 20th century, most Armenians refused to take sides and remained neutral (Worth, 2009). Today, Lebanon is home to approximately 150,000 citizens of Armenian descent, or about 4 percent of the total population (Embassy of Armenia to Lebanon, n.d.). There are three prominent Armenian political parties in Lebanon: the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Tashnag), the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (Hunchag) and the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar Party). They have significant influence in all facets of Armenian life and have become a significant force in Lebanese politics. Two of the most noteworthy political “victories” of Armenians in Lebanese politics include official recognition in 1997 of the Armenia Genocide and effective Armenian opposition to proposals from Turkey to send peacekeeping forces into the region after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict (Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies, 2009).

Armenian media in Lebanon have played a significant part in defining those and other Armenian political positions, and the two majority political camps in Lebanon — the pro-western March 14 movement and the Hezbollah-led opposition — both have been careful to make concessions to Lebanese Armenians (Naim, 2009). Fiercely attached to their political, historical, and cultural legacy, post-Genocide Armenians have long supported their own media, starting with their first daily newspapers in the 1920s. Today, Lebanese Armenians have several newspapers and magazines dedicated to their community, as well as a few electronic-media outlets, both broadcasting and online.

The Armenian press sector consists of several publications. There are two mainstream magazines; a sports magazine; an Armenian culture magazine; and three Armenian newspapers. The first Armenian newspaper in Lebanon, Aztag, was initiated in 1927 (Naim, 2009). The daily “political and literary newspaper” has been and remains the mouthpiece of the largest Armenian political party, the Tashnag party, and is closely tied to the culture of Genocide survivors (Naim, 2009). The Zartonk Daily is the Ramgafar party newspaper. Established in 1937,  “it remained active as a daily newspaper until the end of 2006, when it scaled back distribution and then stopped publishing in a daily format in the end of 2007. It was re-launched in May 2008, and in 2009 it increased publication to three issues per week” (Naim, 2009, para. 33-34). The main ideology of the newspaper is to promote Armenian rights, to bring attention to the Armenian Genocide of the 20th century, to promote Armenian church unity, to instill a sense of patriotism, and to defend freedom of speech. The third major Armenian newspaper, Ararad, also was launched in 1937 (Ararad, 2014). Representing the Hanshak party, the newspaper suffered from harassment from the Lebanese political authorities in the 1950s and 1960s because of the paper’s editorial opposition to the Lebanese government. The newspaper covers the Lebanese political movement, the essential activities of the Hanshak party, news about the Armenian diaspora, and local Armenian current events. It also focuses on analysis concerning local, regional and international political events. Ararad also focuses on news from the Republic of Armenia and its neighboring countries.

Lebanese Armenians have two main radio stations. Voice of Van is located in the heart or Beirut. It provides 24/7 broadcasts of political, social, economic and educational shows, as well as a blend of Armenian music in numerous genres. The other station, Radio Sevan, strives to provide information, entertainment and cultural programming to a global community of listeners, united in their appreciation of Armenian music and culture.

In the early 2000s, as the Lebanese-Armenian political and business influences began to have more sway in the country’s political scene, Lebanese television networks began catering to the Armenian audience. Today, a 30-minute news journal is divided into three categories: Lebanese news, Armenian news, and international news items. In the Lebanese segment, the program focuses on the main local political news. The Armenian segment includes news of official political events in the Republic of Armenia. It is worth mentioning that two Lebanese channels, OTV and Future TV, also have daily Armenian news programs that air at 4:30 p.m. The broadcasts contain coverage of local, regional and international news broadcast in the Armenian language.

Lebanese Armenians also use social media to share news and information. An example is Lradou, a Facebook page that has been active since 2012 that shares news articles about current affairs and issues that are happening in Lebanon and Armenia. Armenians also produce journalistic blogs, such as Seta’s Armenian Blog, which explores contemporary issues concerning Armenia and Armenians everywhere. It shares articles by Lebanese Armenian writers such as Sevag Hagopian.

Overall, Lebanese Armenians initiated their media outlets as tools to preserve their culture and heritage and keep the Armenian society in contact with their primary identity. Over time, those community media further became conduits for Lebanese Armenians to attain and maintain political, economic, and cultural influence in broader Lebanese society.

LGBT Media in Lebanon: The community media of LGBT Lebanese are not nearly as established, as the open LGBT movement in the country is relatively young and struggling. The subject of homosexuality is still considered a taboo in Lebanese society. Lebanese people have been progressing in terms of being able to discuss the subject out loud and even in academic work; however, mainstream Lebanese society is still not ready to let go of traditional customs and beliefs that do not tolerate homosexuality. Laws against homosexuality make it even harder for relevant NGOs to promote homosexual rights in Lebanon. However, the topic of homosexuality is not a taboo subject in public discourse, although the majority view is to speak against homosexuality and to not accept homosexuals as normal human beings — 79 percent of Lebanese believe homosexuality should be rejected, and same-sex sexual acts are illegal there, punishable by fines or up to a year imprisonment (Assi, 2012). Many parents of homosexuals go so far as take their children to therapy just because of their sexual orientation. Absent mainstream acceptance, the LGBT-rights movement in Lebanon has created its own media channels to circumvent the more hostile mainstream media.

Lebanon is the first Arab country to have its own gay periodical, Barra (“Out” in Arabic). Helem is the eponymous website and online newsletter of the most popular LGBT organization in Lebanon. In 2009, the book Bareed Mista3jil was published by the Lebanese Lesbian Feminist Collective organization in Beirut. The most famous LGBT news outlet in Lebanon is a Facebook page called LGBT Media Monitor, reporting about Lebanese LGBT movement. There also is an online newspaper for the Lebanese LGBT community called #LebLGBT Weekly — it is full of new articles, features, and briefs about LGBT activities, parties, experiences, etc. One can register freely for it and the subscriber receives it weekly by mail (The #LebLGBT Weekly, 2014).

There are a number of Lebanese blogs focused on the LGBT community. Raynbow Blog is the most popular LGBT blog in Lebanon. It is being used to call for action as well as sharing stories, mostly tragic ones. One feature of the blog is the “Homophobes Hall of Shame,” which identifies Lebanese celebrities as either “homo-friendly” or “homophobic” (Raynbow Blog, 2014).  Gino’s Blog is another popular website within the LGBT community; although blogger Gino Raidy has never declared his sexual orientation, his blog frequently covers media stories about homosexuals. He often writes positively about LGBT media and causes. For example, he followed a story about some homosexuals who were put in prison when they were caught having sex and he defended their rights as he criticized Joe Maalouf, a well-known Lebanese TV presenter for an offensive episode in which he falsely accused 36 men of being gay, causing them serious problems (Raidy, 2012). Recently, Raidy was among the first to raise awareness of a Lebanese movie about homosexuals that was going to be screened in the U.S. but not in Lebanon (Raidy, 2013).

Internet-based social media have been a driving force for the LGBT community in Lebanon. A number of Facebook pages are focused on LGBT news and information about LGBT events and struggles. Helem’s Facebook page is, of course, flooded with stories and official notices from the organization. The page is also used to organize and promote LGBT events and demonstrations as well as to announce organizational meetings at the Helem office. As with many Facebook pages, Helem’s is full of photos and videos from members. Another example is LGBT Media Monitor, which is newer than Helem; the two work collaboratively, however, and are not in competition. LGBT Media Monitor is more focused on LGBT media and community service. For example, in late 2013, they were calling for volunteers from all over Lebanon to support LGBT people and causes. It has multiple active administrators, or “admins,” and each admin is known by a color rather by his or her name. Pages of People is another Facebook page that focuses on individual Lebanese homosexuals who have been struggling to live in Lebanon. Some of them have traveled elsewhere, while others are still struggling in Lebanon. And personal Facebook pages of individual strugglers can be found that share their different stories locally and abroad.

Other social-media platforms are used by the LGBT community for journalistic purposes. LebanonLGBT’s Instagram site listed more followers than its Facebook site by early 2014, and most of the LGBT media mentioned above also are active on Twitter.

LGBT people in Lebanon also use social phone apps such as Grindr and Growler to connect with homosexuals who are nearby. Users can read one another’s profiles, see their pictures, read short biographies, and have the option to chat online. Manjam.com, a popular dating website, also is used by gay men in Lebanon to meet other gays. Though not really modes for journalistic communication, such online tools are clearly part of the overall media framework used by LGBT Lebanese to build and support their community.

The LGBT community in Lebanon is highly active on social media, especially considering that they are ostracized from mainstream media outlets. Through their own media, LGBT Lebanese can express themselves freely and challenge the broader society to pay attention to them, if not accept them. Time will tell whether the LGBT media in Lebanon will become agents of progress and acceptance for the LGBT community as Armenian media have been for Lebanese Armenians, and whether such community-specific media will eventually lead to accommodation of LGBT voices and agendas in the mainstream media.

UKRAINE: ACTIVIST COMMUNITIES USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO CIRCUMVENT MEDIA OLIGARCHIES

Yuriy Zalizniak, Ivan Franko National University

To successfully run a community media project, one has to meet at least four objectives: to be devoted to the idea of serving the community interests; to have the time to create and support the project; to be qualified enough to conduct the work, along with a willingness to learn and adapt during the process; and, last but not least, to attract both cultural and financial support. All four objectives are substantial hurdles currently in politically divided Ukraine.

More than 20 years after becoming an independent democracy, Ukraine still does not have as many community news media as there are in other modern democracies. Much of the community journalism in Ukraine is produced by student media, trade-union media, and public media funded by NGOs. Those media have some distinctive similarities. They are mostly informal (meaning they are not legally registered as professional news media). They are established and operated by local activists, and often do not have stable staffing or financial support. They are situational, producing whenever they are able to, often with no regular publication periods and rarely remaining viable over long periods of time. And they do not require the sophisticated equipment and complicated procedures used by national and regional newspapers and broadcasters (Klymenko & Pavlenko, 2003).

To be clear, there are some territorial community media in Ukraine that are quite professional — officially registered newspapers, mainly, that are issued on a regular basis with general-interest breadth. The country still has rural newspapers, and they represent a classic type of “local” media for a post-Soviet country, as such newspapers used to be issued in almost every region of Ukraine, if not throughout other former Soviet republics. Those rural-region newspapers are not the same as community media when it comes to issues of political independence, economic activity and financial viability. Regularly issued community newspapers are possible only when initiative-driven groups of citizens manage to find some reliable sources of financial support.

Ukraine’s media landscape in recent years has been dominated by local oligarchs with close ties to the presidential families (Dutsyk, 2010). The opposition has not had adequately powerful media resources by which to compete, and in the run-up to the presidential elections of 2015, a strengthening of pro-government, oligarchic media is noticeable, although the early 2014 secession of Crimea certainly will change how some oligarchic media cover election politics. Absent representation and access to mainstream media in Ukraine, local activists tend to create their own news media to bring attention to specific community problems.

Those media enable numerous action groups to mobilize neighbors or like-minded citizens to collectively stand for common interests or to guard against or oppose actions against their causes. As such, they are more factional than typical “small-town” media in other countries. The majority of Ukraine’s “activist community media” are in print: newspapers, flyers, newsletters, etc. Examples include student newspapers, such as the two at Ivan Franko National University of  Lviv, Mogu and Kredens. Lviv also has a Greek-Catholic community newspaper, the All Saints of Ukrainian People Church Bulletin. Similar forms of niche community media can be found in cities throughout Ukraine.  But in recent years, other formats have been widely adopted, particularly social media and multimedia (using audio and video) that are shared through the Internet.

Sometimes, local NGOs can be the publishers of such newspapers, or can provide content for TV and radio bulletins on local channels and stations. An example is the project called Establishment of Media Centers in Rural Areas. Its aim in 2007 and 2008 was to foster democratic dialogue in rural areas and to give rural citizens a means to voice their concerns and opinions by setting up community media centers. But that was a short-term project funded by the European Union (Shutov, 2008).

Public-opinion studies show that news media are, along with the church and armed forces, the most trusted institutions in Ukraine (Democratic Initiatives Fund and Razumkov Centre, 2013), yet it is very hard to gather money to start a community media project — unless it is backed by oligarchs. But even oligarchs in Ukraine prefer buying TV and radio stations, magazines, newspapers and websites that they can control to increase their wealth and power rather than donating some of their wealth to independent community media. That is why almost all national media in Ukraine are commercial and owned by businessmen who have close ties to the ruling parties or strong opposition parties. Oligarchy has a tremendous influence on the content of mainstream Ukrainian media; as such, local community stories are often not covered when “national” problems are discussed, usually according to the “blessing” of the media owners.

The financial barriers to truly independent media in Ukraine are substantial. Ukraine has a smaller middle-class relative to the rest of Europe. Wealthy Ukrainians tend to be oligarchs, politicians and authorities at all levels of government, and they are conspicuous in their consumption of luxury brands such as Ferrari, Maserati, Chanel and many more. The rest of the population lives near or below the poverty line.  The Global Wealth Report 2013 of Credit Suisse Bank notes that the average annual income of a Ukrainian citizen is less than 41,000 hryvnia (about US$5,000), which is 10 times less than the world average. Ukraine’s nearest cultural neighbors, Poland and Russia, are richer: Russia is among the countries with an average income between US$5,000 and US$25,000, and Poles have average incomes between US$25,000 and US$100,000 (Global Wealth Report, 2013).

The question is whether it is possible that common Ukrainians, after spending their salaries mainly on groceries, are willing or able to give some money to support their own local community media. Surprisingly, the answer has been “yes” in some areas. For example, a group of professional journalists in November 2013 managed to gather more than 60,000 hryvnia (US$8,000) from more than 300 donors through a crowdfunding website to start a project called, simply, Public Radio. The station was created originally as a podcast-only project, with the hope to eventually become a full-time Web stream and, perhaps, even broadcast over airwaves. As they explained, it is expected to be the only truly independent “talk” radio outlet in Ukraine, as it will not be under control of the government, businessmen or politicians (Public Radio, 2013). The project’s mission statement includes this explanation: “Each of us at one time refused to turn a blind eye to censorship, unfair ‘editorial’ or non-transparent media ownership. Each of our listeners has already noticed that he receives low-quality, stale and even deliberately distorted picture of the day from many media. Now we are trying to break this shameful circle” (Slavinska, 2013, para. 3). And it turned out to be enough to attract enough donations to launch the project. Although the project is not a “local” community journalism project — it is seeking a national audience — it is an experiment with grassroots journalism that is uncommon in Ukraine.

In that context, the difference between the concepts of community journalism and public (or “citizen”) journalism is not immediately noticeable because in Ukraine both are often regarded as the same phenomenon. That can possibly be explained by considering Ukraine’s Soviet past, a legacy of totalitarianism across two continents that used to deny any regional or community autonomy, including journalism produced by and for distinct communities. Today, Ukrainians are inhabitants of a reborn state crowded with communities that have regained cultural distinctiveness through 22 years of independence. Community journalism and public journalism are evolving at the same time. A national imperative for a free, independent, and community-focused press is only now entering the national consciousness. The dominance of oligarchical media slows that process, given the significance of large, national media to influence how citizens conceptualize their national culture. That gets to Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” and his explanation of imaginary roots of nations: “Members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 1991, p. 6). For seven decades, Ukrainians were compelled, partly via state-owned media, to imagine themselves as part of the U.S.S.R.; today, the first generation of Ukrainians born and raised in an independent, democratic nation are just entering adulthood. Ukrainians are still in the process of re-imagining “community” both through expanding personal acquaintances but also through derivative awareness via the efforts of community/public journalism efforts that reflect smaller Ukrainian communities that are tied together by geography, beliefs, or shared interests.

The Internet is giving a tremendous boost particularly to the rapid development of community, citizen, civic and other types of “connected” journalism. Ukrainians have a tradition of small-scale, un-official publishing — evidence of that can be seen in the dissident “samizdat” press collection of Ukrainian journalist Vakhtang Kipiani (Kipiani, 2007). But Internet-based communication has greatly enhanced the ability of disempowered Ukrainians to produce journalism both in print and online.

The worldwide digital network simplifies access to content for audiences, as well as access to low-cost production and publishing tools, especially compared to those needed for legacy print, radio and TV news outlets in Ukraine. Consider the case of Hromadske.tv, a project by Ukrainian journalists who produce public-journalism video reports that are distributed online (Chornokondratenko, 2013). Such an independent journalism project would not be possible without ubiquitous Internet access.

In 2013, half the adult population in Ukraine used the Internet (KIIS research, 2013a). The main differences in the spread of the Internet in Ukraine are based on age and type of settlement. Ukrainian researchers have noted a linear, inverse relationship between age and Internet use, with the elderly using it very little and younger Ukrainians using it extensively (KIIS research, 2013b). And although sociologists also have noted Internet-access disparities in settlements of various sizes has noticeably smoothed, the digital divide is still notable in the Ukrainian countryside where residents often refer to technical problems of connectivity in sparsely populated areas (KIIS research, 2013b). Meanwhile, the founder of the portal Watcher.com.ua, Maxim Savanevskyy, says that the dynamics of Internet development in Ukraine is rather high because every year the level of internet penetration in Ukraine increases by 20 to 25 percent:

Growth occurs primarily through small settlements. However, in Kyiv, for example, the penetration rate is almost unchanged for the last 1.5-2 years. Speaking of age dynamics of Internet users, the most active group is 50 years old or more, starting to take up the Internet after their children, or because the requirements at work. (Savanevskyy, 2013, para. 3).

In general, the development of the Internet in Ukraine can let us make predictions about the further expansion of Ukrainian community media, which will be decidedly online. That is indicated by the dynamics of Internet penetration in other parts of the world where Internet use corresponds with a steady growth of interest of the former audience to create its own content (Rosen, 2006). The number of blogs is growing in Ukraine; Ukrainian Wikipedia is among the top 20 Wikipedia channels in the world by number of articles; and social networks are becoming more and more popular among Ukrainians. According to Watcher, which has been analyzing the growth of Ukrainian audience on Facebook since April 2009, the number of Ukrainian Facebook users grew 48-fold in just four years, from 63,000 users in April 2009 to 3 million by October 2013 (Watcher research, 2013). Growth in 2013 was faster than in the previous year, increasing by a third from 1.6 million to 2.3 million users (Watcher research, 2013). The three most popular social networks in Ukraine – Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook — are steadily in top-10 most popular domains in Ukraine (Minchenko, 2013).

Corresponding to the rapid growth of social media use is the rapid appearance of online-only journalism projects in Ukraine. One such new project is in Vinnytsia – a hyperlocal social network as a platform for decision-making. Supported by a United Nations e-governance project, the project aims to develop a culture of dialogue in the community, attract active users of social networks to discuss the state of local development there, and identify new community leaders to promote new local initiatives (UNDP, 2015).

Many of the emerging citizen-journalism efforts in Ukraine combine geographic considerations with specific causes or goals. For instance, the movement “Let us walk” has a shared goal to fight for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in Lviv where narrow streets are crowded with illegally parked cars. “Let us walk” has open groups on Facebook with more than 2,000 members (Let us walk, 2013). Members of the group use their mobile phones to report illegally parked cars and to cooperate with local police to cite the car owners. At the same time, the group has managed to gather enough money from community members, other inhabitants of the city, and local businesses to buy and install physical barriers to prevent drivers from parking cars on sidewalks. The group’s success has forced mainstream media to meet with activists of the group and to cover that persistent local problem (Zaxid.net, 2013; Lviv24.com, 2013).  A similar approach has been taken by the “Save Old Kyiv” group, which tries to preserve old buildings and places of Kyiv from demolition or drastic alteration. A Google search in Ukraine using the terms “village site” or “village blog” returns countless results. Local activists use their do-it-yourself media to solve their community problems, to entertain neighbors, even to attract tourists.

Not all of those new community-focused media have proximate goals. For example, “Community against Lawlessness” is a social-network-based initiative dealing with cases of different injustice in the case of law and rights of Ukrainians violated by officials, police or judges (Community against Lawlessness, 2013). Those stories often are not covered by national and local mainstream media so activists report the stories in their own way using whatever resources are available to them.

That was certainly evident in late 2013 into 2014, during the Ukrainian pro-European revolution, when hundreds of thousands of people gathered several times in different parts of the capital city, Kyiv, to oppose the government’s decision to turn down European integration. Dozens of students, journalists (even foreign correspondents) and other people were roughly beaten by police during the protests. In general, mobilization of those protests took place via Twitter and Facebook. The community site EuroMaydan turned into a news aggregator. The hashtag “#Euromaydan” spread quickly and reached the top position in Ukrainian Twitter. Several separate-but-united online communities were organized in a short period of time to inform people about police activity in Kyiv and elsewhere; to help people from different regions of Ukraine get to the capital by public or private  transport; to provide traveling protestors with gasoline, food, warm clothes, medical assistance in the streets of the city, and places to stay in Kyiv for days; to find people who went missing after police arrests; and many more missions. At the same time, Ukrainian journalists were demonstrating extreme consolidation as they became willing to unite and support one another. More journalists have become more open to collaboration with ordinary people – specially Hromadske.tv (Chornokondratenko, 2013).

It is this growing diversity in online communication that suggests that stronger, more professional forms of community journalism may evolve in Ukraine. While oligarchic and commercial media continue to focus only on mainstream news related to national politics, macroeconomics, major crimes, major sports, weather issues and international news, local activists are demonstrating the more focused informational needs and desires of distinct communities. Amateurs with strong community ties are becoming the masters of understanding local context, of recognizing the local impacts of global changes, and of providing in-depth coverage of the issues and aspirations of each community. The plurality of such communities drives the demand for a stronger community-journalism presence in Ukraine, and the new media instruments of the Internet can help anybody with skill and talent to become their own, community-level media magnate.

Zambia: Community radio struggles under government interference

Carole Phiri-Chibbonta, University of Zambia

Radio is the most significant source of community journalism for the diverse populations of Zambia. Community radio in Zambia began after the introduction of multi-party, democratic governance in the early 1990s. The subsequent liberalization of the airwaves in 1994 resulted in the emergence of community radio stations in many parts of the country. Over the years, the number of not-for-profit community radio stations has increased steadily; today, Zambia has at least 48 community radio stations broadcasting in a number of languages with content as diverse as the population itself. Although most of those stations serve both communities of interest and geographical communities, most of them serve communities defined by geographical locality (Muzyamba, 2005). However, political pressures and interference have prevented community radio from achieving its highest potential in the young democracy.

The rise of community radio in Zambia, as noted by Kasoma (2001), seems to have been acknowledged against the backdrop of shortcomings of national radio provided by the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC), as well as shortcomings in commercial and Christian radio in the country. Compared to commercial or Christian radio, community radio would seem less restrictive in terms of content, as it lacks the aim of Christian radio which is to evangelize and it represents a more egalitarian media system for the people as its ethos is not primarily driven by profit and advertising (Kasoma, 2001). The signal of the national broadcaster, ZNBC, does not reach all people in the country, and ZNBC has failed to provide content to satisfy all the people in Zambia in terms of language groups and the specific problems and issues faced by communities in various parts of the country (Kasoma, 2001). Community radio aims to fill those gaps.

In addition, the entire media landscape in the country has probably contributed to the popularity of community media. Government owns and controls two of the country’s daily newspapers (Zambia Daily Mail and Times of Zambia), while several privately owned newspapers, of which The Post has the widest circulation, provide opposition views and criticism of government but face frequent reprisals for their oppositional reporting. These three newspapers have for a long time dominated the newspaper industry in Zambia, which has occasionally seen weekly newspapers circulating but those have all folded in short order mainly due to sustainability problems. Previously, the government through the Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS) also produced six vernacular newspapers to cater for the information needs of the rural communities, but those, too, disappeared almost a decade ago. However, government has recently revived the production of those vernacular newspapers (Nyirenda, 2013) — time will tell if they succeed.

The media in Zambia is highly polarized, with the state media supporting the government of the day and the private media supporting the opposition. As such, most mainstream news media in Zambia are more reflective of the interests of their owners and supporters than of the people at large. Community radio has not only provided listeners with content about their own communities, but it also has offered people in those communities the opportunity to access diverse information as well as to express themselves to the public. Public involvement is conducted particularly through the use of mobile phones, and live radio phone-in programs provide alternative forms of information, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. Community radio stations seem to have become popular for broadcasting live phone-in programs in which the contributions of callers are not censored.

However, that appreciation of community radio has not come without its own limitations. Paramount among those are financial, regulatory, and political impediments as identified in the 2006 Needs Assessment Survey on Community Media (Muzyamba & Nyondo, 2006).

Since the time community radio appeared on the scene in Zambia, several stations have ceased to broadcast due to their inability to financially sustain their operations. The impact of rather exorbitant costs of obtaining a license as well as annual renewal fees has been harsh on some stations. In addition, there is still no clear policy and regulatory framework for community media in Zambia. Most notably, the 1996 Information and Media Policy is silent on the issue of community radio. Although it contains guidelines on how to apply for a radio broadcasting license, there is no clear definition of what constitutes a community radio station, no analysis of the context within which it can be carried on, let alone any attempt to distinguish between “community,” “commercial” and “public” broadcasting (MIBS, 1996).

Legally, issues of community media are represented by the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act of 2002, which mandated the creation of the IBA agency to license and regulate broadcast stations. However, to date, the IBA has not been fully operationalized, as the board was yet to be constituted 10 years later — at this writing, only an IBA director general has been appointed, and that was just in May 2013. Until (or unless) the IBA is fully implemented, all power to supervise, regulate and give licenses for radio stations, including community radio, is vested in the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, a political position that is prone to controversy (Adumu, 2013a).

The lack of a clear policy and regulatory framework for community radio could be enabling political interference in the form of arbitrary regulation and pronouncements by government officials. The interference comes by way of a number of approaches, both legal and extra-legal. For example, those in power may threaten to close down community media if they engage in “political broadcasts,” which they claim is contrary to license terms even though the regulations do not state any such restrictions (Muzyamba and Nyondo, 2006). Any content deemed to be critical of government by those authorities draws the same wrath and retaliation.

In fact, it has become common practice, in the recent years, for Zambian government officials to not only threaten to silence community media houses through closure but to try to influence the content and programming. For example, in November 2007, officials threatened to revoke the license of Radio Lyambai in western Zambia following allegations that the station intended to invite an opposition leader to discuss a controversial political issue. Officials banned the station from broadcasting live phone in radio shows. A few years later, the government shut down the radio station under allegations that it broadcast “seditious material” related to the Barotseland independence movement (Zambian Watchdog, 2011).

In a more recent case, the Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary Emmanuel Mwamba in 2013 threatened to revoke the broadcasting license of UNZA Radio, a teaching radio station operated by the University of Zambia in Lusaka (Adumu, 2013b). The official alleged that the station had broadcast a discussion about politics with an opposition party leader. Mwamba accused UNZA Radio of departing from its mandate of being a community radio station by offering a platform for partisan interests. That was neither the first nor the only the incident of political interference at UNZA Radio. Earlier, in September 2012, Mwamba’s predecessor, Amos Malupenga, had also threatened to suspend UNZA Radio’s license on allegations that the station was providing a platform for advancing partisan interests (Adumu, 2012). In 2014, the country’s Youth and Sport Minister, Chishimba Kambwili, went into the radio station to threaten student journalists for their coverage of a student protest on campus (Lusaka Times, 2014).

Similar incidents at other community radio stations resulted in government officials threatening to either close or dissolve boards of directors for such media. In February 2013, the district commissioner from the North-Western Province threatened to revoke the license for Kasempa FM community radio after he was quizzed about the shortage of mortuary attendants at a hospital under his jurisdiction (Zambian Watchdog, 2013). In the same month, Isoka Community radio station in Northern Zambia and Radio Pasme in Eastern Zambia also faced similar intimidation (MISA Zambia, 2013).

With the lack of implementation of the Independent Broadcasters Authority and the ad hoc and capricious manner in which political pronouncements relating to community media are unilaterally made by officials, it is clear that the government has apportioned itself regulatory power over community radio regardless of community interests. That level of restrictive regulation and arbitrary government control makes it impossible for community radio in Zambia to offer a diversity of opinions from those communities. A free and independent media cannot achieve its best goal — to empower communities and give voice to the voiceless — if the government keeps interfering.

CONCLUSION

All five of the countries discussed here have constitutional guarantees of “freedom of the press,” though of course the degree to which a particular government will honor such rights will vary from place to place and from time to time. Clearly, the human need for sharing news within communities is demonstrated by the myriad projects and efforts discussed above. Most turn to modern media formats — newspapers, radio, blogs — but the impetus is not really about “putting out a newspaper” or “getting the word out over the airwaves.” The impetus is to share, to bear witness, and to empower — how that goal is achieved is as diverse as the many cultures of the human civilization.

In his acclaimed book A History of News, Mitchell Stephens wrote about “the need for news” as a social impetus that is as old as human civilization itself: “It does not matter whether we are used to following news across an island or around the world; when the news flow is obstructed — depriving us of our customary view — a darkness falls. We grow anxious. Our hut, apartment, village or city becomes a ‘sorry’ place. However large our horizons were, they grow smaller” (Stephens, 2007, p. 12). Sometimes the obstruction comes from the gauche, heavy-handed tactics of tyrannical politicians; sometimes it comes from the financially motivated dominant media who are focused only on the disposable incomes of the middle- and upper classes. Sometimes, it comes from years of not knowing anything else. But, in the end, the obstructions cannot seem to stop the natural tendencies of communities to develop their own systems of gathering and disseminating news. The means of doing so, however, are as diverse as the cultures of the world itself.

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Introduction and conclusion

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• Waheed, M., Schuck, A. R. T., Neijens, P. C., & de Vreese, C. H. (2013) Values in the news: Comparing the news coverage of political speeches in developed and developing countries.  Journalism Studies 14 (4), 618-634.

Honduras essay

• Comision Nacional de Telecomunicaciones Conatel (n.d.). Indicadores Radiodifusion. Retrieved December 6, 2013, from http://sitae.conatel.gob.hn/SIGERPAC/default2.aspx
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India essay

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• Mudliar, P., Donner, J., & Thies, W. (2012). Emergent practices around CGNET-Swara: A voice forum for citizen journalism in rural India ICTD2012 Special Issue 9, (2), 65-79.
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• Thakurta, P. G. (2012, July 3). Media ownership trends in India. The Hoot. Retrieved November 18, 2013, from http://www.thehoot.org/web/storypage/6053-1-1-16-true.html
• The Hindu (2009, August 4). Newspaper by rural Indian women wins UN literacy award.” The Hindu. Retrieved December 26, 2013 from http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200908041021.htm
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Lebanon essay

• Ararad Daily (2014). About us. Ararad Daily. Retrieved January 27, 2014, from http://araraddaily.com/about.php?q=1&lang=en
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• Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (2009). Turkey-Lebanon relations: Perceptions of Turkey among the religious and sectarian factions in Lebanon. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://sesaenstitusu.org/en/perceptions-of-turkey-among-the-religious-and-sectarian-factions-in-lebanon/
• Diab, A. (2012, April 22). Armenians in Lebanon (I): The Republic of Anjar.  AlaAkhbar English. Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/6454
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• Embassy of Armenia to Lebanon (n.d.). Armenian Community in Lebanon. Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://lebanon.mfa.am/en/community-overview
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• Naim, H. (2009, May 28). The Armenian media in Lebanon: Pre-election divisions. Menassat. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/6578-look-armenian-media-lebanon
• Raidy, G. (2012, November 21). Joe Maalouf’s lawsuit against this blog has been scrapped. Gino’s Blog. Retrieved January 27, 2014, from http://ginosblog.com/2012/11/21/joe-maaloufs-lawsuit-against-this-blog-has-been-scrapped/
• Raidy, G. (2013, October 26). ‘Out Loud,’ Lebanon’s ‘first gay film’ debuts in Manhattan. Gino’s Blog. Retrieved January 27, 2014, from http://ginosblog.com/2013/10/26/out-loud-lebanons-first-gay-film-debuts-in-manhattan/
• Raynbow Blog (2014) Homophobes Hall of Shame. Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://raynbow.info/homophobes-hall-of-shame
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Ukraine essay

• Anderson, B. (2001). Imagined Communities. Kyiv: Krytyka
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• Dutsyk, D. (2010). Media ownership structure in Ukraine: Political aspect. Institut für Rundfunkökonomie an der Universität zu Köln. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.rundfunk-institut.uni-koeln.de/institut/tagungen/2010-Cologne/Dutsyk_u.pdf
• Kipiani, V. (2004, April 14). Samvydavnyky. Kipiani.org. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://kipiani.org/samizdat/index.cgi?254
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• KIIS research (2013a, October 30). Dynamics of the Internet in Ukraine: September 2013. Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=199&page=1
• Klymenko, I. & Pavlenko, R. (2003, September 18). Community media. Ukrainian version. Media Reform Centre. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.mediareform.com.ua/article.php?articleID=31
• “Let us walk” (2013). Retrieved March 13, 2015, from message to https://www.facebook.com/groups/trotuar
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• Minchenko, Olha (2013, October 25). Already 3 million of Ukrainians are using Facebook, Watcher. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://watcher.com.ua/2013/10/25/vzhe-3-milyony-ukrayintsiv-korystuyutsya-facebook/
• Minchenko, O. (2013, October 18).  Most popular sites among Ukrainians in September 2013. Watcher. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://watcher.com.ua/2013/10/18/naypopulyarnishi-sayty-sered-ukrayintsiv-u-veresni-2013-roku/
• Public Radio (2013). Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://hromadskeradio.org/
• Public Television (2013). Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://hromadske.tv/
• Credit Suisse Research Institute (2013, October). Global Wealth Report 2013. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/global-wealth-report.pdf
• Rosen, J. (2006, June 30). The people formerly known as the audience. Huffington Post. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/the-people-formerly-known_1_b_24113.html
• Savanevskyy, Maxym (2013, October 23). In two years Ukraine will overtake Europe in terms of Internet coverage. Tyzhden.ua. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://tyzhden.ua/News/92197
• Shutov, R. (2008). Social media in Ukraine: A practical guide. Kyiv: Makros.
• Slavinska, I. (2013, October 16). Public Radio. Listen. Think. Support. Biggggidea. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://biggggidea.com/project/323/
• UNDP (2015). Hyperlocal social network ‘Tvoye Misto’ (‘Your City’) was created in Vinnytsya under UNDP support. United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://www.ua.undp.org/content/ukraine/en/home/presscenter/articles/2013/12/13/hyperlocal-social-network-tvoye-misto-your-city-was-created-in-vinnytsya-under-undp-support.html
• Zaxid.net (2013, August 6). The movement ‘Let us walk’ discusses cooperation with city police. Zaxid.net. Retrieved via Ukraine on March 13, 2015, from http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?ruh_dayte_proyti_obgovoryuye_spivpratsyu_z_dai_lvova&objectId=1290888

Zambia essay

• Adumu, P. (2012, September 6) State agents storm UNZA as PAZA condemns Malupenga. Zambia Reports. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://zambiareports.com/2012/09/06/state-agents-storm-unza-as-paza-condemns-malupenga
• Adumu, P. (2013a, November 6) MISA Zambia condemns Mwansa Kapeya hypocrisy, Zambia Reports. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://zambiareports.com/2013/11/06/misa-zambia-condemns-mwansa-kapeya-hypocrisy/
• Adumu, P. (2013b, October 4). Mwamba picks another battle with UNZA Radio. Zambia Reports. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://zambiareports.com/2013/10/04/mwamba-picks-another-battle-with-unza-radio/
• Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services (1996). Information and Media Policy. Lusaka, Zambia: Government Printers.
• Kasoma, F. (2001). Community radio: its management and organisation in Zambia. Ndola, Zambia Independent Media Association.
• Muzyamba, F. (2005). Community broadcasting: Short-term experiment or cost-effective option for developing countries. Paper presented at the National Media Conference, May 26-28, 2005, in Windhoek, Namibia.
• Muzyamba, F. & Nyondo, R. (2006). Needs assessment on community media. Lusaka, Zambia: Panos.
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• University of Zambia (2013). About UNZA Radio. University of Zambia. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://www.unza.zm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=259&Itemid=892
• Zambian Watchdog (2011, February 4) Government refuses to re-open Radio Lyambai. Zambian Watchdog. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://www.zambianwatchdog.com/government-refuses-to-re-open-radio-lyambai
• Zambian Watchdog (2013, February 7). Police pursue Kasempa Radio staff. Zambian Watchdog. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://www.zambianwatchdog.com/police-pursue-kasempa-radio-staff/

About the Authors

Bill Reader is an associate professor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

Beatriz Lovo Reichman is associate professor at Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana in Honduras.

Anand Pradhan is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Delhi, India.

Sleiman El Bssawmai is an associate professor at The Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon.

Yuriy Zaliznyak is an associate professor at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine.

Carole Phiri-Chibbonta is a lecturer and media consultant at the University of Zambia in Lusaka, Zambia.

 

Kristy Hess and Lisa Waller

This article provides clarity about the different types of journalism that come under Australia’s vibrant community media umbrella and conceptualizes their relationships to one another against the backdrop of dominant media. We draw on critical-cultural theory, using the concept of media power to argue that journalism invents and reinforces the idea of  “community” among audiences, generating advantages and sometimes inequalities as well.  It is also used to differentiate certain community journalism practices from mainstream norms and conventions, although we highlight that “community” is a powerful idea that dominant media use to their advantage as well.

“Community journalism” means different things to different people in Australia. It is used to describe a wide range of media that provide information for niche audiences, from radio and television stations run by volunteers, to rotating Twitter accounts set up by activists and newspapers, and online news sites that are owned by global news companies or home office operators. The idea of “community” often conjures notions of collectivity, altruism, shared interests, sense of belonging and collegiality. There is a need, however, to examine the underbelly of this feel-good concept that is often overlooked in broader discussions about community media in Australia. This article contends that “community” is a constructed notion that creates advantages and inequalities and generates boundaries between insiders and outsiders. Furthermore, in this digital world forms of community media are inherently tied to dominant media in one way or another – whether they like it or not.

This article takes up the invitation from American journalism scholar Bill Reader (2012) to draw from the “critical cultural well” in research about community journalism. Reader argues that the cultural studies approach can generate innovative research in this field, even though it challenges many traditions of 20th century professionalism and social science (Reader, 2012). As he points out, the goal of cultural studies is not about “testing hypothesis and finding answers, but rather about discovering new and more interesting questions” (ibid, p.109).  Reader outlines some of the broad theoretical frameworks that can be used to understand community journalism from a cultural perspective, including Marxist theory, hegemony theory (Gramsci, 1971) James Carey’s ritual of communication (1989) and Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” (1983). This article highlights the benefits of working with an alternative perspective – that of media power (Couldry, 2003, 2012; Couldry & Curran, 2003; Howley, 2010, 2013) – which draws upon some of the well-known paradigms above. This theory helps us to investigate community journalism in two ways: how it is shaped and framed against dominant media; and secondly, the power that comes from a media organization’s ability to construct and reinforce the idea of community related to a geographic region, demographic band, or space of shared interest.

The article begins by providing some clarity about the different types of journalism that come under Australia’s vibrant community media umbrella. It will then provide an overview of the concept of media power, before turning to a discussion of the way issues of power can help to compare and contrast the different forms of community journalism and their relationship to society. We take our cue from scholars who have highlighted the benefits of studying not-for-profit forms of community journalism through a lens of media power, including Howley (2010, 2013) and Couldry (2003, 2012) and advance these discussions to acknowledge that  “community” is also a powerful idea adopted by dominant media – the very media that much community journalism serves to challenge.

COMMUNITY MEDIA – AN OVERVIEW

In international scholarship, the idea of community journalism is linked to the local newspaper, especially those serving small towns and cities (see Reader & Hatcher, 2012). But with the rise of new technologies, from radio to television and the internet, the term “community media” has transcended geographic spaces and is now also used interchangeably with alternative, independent, underground and radical media, particularly public broadcasting, blogging and internet sites (Forde, 2011; Ndlela, 2011; Howley, 2010, 2013; Couldry and Dreyer, 2007). There remains some confusion over whether community media is not-for-profit or commercial in nature (see Forde, 2011). Howley (2010), for example, defines community media as an alternative to profit-oriented media that caters for the wide range of tastes and interests of ethnic, racial and cultural minorities, who are often ignored, silenced or otherwise misrepresented by mainstream media:

…This rather generic definition … accommodates a diverse set of initiatives, community radio, participatory video, independent publishing, and online communication to name but a few. (Howley 2010, p. 2)

Forde suggests alternative and community media resonates with the unrepresented, working outside established societal power structures, dedicated to the role of journalism in democracy and occupying a place in the media-scape as “an endangered species” (Forde 2011, p. 53). We have argued elsewhere that community is a weak theoretical framework for understanding commercial newspapers in a digital world  (Hess, 2013a; Hess and Waller, 2014). But we also emphasize that community is a powerful idea, rather than a tangible reality, that should be engaged with and understood (Hess & Waller, 2012; Hess, 2014), a point we shall return to soon. Reader and Hatcher (2012) argue that news media today are hybrid models that are hard to categorize using old definitions. They identify a need to study the new ground that exists between the idea of community and journalism that we will extend by drawing upon the Australian experience.

COMMUNITY JOURNALISM IN AUSTRALIA

Australia’s commercial media rests in the hands of relatively few companies and individuals, resulting in one of the highest concentrations of media ownership in the developed world (Finklestein, 2012, p.59).  It has been argued that this has led to a narrow range of news and opinion from which people can understand their world and make informed decisions about politics and social issues (Finkelstein, 2012). Community journalism of all stripes is therefore viewed as crucial for enhancing and ensuring Australia’s media diversity (Hess et al., 2014). Community broadcasting in particular, as an alternative medium to public service and commercial media, is argued to foster citizen participation and help to preserve cultural diversity (Forde et al., 2009). It also promotes an overall “Australian-ness” through the creation of Australian content for a heterogonous audience and support for local artists  (Jolly, 2014). It is important to outline each of the styles of Australian community journalism before moving on to discuss how a media power perspective can cast some different understandings and questions about how they relate to one another, and mainstream media, in the digital age.

Community newspapers

In international circles, there is much literature that equates the local newspaper with community journalism (see especially Lauterer, 2006; Reader & Hatcher, 2012; van Vuuren, 2007; Bowd, 2007). In this way “community” is often considered synonymous with geographic territory or used in tandem with terms such as country newspapers (Bowd, 2007), rural/regional (Ewart, 2000) or the local press (Buchanan, 2009; Fenton et.al 2010; Franklin 2006). As Lauterer argues (2006), the very idea of community journalism was a choice phrase adopted by American researchers in the 1960s to replace the phrase “hometown newspaper” (see also Byerly, 1961).

In Australia, community newspapers are also understood to serve specific geographic areas. However, there is a need to carefully distinguish between “local” and “community” press in discussions about Australia’s media. It is a practical distinction that also offers an important insight into relationships of power that we will unpack later in this article. Australia’s two big newspaper groups – Murdoch’s News Corporation and Fairfax Media – own many of the nation’s community newspapers. Fairfax’s community media arm is concentrated on the suburban fringes of Australia’s southern cities (Melbourne and Sydney). News Corp Australia’s Community Newspaper Group covers more of the nation, but adopts a similar strategy (News Corp Australia, 2015). These types of community publications are largely understood as free newspapers distributed to households through the letterbox, often weekly, sometimes tri-weekly. They are often free publications that are distinguished from other titles in the company stable that audiences have traditionally paid to read in print, including long-serving local newspapers. In the state of Victoria, for example, Fairfax Media owns and operates the local daily newspaper, The Warrnambool Standard, that serves the vast south-west region. The company’s free community paper Warrnambool Extra, is distributed to households in the immediate geographic region of the city of Warrnambool. The Extra has a higher advertising-to-editorial ratio and provides more social than civic content (events and social photos rather than coverage of local government or the courts). Outside the world of the big mainstream players there are other interpretations of the community newspaper. Van Vuuren (2007) notes that there are commercial community newspapers in Australia that operate independently of Fairfax and News Limited. She defines the community newspaper in Australia as:

Those that are distributed monthly, fortnightly or weekly to residents of particular suburbs or localities, either delivered directly to households or available from local traders or on the pavement at shopping centers, and often free of charge. (van Vuuren, 2007, p.8)

Van Vuuren cites a 2005 News Corporation study of 6,500 people that found two-thirds of Australians considered their community newspapers to be the medium of most relevance to them (ibid, p.96). The Community Newspapers of Australia (2015) association, meanwhile, uses phrases such as “suburban” and “local newspaper” as synonymous with community media and under this definition they are distributed for free in print and online spaces. At the state level, the Community Newspaper Association of Victoria  (2015) defines a community newspaper as “a newspaper or newsletter that is owned by the community”. This could mean a newsletter produced by a community house, or a newspaper put together by a group of volunteers for a town or community group. This implies that such media are created as not-for-profit products that serve horizontal networks, separated from the powerful and the elite.

Community broadcasting

Australia was one of the first countries in the world to introduce not-for-profit community broadcasting (see Forde et al., 2009) and community radio is arguably most closely associated with the community journalism tag. It is often referred to as being a not-for-profit radio station, run primarily by volunteers, drawn from the community that the radio station is targeting as its audience.  Community stations broadcast in remote and rural places, as well as suburban and urban areas. Community broadcasting has been described as playing an important role in Australian culture by:

… empowering participants, providing voices for different cultures and minorities, delivering local news, information and views, providing alternative music formats, a forum for Australian musicians and writers and programs that create a sense of belonging for people and maintaining projects which nourish Australian content in the face of an increasing reliance on overseas content by other broadcasters. (Jolly, 2014, “concluding arguments”)

The Australian community broadcast sector has 360 community radio licensees, 66 per cent of which are located in rural/regional Australia (Community Broadcasting Foundation, 2015). Australian Community Broadcasting distinguishes itself from other media by actively promoting access and participation in the processes of media operations, administration and production. It is volunteer-driven, with more than 20,000 volunteer broadcasters and support staff helping to deliver media “for the people by the people” (Community Broadcasting Foundation, 2015, para 3) The McNair Ingenuity research study ,of community radio found that 64 per cent of non-metropolitan listeners in 2010 and 66 per cent in 2008 nominated local news and information as a reason for listening to community radio (McNair Ingenuity Research, 2008, as cited in Bowd, 2010). However, the 2012 Finkelstein inquiry into Australia’s news media expressed some concern that community radio services related mostly to localized communities, were largely run by volunteers, with little capacity for regular coverage of local news.

One of community broadcasting’s recognized strengths lies in its delivery of radio and television programming for specific cultural and ethnic groups throughout the land (see for eg. Misajon & Khoo, 2008).  It is a significant resource for people from non-English speaking backgrounds, as they have few media alternatives, and these broadcasts support language and cultural maintenance. Meadows et al. (2009) found that community radio plays a significant role in the settlement process for migrants and refugees.  A Turkish focus group that was part of their study explained how community radio helped to integrate people into Australian life:

It’s very important. Our children are growing up Australians anyway, maybe they’re having difficulty adapting culturally, but through the radio, they will be able to get some help or adapt anyway. And also we see our differences as richness. (Meadows et al., 2009)

Community broadcasting also helps people who have been in Australia for some time to keep in touch with their cultural heritage. Many community radio stations deliver programs of interest to a number of groups. For example, Jolly (2014) notes that in Australia’s national capital Canberra, community radio station 2XXX broadcasts programs made by and for the city’s Korean, Finnish, Chinese, Greek and Spanish communities.

There are debates as to whether community stations should stress localness and service the local “geographic” population, or emphasize participation and provide a platform for under-represented voices, views and cultural products (Gordon, 2009, p.62). It can be argued that while these tensions and debates exist, community broadcasting in Australia is engaged with the issues and strives to provide a wide range of services and cater to diverse audience needs (Jolly 2014).

Alternative media

Radical, or alternative journalism is found increasingly in online and social media spaces, but there is a long tradition of print publications, as well as community broadcasting, dedicated to political and social justice causes in Australia (Forde, 1999). Historically, alternative media journalists have been distinguished by belonging to a campaign or movement for which they write or broadcast (Forde, 2011). They have an overriding commitment to their public sphere and always, their public sphere is quite simply that which is not being served, or served properly, by the mainstream news media. Forde (2011) suggests such media is more closely aligned than any other form of journalism with the unrepresented, the “poor and downtrodden” (Downing, 2003 quoted in Forde, 2011).

Indigenous Australians are among the most disadvantaged on measures including health, education, home ownership and incarceration (Australian Productivity Commission, 2011), but they have succeeded in creating what is arguably one of the largest, strongest and most distinctive alternative media subcultures in Australia. It is mature, prolific, uncertain and evolving. Waller et al., (2015) describe it as “the consummate expression and achievement of the politics of voice, or speaking up, in the Australian media landscape”. Indigenous media is dynamic, at times working to redefine its use and meaning (Michaels 1986; Rennie & Featherstone, 2008). Diversity and differences of purpose, as well as uncertainty, are part of its essence, offering space for difference of opinion and delivery. The histories and aims of a wide range of Indigenous media outlets confirms the pivotal role they play in Indigenous activism and as mechanisms for debate and development of public opinion which has long been recognized (Hartley & McKee, 1996, 2000; Hartley, 2003; Forde et al., 2009).  Indigenous media operates across all platforms, with newspapers that advocate for Indigenous rights including Land Rights News, The Indigenous Times and Koori News. There is an extensive national network of Indigenous community radio, as well as three community television networks (see Waller et al., 2015 for a full discussion). Indigenous journalists campaign for social justice in online publications such as The Koori History Website and social media, with Twitter proving an especially popular and successful platform for radical Indigenous journalism.

UNDERSTANDING MEDIA POWER

We have sketched what we consider to be the spectrum of Australia’s community media sector, highlighting that while they all share the descriptor of “community” they can differ quite dramatically in their motivations and approaches to news. To unpack this further we return to cultural theories of media power that challenge the political economy view of ownership and control by major media players (McChesney, 2003). The cultural approach is also critical of the normative, Fourth Estate view of journalism’s power coming from its role as democracy’s watchdog (Zelizer, 2012). It emphasizes the media’s own power to construct reality, or frame the way we see the world (see Couldry, 2012). In the words of Maras (2013), media power means more than:

Just the power of the press and includes the capacity of media to “do” certain things, its power within (and over) society and power struggles between different parts of the industry and profession. Media power describes how the press and journalism occupies its field and has to do with the way public discourse is imagined and promoted and controlled, via terms such as “objectivity”. (Maras, 2013, p.12)

The concept of media power has not figured strongly in studies of community newspapers (see Hess & Waller, 2014), but it has proved a robust theoretical paradigm for understanding the social significance of not-for-profit journalism that provides media access and advocates for social equity (see especially Couldry & Dreher, 2007; Howley 2010). For example, Howley (2010) says:

For those with little or no access to mainstream media, community media provide resources and opportunities for marginalized groups to tell their own stories in their own voices. They are instrumental in protecting and defending cultural identity while simultaneously challenging inaccurate, prejudicial media representations. (Howley 2010, p.5)

In the discussion that follows here we will highlight how the ability of media organizations to construct and reinforce the idea of community among audiences can generate power and inequality on all levels. We will also demonstrate how media power helps to differentiate and contextualize Australia’s community media sector in terms of its relationship to dominant media and society.

Repositioning “community” through a media power lens

Couldry (2003) draws on Bourdieu to suggest media power can best be understood as the media’s symbolic power of constructing reality (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 166). In Introduction to Reflexive Sociology(Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992), Bourdieu used the term “meta-capital” to describe the concentration of different types of capital in the state, giving it power to decide what counts as capital in specific fields. Couldry argued that the media’s power could be theorized the same way:

Just as the state’s influence on cultural capital and prestige … is not confined to specific fields but radiates outward into social space generally, so the media’s meta-capital may affect social space through the general circulation of media representations. (Couldry, 2003, p. 688)

Much like Anderson’s (1983) idea of the imagined community, viewing community journalism through a lens of media power helps to untangle the assumption that community is in some way a tangible reality. As Webb et al. (2002, p. 88) observe, one of the enduring beliefs in most societies is that “community” in both local and national contexts has a real existence:  “An identity as tangible as the continents and as natural as the Amazon forest or the Rhine river”. They argue that community is not natural or inevitable. It is constructed by a series of discourses about society. Shaun Moores (2000) follows Anderson to argue that community might be best understood as a “fictional reality” – communities appear to have an objective existence but are actually products of the imagination (Moores, 2000, p.39). Elsewhere we, among others, have argued that media organizations, especially small newspapers, are considered to be in a powerful position to construct community ideas and values (see eg Hess & Waller, 2014; Hess, 2014; Reader & Hatcher, 2011; Howley, 2010; Mersey, 2010; Ewart 2000). For example, Mersey (2010) contends that within boundaries of community, feelings of emotional safety, a sense of acceptance and willingness to make a personal investment can develop (Mersey, 2010, p.63). We must provide scope therefore to examine how dominant media might maintain economic and symbolic power by constructing and reinforcing the community ideal.

Hess (2014) draws on cultural studies to rethink the theory of social capital in regards to commercial local newspapers, both those that are independently owned or belong to a major media company. These are the types of publications that are also considered to be synonymous with notions of ‘community’. She argues the concept of “mediated social capital” places commercial local newspapers in a position of advantage within the geo-social spaces they serve because they are seen as central to social order. They generate feelings of unity and drive a sense of collectivity among audiences, especially in times of crisis like natural disasters (Hess, 2014). This places such media outlets in a position of advantage – it may generate economic capital in terms of advertising, be used for reputation building, social networking or lobbying – what Hess conceptualizes as mediated bonding, bridging and linking social capital (see Hess, 2014).

The same idea may also apply to alternative community media. Bourdieu (1986) argues that in any social network there is a degree of symbolic power bestowed on leaders to speak on the group’s behalf. Take the alternative, Indigenous journalism example of @IndigenousX, which was founded by activist Luke Pearson. @IndigenousX is a rotating Twitter account that features a different Indigenous commentator on a new topic each week. Evidence of the symbolic capital generated by @IndigenousX can be found in the fact that The Guardian’s Australian online site now promotes and provides a platform for the featured @IndigenousX columnist every week. It is an example of user-driven innovation and of how Indigenous voices are emerging strongly in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Sweet et al. (2013) argue its effectiveness now ranges from it providing the means to “both scale and tear down barriers to participation” (2013, p. 108); to fostering cultural emotional and social wellbeing; as a journalistic innovation and a community development intervention.

The dark side of community

The media’s power to construct community can also be used to create difference and inequality. Recent Australian research shows how this can at times create “polarizing” views (Ewart, 2014, p.804). Hess (2013, 2014) highlights how the news media’s ability to generate a sense of community can restrict outsiders and has a dark side. She provides examples where minority groups are under-represented in Australia’s country newspapers and discusses how this can contribute to social exclusion. We must be careful to acknowledge that generating feelings of unity and sense of collectivity among audiences, especially in times of crisis such as terrorist attacks, can result in exclusion as well as inclusion. In a complex, globalized world, a retreat into “communities” can be a refusal to engage or connect with difference and complexity. Deuze (2007) argues contemporary society is anything but solid or socially cohesive. He says under conditions of worldwide migration (of capital and labor, global conflict and environmental apprehension) most people experience a growing precariousness in everyday life. “As a response, citizens increasingly retreat into hyperlocal enclaves (suburban ghettos or guarded-gate communities) or global personal spaces such as Facebook” (Deuze, 2007, p. 671). People involved in all forms of community journalism are constantly negotiating what it means to be part of the community – not only bringing community into existence, but also questioning and contesting how it happens and the shapes it takes (see Hess & Waller, 2014). We must also acknowledge that in the process there is a risk that certain voices will not be included, or heard (Dreher, 2010).

Rethinking relations with the mainstream

A clear characteristic of all forms of community journalism in Australia is that they provide a crucial service by promoting and/or giving value to news and information that is not covered by mainstream media. ElGhul-Bebawi (2010) argues there is a blurring between mainstream and alterative media, but that ultimately the distinguishing feature will be the way community media contest mainstream media power (see also Couldry & Curran, 2003; Couldry & Dreher, 2007). One way of understanding this relationship more generally is through an examination of how forms of community media fill gaps in mainstream news media presence and coverage of localities, events and people. However, taking a media power perspective means we must also explore how community media relates to dominant media channels in this changing digital world.

Communities that the big players don’t speak to or for

Australia is a diverse, multicultural nation where the English language dominates the media and mainstream coverage of news from other countries does not always satisfy the needs of people with close links and interests in those places. This gap is filled by Australia’s vibrant ethnic media scene, celebrated for its contribution to cultural diversity and cultural maintenance (Cover, 2012; 2013).  There is not space here to explore the sector in depth, but there is a well-established ethnic press that has extended online, as well as a strong accent on ethnic programming on community radio and television that delivers local, national and international news, information and entertainment. In the state of New South Wales alone, there are dozens of publications in some 30 different languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese. Radio 2000 in the capital, Sydney, is a full-time multi-lingual community-based radio station and there are at least 10 community radio stations that broadcast part-time in community languages (NSW Government, 2015). On the other side of the nation, Western Australia has 18 ethnic print media outlets and at least 11 community-based ethnic radio stations (Government of Western Australia, 2015).

Other groups, including senior citizens, gays and lesbians and people living with disabilities are often critical of mainstream media in Australia for the negative ways in which they are represented, or are made invisible by not being represented (see for example Disability and Media Matters, 2015).  In response to this and as a way to build community, they produce their own programs on community radio and television, and also in niche print and online publications that provide news and information that connects those involved with their communities (van Vuuren, 2007). An example is an online publication called The Senior (2015) that provides news, information and targeted advertising for older Australians.

Demanding the big players’ attention

A key aim of alternative media groups and journalists in Australia is to have an impact on politics and policies across a range of issues – from the environment, to social justice, trade agreements and international relations – by influencing public debate and agitating for change. The literature on mainstream journalists’ sourcing practices shows that they listen most closely to their elite sources and their reports reflect the agendas of these powerful actors (Soley, 1992; Koch-Baumgarten & Voltmer, 2010). The “gaps” alternative media try to fill include the mainstream’s lack of attention to certain issues and/or where news angles reflect powerful news sources’ views at the expense of ordinary or marginalized members of communities, who are sometimes portrayed negatively. Participants in what are termed “news interventions” (Howley, 2013) therefore target mainstream news in order to influence news agendas and representations, which are seen to impact on audiences and interactions between communities. A current Australian example is the Lock the Gate Alliance (2015), which opposes coal seam gas mining. Working with alternative journalists, including Margo Kingston and the New No Fibs citizen journalism project (Kingston, 2013) the alliance and has been highly effective in its use of a range of digital media to communicate with its supporters, the public and for engaging mainstream media interest in the campaign.

Extremely local news and gaps in the media market

It is important to recognize that community journalism in Australia is not entirely independent from the state. For example, community radio relies on government funding to survive (Hallett, 2009). In 2013-14, the Australian Government committed $17.7 million to the Community Broadcasting Foundation to support its activities. Many community newspapers also receive indirect public subsidies through government advertising (Hess et al., 2015). Such government subsidies can be understood as a form of recognition for the social importance of these news services. Free newspapers and community radio that serve small geographic areas are crucial because they provide news and information that is not often available from mainstream news media, including reports about local events and everyday happenings such as road works (Finkelstein, 2012). They exist not to directly challenge media power but to fill the gaps left by the mainstream.

Consider the role of The Meredith and District News in Australia – which is arguably an exemplar of the “community” modus operandi based on altruism, shared interests, collectivity and collegiality. The Meredith and District News (2015) depends entirely on advertising, donations and grants to meet the costs of maintaining the newsletter and its primary motive is to generate a sense of community among readers, not profits. The publication grew from a school newsletter and is now affiliated with the local community center. It unassumingly challenges media power by plugging the gaps ignored by mainstream publications, but also confronts traditional norms and conventions of professional journalism in the way it is produced and presented to audiences. For example, its front page is dominated by a list of contact numbers for civic, community and emergency services rather than news stories, and its content features calls for contributions to a kindergarten cookbook and the announcement of the new school principal.

As Reader and Hatcher (2012) point out, those who study community journalism at this level begin with an appreciation that journalism is not solely the purview of major national and international media outlets:

Community journalism is at the bottom of an iceberg; it forms the greatest bulk of journalism produced in the world, but it goes largely unnoticed by the masses compared to the ubiquitous big media names readily recognized by society at large (The New York Times, the BBC, National Geographic etc.). (Reader & Hatcher, 2012, xiv)

The authors touch on an important point that highlights how dominant media use and abuse the idea of community, depending on the context in which it is considered. Despite the altruistic Gemeinshaft ideals (see Tönnies, 1957) that community represents, from an economic perspective “community” often signifies editorial content that can be used by commercial players to define a niche market in which to sell advertising to highly targeted audiences. A News Corporation study of 6,500 people revealed that 20 per cent of all newspaper revenue in Australia was generated from the “community newspaper” sector (as cited in van Vuuren, 2007). As highlighted earlier, community publications in Australia have often been established by major media companies at low cost (with high advertising to editorial ratios and more social and contributor content). As a result, they have often been distanced from the Fourth Estate ideals and notions of objectivity upheld by larger, long-serving newspapers which boast established reputations. In an interview for a study on how local newspapers connect people with one another, an editor of a daily local newspaper who also oversees a “free” community weekly paper said:

Our free paper is often described as a community newspaper because it doesn’t upset anyone…it covers the fluffy feel-good stuff. (Personal communication with author, March 22, 2012)

This comment resonates with Forde’s idea that community media are the ‘poor and downtrodden’ (2011) – at least within professional journalism circles and illuminates the powerful cultural norms and values at play that determine what is ‘good’ journalism (see Hess & Waller, 2015). Van Vuuren (2007) highlights that little research is undertaken on community publications in Australia as most academics think they “aren’t worth the paper they are written on” (van Vuuren, 2007, p. 96), This is despite research that shows many households value these publications highly and consider them to provide the news and information most relevant to them (ibid).

CONCLUSIONS

We have established that a defining aspect of community media is the way they challenge media power. But in this digital world, it is important to acknowledge that while community media is often celebrated as being independent (Forde, 2011) and serving horizontal ties, such media are connected in one way or another to dominant forms of power – both media and political ­– whether they like it or not.  Future research on community media must provide scope to examine this more carefully in the digital environment. As Curran (2003) contends, “new technology has not fundamentally changed the underlying economic factors that enable large media organizations to maintain their market dominance” (Curran, 2003, p. 227). Community journalism, from alternative blogs to community radio, increasingly relies on hugely profitable global media companies to communicate. While forms of community journalism are seen to push back against dominant media, there is a growing dependence on powerful commercial information channels such as Google and Facebook to reach and engage with audiences, especially in digital space. These are not neutral players in the media world (see eg: Picard, 2014). Viewing this through a media power lens provides a way of seeing that as dominant media changes and evolves, so too does the relationship with community media forms. Media power might become less visible and more fluid as old structures collapse, giving rise to the Digital Dynasty’s new media empires and moguls. Picard (2014) advises that studies about the use of social media should therefore be viewed through a critical lens. He goes further, to argue that all forms of information technology should be studied in terms of power relationships, rather than the naïve perception that the Internet is about widespread democratization (Picard, 2014). Community newspapers and websites that belong to big media corporations are most obviously connected to powerful information nodes and flows through their own networks, as well as via platforms such as Twitter. This means stories deemed important can be picked up more quickly and given traction in other media owned by the same parent company, and further afield.

As Reader (2012) suggests, drawing from the critical-cultural well offers a way of generating innovative research in the field of community journalism. It has helped us to highlight different motivations and approaches to news across Australia’s community media spectrum. It has also provided the framework for understanding media power operates through all forms of community journalism in two ways. First, through their ability to construct “community” in distinctive ways for both public and private good; and secondly, through their relationships with the big, mainstream commercial media channels of the digital age. Community journalism has being widely theorized against the backdrop of dominant mainstream media where it is viewed as filling a perceived news gap, or representing the interests of those who are not given a voice in big media. However, it is important to acknowledge the complexity that rests in its increasing reliance on big commercial media such as Google, Twitter and Facebook to connect with and across audiences in shifting media terrains.  This article has also argued that we must provide scope to consider the benefits and inequalities that the power to construct community presents for dominant news media players in this increasingly globalized world.

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About the Authors

Kristy Hess is a senior lecturer in journalism in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia.

Lisa Waller is a senior lecturer in journalism in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia.

 

Sam C. Mwangi, J. Steven Smethers and Bonnie Bressers

This exploratory study seeks to ascertain whether community engagement behaviors among residents of Kiowa County, Kansas, and their attitudes about the new community information portal affect their intentions to contribute content. Results indicate that while most residents are engaged and have a favorable view of this citizen journalism project, technology-based communication hubs pose unique challenges beyond civic engagement that creators of information hubs should consider.

Greensburg, Kansas, was thrust into the national limelight when an EF5 tornado hit the city on May 4, 2007, killing 12 people, injuring 90 more and destroying 95 percent of the city (Ablah et al., 2007). In the aftermath of the storm, it soon became clear that this small south Central Kansas farming community of approximately 900 people and residents of surrounding areas had vital information needs that could not be met through the existing communication infrastructure (Smethers et al., 2010). The local newspaper, the Kiowa County Signal, is a weekly publication and therefore was unable to provide the constant information updates that local residents needed. The paper’s website was in no position to fill the void because electricity and the cable system were equally affected. Area radio and television stations located in Wichita, Dodge City and Pratt, Kansas, were too remotely located to provide constant emergency communications essential to the rescue and cleanup efforts. Residents established improvisational communications networks to fill the void including use of cell phones, bulletin boards, interpersonal communication and a daily duplicated paper bulletin called the Yellow Sheet.

As rebuilding efforts got underway and area media got back on track, the Signal was a model community newspaper, providing residents with extensive information associated with rebuilding efforts. But civic leaders did not forget the frustrations of their inability to communicate with residents in the immediate aftermath of the tornado. With technical advice from Kansas State University, city and county leaders began to explore ways to fill such a void and to get information to citizens in-between the weekly editions of the newspaper (Smethers et al., 2010). An idea gradually emerged that would bring together several information sources and use modern technology to communicate with the public. The centerpiece of this communication hub is the Kiowa County Commons, which was dedicated in November 2011 and houses the Kansas State University Research and Extension office, the county museum, county library, and a state-of-the-art media center that includes a radio and audio production studio, a television studio, and a Web portal to disseminate multimedia content via a WiMAX system installed on the highest point in the community: the local grain elevator (Wilson, 2008).

Though the Media Center was not at full capacity at the beginning of this research project, the facility nonetheless had the capability to offer a myriad of information services, including streaming local government meetings and community news. More importantly, the media center plan embraces “open sourcing” as an ideal that Reader (2012) has pointed out as synonymous with good community journalism practice. Residents in Greensburg were expected to contribute a good portion of the content to the information hub as a way of building the civic vibrancy of the rebuilt city (Watson, 2011). From the beginning, it was understood that the county-owned Media Center would be on its own in terms of collecting and providing local information, as Gatehouse Media, the publisher of the Kiowa County Signal, foresaw active partnership as a potential conflict of interest (Smethers et al., 2010).  In 2001, the Center’s board of directors hired producer/manager Grant Neuhold, who attempted to transform the founders’ lofty expectations for the facility into reality. Neuhold began soliciting volunteers, who were initially a handful of local adult volunteers, and a more energetic––and electronic media savvy––group of high school students.  He launched a training program that covered basic audio-video production techniques, theorizing that building community participation and promoting buy-in of the open source aspects of the project would likely begin with a nucleus of trained citizens. Neuhold also began providing some local offerings produced by his cadre of citizen journalists, including a limited schedule of Kiowa County High School athletic events (Grant Neuhold, personal communication,  January 30, 2013).

Neuhold’s ambitious efforts to demonstrate what the Media Center could provide for the community were generally met with enthusiasm, but serious questions remained that affect the operationalization and sustainability of the center’s mission: How do local residents view the project, and what are their attitudes about contributing content to the local information network?  Although the media center and its goals seemingly serve as a model of the critical connection between communication and civic engagement, there is still the unanswered question of whether residents will use the center’s services or contribute content.

The purpose of this study is to examine civic engagement behaviors among residents of Kiowa County, their attitudes towards the new community information portal and their likelihood to contribute content. After a discussion of the literature, the study uses survey methodology to gather information to explore the research questions.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Communication and Civic Engagement

Civic engagement has been defined as a heightened sense of responsibility through which individuals, acting as citizens of their own communities, their nations and the world, are empowered as agents of positive social change for a more democratic world (Coalition for Civic Engagement and Leadership, 2004).

French scholar Pierre Bourdieu is credited with laying the theoretical foundations for the civic engagement movement through his writings on social capital which described circumstances under which individuals could use their membership in groups and networks to secure benefits. Bourdieu (1986) argued:

Social capital is an attribute of an individual in a social context. One can acquire social capital through purposeful actions and can transform social capital into conventional economic gains. The ability to do so, however, depends on the nature of the social obligations, connections, and networks available to you.

Sociologist James Coleman, who wrote widely on public issues involving schools and families, advanced Bourdieu’s ideas by helping bridge the gap between the individualistic market-oriented thinking of economists and the sociologists concerns with social networks, values and norms (Coleman, 1988). He used the term “social capital” to show ways in which social ties and shared values and norms can help people become better educated, amass economic wealth, make careers and raise well-socialized children. He argued that economists should pay attention to social ties and culture (Coleman, 1990).

Political scientist Robert Putnam borrowed some of Coleman’s ideas on social capital in his seminal book, Making Democracy Work, to explain effective democratic governance in Italy. Putnam found that regional governments in Italy, which looked very similar on paper, worked very differently depending on which region had a rich array of voluntary social groups (Putnam, 1993). In a follow-up book, Bowling Alone, Putnam used social statistics to argue that the United States has experienced a decline in social capital in the late twentieth century as Americans became less likely to join groups such as churches, bowling alleys or civic organizations. Putnam argued that the problems facing U.S. democracy and governance can actually be traced to the decline in social connections (Putnam, 1995).

Putnam’s research has inspired other scholarly works and discussions on social and political change, including studies on social capital that pay tribute to such networks as significant in development of a democratic culture and participation of citizens. The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) (2003) has compiled a comprehensive list of indicators of civic engagement, which include: voting in national elections, joining a political party, being a candidate for local office, and civic activism, such as writing letters to a newspaper about social or political concerns, collecting signatures for a petition, collecting money for a social cause and boycotting products or services because of social concerns. For citizens to be engaged in civic life, they must be equipped with certain skills such as knowledge and understanding of community issues, values that support a civic culture, a willingness to act to advance the public good, and the skills and ability to imagine a better society and direct social change (Pratte, 1988; Carpini, 2000). Political communication research has demonstrated that news media consumption and interpersonal political discussion play important roles in civic participation (McLeod et al., 1996; Shah et al., 2001). News media provide a resource for political discussion and create opportunities for exposure to conflicting viewpoints, encouraging political talk that might not otherwise occur (Mutz & Martin, 2001: Mutz, 2002). In turn, political discussion raises awareness about collective problems, highlights opportunities for involvement, and thereby promotes civic participation (McLeod et al., 1999; Kwak et al., 2005).

Citizen journalism adds another layer to civic engagement by creating opportunities for citizens to be involved in the production and distribution of media content. Citizen journalism has been defined as ‘the act of a citizen, or a group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information in order to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires (Bowman and Willis, 2003, p. 9). This study also acknowledges and adopts as its definition and understanding of citizen journalism the participatory (Deuze et al., 2007) and user-centered (Hermida and Thurman, 2008) nature of this trend. As Rosen (2008) noted: “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.”

Participatory media technologies that allow the creation and distribution of user-generated content have subverted the traditional power dynamics that separated sender and receiver, thus allowing for multiple discourse through blogs, podcasts, virtual reality (e.g. Second Life), collaborative technology (e.g. Wikipedia), social networking sites and video sharing sites (Freidman, 2005; Tancer, 2007; Birdsall, 2007). These technological developments as well as a cultural trend that increasingly encourages citizens to produce media content has led to a rising embrace and popularity of citizen journalism (Tapscott and Williams, 2006).

Citizen journalism impacts the democratic process by allowing citizens to be part of a conversation in the public sphere as envisaged in the ideals of Jurgen Habermas (1989) where public deliberation becomes an integral part of democracy and civic engagement. Scholars have argued that communication is essential in the development and sustenance of civic engagement (Dewey, 1927; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). They argue that a community with a communication infrastructure that citizens can use as a storytelling network to share their lived experiences is a stronger community.

Kim and Ball-Rokeach have developed a theoretical framework that differentiates communities in terms of whether they have communication resources that can be activated for common purpose. In developing the communication infrastructure theory, they posit that there are three forms of story telling within communities: macro, meso. and micro storytelling agents. Macro-storytellers refers to the mainstream media which tend to focus on larger populations such as city, state, or a country. Meso-storytelling agents include neighborhood associations and tend to focus on one particular section of a place. Micro-storytelling agents are the individuals who live in a neighborhood. The theory confers significant importance to the  meso and micro story tellers. According to Kim and Ball-Rokeach, “when residents talk about their community in neighborhood council meetings, at a neighborhood block party, at the dinner table, or over the fence with neighbors, they become local storytelling agents — participants in an active imaging of their community,” (2006a, p. 179). They further argue that while each agent is important, the value of agents is multiplied when they come together to form a storytelling network. “In an ideal community, meso-and microstorytellers form an integrated network where each story teller stimulates the others to talk about the local community (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, p. 181). The Kiowa County Media Center has been an effort to provide such an integrated communication network for the community.

Local Media Use and Civic Engagement

Numerous studies have linked local media use with civic engagement and community integration, what Stamm (1985) and other researchers, such as Rothenbuher, Mullen, DeLaurell, and Ryu (1996), have called “community ties.” In this sense, media content is seen as a vital component of one’s sense of belonging to a particular locale (Janowitz, 1952; Stamm, 1985; Rothenbuhler et al., 1996).  Community attachment and local media use do not have a causal impact on one another (Hoffman & Eveland, 2010), but the two concepts do have a strong relationship in the formation of individual civic engagement and the propensity of local individuals to be involved in community issues and events (Stamm, 1985; Rothenbuhler et al., 1996). Moreover, media play a key role in the local interpersonal communications infrastructure, the “neighborhood storytelling network,” through which integrated citizens share important information gleaned from media in face-to-face or computer-mediated conversations (cf., Hayden & Ball-Rokeach, 2007; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Mehart, 2008).

Interestingly, while studies linking media content and consumption with community cognition and affection are numerous, few studies have attempted to determine if factors relating to community engagement are predictors of an individual’s propensity to actually create news content, a key element in citizen journalism projects. Studies do link such activities as writing letters to the editor with community engagement traits (CIRCLE, 2003), but there is little literature to establish how or if one’s attachment to a community translates into the willingness to contribute news and/or visual content to a newspaper or any kind of communications hub. Littau, Thorson and Bentley (2007) attempted to determine if community engagement was a predictor of reader propensity to actually contribute content to a citizen journalism newspaper project. The study was inconclusive on these variables, although the researchers did conclude that an open-source newspaper is a viable medium in the communications infrastructure of community-involved people (p. 21).

Citizen journalism projects have occupied the imagination of both the journalism and academic professions since the development of the concept nearly a decade ago. But studies about citizen journalism sites have primarily focused on the content and goals of such ventures (cf., Lacy, Duffy, Thorson & Fleming, 2010). While content is undoubtedly important, so are the perceptions and attitudes of the audience toward such projects. Citizen journalism is based on what Watson (2011) calls “the active audience” that is engaged, technically savvy and interactive in both consuming and providing content. To ensure the viability of citizen journalism as a community medium, then, we need audience studies that gauge the consumer attitudes and their perceived willingness to participate, especially in small towns and communities such as Greensburg and surrounding Kiowa County, where the media project is based on the assumption of community contributions.

The Kiowa County experiment in providing an electronic citizen journalism hub thus provides a unique lens through which scholars may view an actual audience perspective of an open source project. Such a study was first undertaken by Smethers, Freeland and Rake (2010), who conducted focus groups in Greensburg to ascertain the feelings of county residents toward the perceived benefits of the project. That study sought to determine the propensity of residents to accept an open-source news outlet as a bona fide source of local news, and to determine the propensity of users to regularly read and contribute information in audio and video formats. Panelists quickly realized the potential of the information portal as a storytelling medium and a community information hub. However, they also forecast that sustaining the project was only possible if the Media Center’s staff could conduct regular reporting and production training sessions to teach the skills involved, and panelists’ propensity to be active contributors was still mixed, based on how they saw their technical capabilities and how they viewed the journalistic value of possible contributions. The study did not probe the actual community engagement tendencies of the panelists.

This exploratory study seeks to ascertain attitudes of residents about the community information portal in the Kiowa County Media Center in Greensburg. Specifically, the research attempts to ascertain whether behaviors of community engagement may contribute to positive attitudes about the Center and people’s intentions to become regular contributors to the content of the computer-mediated information hub.

The research questions guiding this study are:

RQ1: What is the level of community engagement among residents of Kiowa County, Kansas?

RQ2: What are the attitudes of county residents towards the Kiowa County Media Center and citizens’ perceptions of the Center’s perceived benefits to the community?

RQ3: Beyond the known criteria of individual community engagement, what other factors are unique to the adoption of a computer-mediated communication hub?

METHOD

In line with Tse’s summary (1998) that outlines the multiple advantages of electronic surveys including cost, ease of process and speed, a 32-item online questionnaire containing semantic differential, dichotomous-choice and open-ended items was designed.  Following previous studies finding that civically engaged people are active local news consumers (Stamm, 1985; Rothenbuhleret al., 1996), researchers for this study sought to survey individuals who were likely to fit such a description, and in that regard, the subscription list for a local electronic newsletter, the Yellow Sheet, proved to be an effective purposive sample.  The Yellow Sheet was originally designed to provide daily emergency communications in the aftermath of the 2007 tornado. It was a necessity at the time, considering that the Kiowa County Signal’s seven-day news cycle was inadequate to meet the community’s “24/7” news needs.  The e-publication’s constant news updates and publication flexibility proved to be so popular that it remains today as an alternative source of local news. While the sample was not random and not without limitations, Yellow Sheet subscribers nonetheless represented local business owners and managers in this county of only 2,549 total residents.  Despite the age homogeneity––they were all over 30 years old ­­–– respondents were nonetheless judged to be knowledgeable about the Media Center and display characteristics of civic engagement.

Questions that sought to examine respondents’ levels of community engagement were consistent with Littau, Thorson and Bentley (2007). Other questions involved awareness of the Kiowa County Media Center, attitudes toward it, perceived difficulties in accessing or providing content to the Media Center, possible solutions to those obstacles, and respondents’ preferred news and information subject categories. Demographic questions were also asked. The questionnaire was initially pretested with six individuals who were not part of the targeted sample but were nonetheless familiar with the Media Center project and its mission.

An introductory letter about the project was emailed one week prior to the distribution of the questionnaire. Mindful of Dillman’s dictum (1978) that follow-up reminders should be sent one, three and seven weeks after an initial mailing, but also recognizing Andreson and Gansneder’s (1995) argument that the faster delivery speed of email requires a different and faster schedule of reminder notices, researchers sent weekly follow-up reminders during the three weeks of the questionnaire’s availability.

A total of 36 surveys were completed and returned for a response rate of nearly 21 percent (20.8 percent).  Below, responses are reported through percentages on items in the semantic differential and dichotomous-choice responses, in addition to comments obtained through more qualitative open-ended questions. All spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors appear in this study as they appeared in the survey responses.

RESULTS

RQ1: What is the level of community engagement among residents of Kiowa County, Kansas?

Results suggest a high level of community engagement among survey respondents, as measured by behaviors such as participation in activities or causes, politics and elections, and current affairs. All but one respondent reported Kiowa County residency, and literally every respondent reported volunteering in the community to some degree, with nearly 28 percent (27.8 percent) volunteering “Very Often,” 33.3 percent volunteering “Often” and 38.9 percent volunteering “Occasionally.”

Similarly, only one respondent reported never working with someone to solve a community problem. Most, 38.9 percent, worked “Occasionally” with others to solve a community problem, while 33.3 percent “Often” did, and one-quarter “Very Often” did.

Almost half (47.2 percent) “Occasionally” participated in fundraising for a community charity or cause, with 30.6 percent and 13.9 percent, respectively, participating in fundraising “Often” or “Very Often.”

Reflective of the older demographic of respondents — none were less than 30 years old and 59.4 percent were 50 or over — 80 percent of the respondents (n=35) reported voting in elections “Very Often” with 14.3 percent voting “Often” and 2.9 percent “Never” voting or voting “Occasionally.” That voting behavior did not necessarily extend to political volunteerism. The majority (58.3 percent) “Never” volunteered to work for a candidate for political office, although one-third (33.3 percent) “Occasionally” did. A total of 5.6 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively, “Often” or “Very Often” volunteered to work for a candidate or political organization. Respondents were likely to voice their opinions to people in office, however. The overwhelming majority (77.8 percent) “Occasionally” contacted a public official about an issue, and 5.6 percent “Often” did. A total of 8.3 percent “Very Often” did, which was the same percentage as respondents who “Never” contacted a public official.

In response to other indicators of community engagement, 81.3 percent of respondents (n=24) reported owning their home and 71.9 percent belong to a church or other religious group. Asked about membership in community organizations, all who responded (n=16) listed traditional groups such as the Lions Club and the Chamber of Commerce.

Fewer than one-third of the respondents (31.3 percent, n=32) reported subscribing to the local weekly newspaper. Respondents nevertheless reported high levels of interest in community affairs. A total of 87.1 reported following city and county news via traditional media, the Internet or other sources “Very Often” or “Often,” and 80.6 percent said they talk about current affairs with others “Very Often” or “Often.”

While they may not be subscribing to the newspaper, nearly 72 percent (71.9 percent, n=32) of respondents reported contributing a news item to it, which could bode well for the Media Center’s goal of providing citizen-generated content. General news was the most frequently contributed followed by birth announcements, social news, church news, weddings/engagements, club news and Chamber of Commerce/economic development news. One respondent reported contributing a weekly news column for several years.

Utilizing measures of involvement well established in community engagement scholarship, respondents displayed a high-level of participation in community activities and issues, perhaps as a result of being an older demographic group with long-standing roots. Of those who reported their number of years of Kiowa County residency (n=30) — as opposed to “all my life”, etc. — the median was 30 years.

RQ2: What are the attitudes of county residents towards the Kiowa County Media Center and citizens’ perceptions of the Center’s perceived benefits to the community?

Respondents (n=32) responded affirmatively to a qualifying question: “Have you heard of the Media Center…?” Most frequently, they reported learning about it from the local newspaper, friends/word of mouth and “through all means of publicity.” Typical of small communities, responses also included, “They are located next to my office,” “watched it being built,” “If you live in Kiowa County, who hasn’t heard of the Media Center,” and, simply, “I live here.”

Nearly two-thirds (65.6 percent) of the respondents said they saw the Media Center benefiting Kiowa County. Responses about both the positive and negative aspects of the project were sought. Some respondents expressed unequivocal enthusiasm and several cited benefits to young people. One respondent said, “They work closely with the school. Kids love it. Administration of the school think Media Center can walk on water. Will broadcast games and public service meetings etc. It’s fantastic,” with another saying it’s “Another avenue for learning for the young people,” and yet another saying “students of Kiowa County will benefit from the exposure to the technology offered.” Finally, respondents said it will allow “new and more opportunities for young people to discover new passions in their lives. and give them something new to work towards or to be a door to do something else in a professional career” and it will “give the younger people something to be involved in.” Other respondents said the Media Center can promote the environmental goals of the county, it will help tell the Kiowa County story, it will promote public outreach and it can, in the future, offer worthwhile programming. “It will bring our population into the electronic age,” said another respondent.

Most of the negative responses centered on costs to the county versus perceived benefits; as one respondent said, “The county should not be in the media business. What is being funded is not worth what is being produced.” Another respondent said, “Not sure how that is a necessity to have to spend money on,” and yet another said, “I believe the cost to the county will be greater than any benefit.” One respondent pointed out the unequal access: “I don’t think it’s necessary. The basketball games did not broadcast right and if you don’t have a computer you can get no benefits.” One respondent, prefacing the comments by saying, “Really I wanted to say maybe” there are benefits, but “It is costing the county way to much for what little benefit I see. Do we need that whole center to videotape Santa with Kids? It isn’t doing anything like they initially put in their business plan.” Other respondents said they are not sure — or not sure at this early stage — what the positive or negative benefits are or will be. A couple of respondents saw a political component to the Media Center, including one who said the sentiment is shared by “a lot of people here in town.” “It seemed like an unnecessary expenditure and costly luxury wanted by only a few citizens with political pull,” said another.

Of the 27 respondents who listed categories of information they like to see on the Media Center’s Web portal (local government news, high school events, senior citizen news, community events, obituaries, etc.), most listed “all of the above” or “all of the above and more.” Some respondents specifically identified school news, community events, local government news, and news of interest to senior citizens such as “interviews with older generations about family and local history made before this generation passes.” Identified, but slightly less often, were obituaries, church news, business news, organizational news and current events. One respondent wanted “any community information that is not available on other local websites” and another said, with emphasis: “Live and/or taped coverage of City Council and County Commissioner meetings. Working with the Kiowa County Signal newspaper — not in competition against it — to further information dissemination in the community….” Some respondents reported never using the Media Center website and others said there is no content they would like to see on it.

Although a majority of respondents (53.1 percent) said they would “Occasionally” contribute information to the Media Center (news stories, social news, pictures or videos, etc.), over one-third (37.5 percent) said they would “Never” contribute content. Nearly 10 percent (9.4 percent) said they would contribute content “Often” but no one predicted contributing content “Very Often.”

Respondents universally were aware of the Media Center, and a majority saw benefits to it, particularly among the younger demographic. But concern about costs versus benefits and lack of full community buy-in was observable. While respondents seemed appreciative of the local-news and information potential of the Media Center’s content and would occasionally contribute content, a sizeable percentage of respondents did not plan to participate.

RQ3: Beyond the known criteria of individual community engagement, what other factors are unique to the adoption of a computer-mediated communication hub?

Researchers sought to examine what factors and/or obstacles may need special consideration due to the nontraditional nature of a multi-platform, open-source, nonprofit computer-mediated communication center. In response to the question, “What do you see as the obstacles to your getting involved (lack of equipment, technical skills, time, interest, etc.?),” lack of technical skills was the most frequently cited obstacle that respondents (n=26) perceived would prevent them from creating content for the Media Center Web portal, followed closely by lack of time. The next most frequently cited obstacle was a collapsed category of lack of interest and lack of relevance, presumably meaning the Media Center’s perceived lack of relevance. Lack of equipment also was cited.

In response to a question seeking perceived solutions to factors and/or obstacles preventing participation in the Media Center (n=18), the most frequently suggested solution to perceived obstacles was a collapsed category of adult classes, workshops and volunteers to help would-be contributors’ content creation, perhaps an unsurprising finding given the number of respondents who saw lack of technical skills as problematic. On a related note, one respondent noted that (s)he needed to be “about 50 years younger!” The second most frequently cited solution related to community awareness of the project. “They need a PR plan to sell the benefit to the public,” said one respondent. “That thing is a divisive issue here.” Another respondent suggested more publicity in the Kiowa County Signal, which is the local weekly newspaper; in the County Research and Extension Agent’s weekly electronic newsletter; and on the community’s sign. Yet another suggested “Better PR advertising the Media Center’s offerings. Working within the community to offer program & services that are actually needed. Working with the Kiowa County Signal on a shared information platform.” One respondent, acknowledging that corporations have donated much to the Media Center, said corporate donations of equipment should be explored to an even greater extent because “the locals are getting pretty tapped out after the tornado.” Solutions to the obstacles of time included “retirement” and the unlikely “more hours in a day.” The respondent who cited the solution, “And more people to watch my son,” also may have been responding to a perceived lack of time.

Throughout the results, there appears to be a small, but noticeable, minority who see no value to the Media Center and have no plans to participate at least partly because of a perceived political component to the Media Center’s inception and at least partly because of the public-dollar financing component. Fifty percent of the respondents (n=32) said they do not support using public funds to finance the Media Center. Those who did ranged from somewhat supportive (28.1 percent), to supportive (15.6 percent) to very supportive (6.3 percent).

Other

Because of concerns reported in earlier focus group research (Smethers, et al., 2010), one question asked about perceptions of duplication between the Media Center and the local weekly newspaper. Most (61.3 percent, n=31) perceived “Some Duplication and 9.7 percent perceived “A Lot of Duplication.” Still, a substantial number (29 percent) perceived “No Duplication.”

In addition to demographic results reported earlier, respondents’ age categories (n=32) were: 18-29, 0 percent; 30-49 years, 40.6 percent; 50-64 years, 37.5 percent; 65-74 years, 15.6 percent; and 75 and older, 6.3 percent.

More than half (54.8 percent, n=31) of respondents were male; 45.2 were female.

Nearly half (48.4 percent, n=31) of respondents graduated from college or technical school, nearly two-fifths (38.7 percent) had postgraduate education and 12.9 percent graduated from high school.

DISCUSSION

This exploratory study examines community engagement and the acceptance of a computer-mediated communication hub in the rural Kiowa County, Kansas, community of Greensburg.  Results suggest a high level of community engagement among survey respondents, as measured by behaviors often associated with community engagement and affection (Littau, Thorson and Bentley, 2007), including community volunteerism, a propensity to vote in elections, experience working with others to solve community problems, fundraising, interest in community affairs, home ownership, and membership in churches, civic and social organizations. Community-engagement results may be influenced by the fact that respondents represented an older demographic of longtime Kiowa County residents. It can be further surmised that residents who opted to return and rebuild their homes and businesses after the 2007 tornado devastated Greensburg were, by definition, people who had made an affirmative, proactive decision to engage in their community.

The previously mentioned criteria for the success of citizen journalism projects cited by Watson (2011) –– engagement, technical skills and user dependency on interactivity in consuming and providing content –– is relevant when examining the results of this study, where a mostly community-engaged sample population expressed some skepticism toward the news portal, which, by the admission of many subjects, relates to their perceived skills.  This is the second time that research in Greensburg and its surrounding county has reflected some reservations about individual citizen use and propensity to participate (cf., Smethers, Freeland & Rake, 2010).  By the admission of many respondents in this study, there is a question relating to the technical competence required to participate in Media Center functions. The overall older age of the respondents in this study, a group that has been accustomed to traditional media consumption and less reliant on computer-related platforms, may not see themselves as ready for the interactive nature of a citizen journalism venture. Indeed, that sentiment could explain the tendency of respondents to single out young people as prime beneficiaries of the Media Center project.

Obviously, this points to education in video and audio storytelling as a major factor of sustainability, but it also suggests a possible “technophobia” (Brosnan, 1998) toward the skills needed for participation. The need to overcome that barrier is among the most important findings of the study because sustainability of the Media Center is dependent on broad-based participation among county residents, including the older demographic. To date, the vast majority of participation and content creation involves high-school students who may relocate to other areas after completing their education. That said, it must be acknowledged that the Media Center has identified education and training of community participants as a need, a need that could not be fully realized in the short time since the Media Center’s inception.

A related concern is the identifiable lack of buy-in from a small segment of the community. The fact that more than one-third of respondents reported that they would never contribute content to the Center should not be overlooked by this or any entity seeking to establish a similar model for communitywide storytelling. It can be acknowledged that the social dynamics of small-town America may well include a small, but often vocal, contingent whose lackluster response to innovation can be frustrating to community leaders. However, in this study, a measureable number of people, who had exhibited high levels of community engagement, also called for more and better marketing, public relations and advertising. As every respondent indicated awareness of the Media Center, a promotional/public relations campaign would be advantageous if it focuses less on the Center’s existence and more on the value of programming and benefits of participation to individuals and community. Further, soliciting more community involvement and feedback prior to content creation could help inform what types of news and information would be most desirable.

While this study is largely exploratory, it is significant in two ways. First, it fills an existing void in communication and civic engagement scholarship. Literature on civic engagement suggests that media consumption, as well as writing letters to the editor on community issues, are indicators of civic engagement (CIRCLE, 2003). Similarly, Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006) view the existence of a communication infrastructure and micro- and meso-storytellers as vital to the civic health of communities. But as the findings from this study seem to point out, computer-mediated communication infrastructures pose unique challenges such as fear of technology, lack of skills, and demographic patterns that must be considered. Even in communities with higher levels of civic engagement, citizens’ propensity to contribute to a local community journalism project might hinge on factors and indicators that are not currently addressed by the literature. There is clearly a gap that ought to be acknowledged in the literature as a possible hindrance to the success of technology-based community communication hubs.

Second, this study reveals a void in existing literature: studies examining the need for community involvement in designing information hubs. By its very nature, citizen journalism breaks down the gatekeeping role of traditional media organizations in determining what is newsworthy and vests such power in community storytellers. It is equally important to remove or address the gatekeeping role of civic leaders while designing such communication hubs. Some of the resistance detected in the survey results stem from a feeling of community exclusion in the initial decision making process, underscoring the need to rethink how noble community journalism innovations are introduced in communities.

Last is the thorny issue of financing the Media Center and similar proposals. Half of the respondents did not want public funding for the center, which could be state and federal grants and other monies and, perhaps more to the point, local tax dollars. Clearly, the Kiowa County Media Center must establish independent revenue streams, a challenge exacerbated by its nonprofit status. Current plans include identifying and cultivating revenue sources in larger regional cities, which could at least temporarily shift attention from the citizen journalism, community-storytelling goal of the Media Center. That said, partnerships with commercial enterprises beyond the community might be a necessary forerunner to achieving a sustainable citizen journalism hub.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Although the sample for this study can be regarded as a limitation, the purposive nature of the population surveyed is nonetheless important, since it was necessary to yield subjects who were most likely to contribute information germane to this study. In this case,  the non-random sample yielded valuable feedback from local business leaders and managers who were familiar with the Media Center and the community, and they provided unique and meaningful input on the central research issue: if a community builds a state-of-the-art multimedia operation that relies on citizen-produced news, will local residents support it? Because of their standing in the community, the 36 people who completed the survey — 20.8 percent of the total solicited — were believed to possess characteristics of civic engagement who would also be active local news consumers (Stamm, 1895; Rothenbuhler, et al., 1996), an assumption that data supported. Further, the age homogeneity — no respondent was under 30 years old — was not unanticipated because the respondents were established in the business community. Thus, they were judged to possess both sufficient knowledge of the research issue and have the capacity and willingness to participate in the research.

Clearly, the findings reported here open the door for further research that would provide richer data, such as a more broadly focused survey distributed to the 2,549 residents of Kiowa County to gauge their levels of civic engagement, their degree of support for the Media Center initiative, and their willingness to participate in content creation for the Center. Additionally, an analysis of the origins of the content distributed by the Media Center would suggest actual levels of citizen participation. Certainly, future studies should focus on a key finding yielded here: effective methods for recruiting and teaching laypersons the fundamentals of audio and video production and storytelling. Such studies need to delve into attitudes toward learning these new skills and how to overcome certain barriers associated with teaching such skills to adults.

While the Kiowa County Commons with its multi-million dollar Media Center was a direct result of a tornado that devastated the tiny, Midwestern rural community, this and future research could provide prescriptive insight for other rural communities that could find such a model — albeit whatever the size and scope — useful in the creation and distribution of the communities’ news of the day.

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About the Authors

Dr. Sam C. Mwangi is an associate professor at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University.

Dr. J. Steven Smethers is an associate professor at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University.

Professor Bonnie Bressers is an associate professor at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University.

 

Jeremy Littau

This research introduces a new measure of social capital for users of online news communities by applying social capital concepts used to measure networks in real-world communities.  “Web-network” social capital measures the strength of ties created online for the benefit of engagement that is non-local.  Using the concept of the “networked individual” as a theoretical tool, this research sampled users of news sites that offered online community forums for comment.  The results show that traditional social capital measures rooted in local community increase both local forms of engagement and engagement in causes that are more national than local.

Work regarding civic ties and engagement by researchers such as Putnam (2000) tends to look at people’s relationships with others in the community, in conjunction with media variables such as news use, as a predictor of their civic behavior both in their hometown and nationally. Others have looked at how online community joining has increased the tendency to participate in one’s own local community (Norris, 2002). This research attempts to study those two concepts together more explicitly by examining the growing trend of news sites that offer online forums for community conversation and are built around niches (whether they be local geography or topics of interest).

Despite concerns scholars have voiced about the potentially isolating effects of heavy Web use (Ng & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005; Becker & Mark, 1999), the ease of joining online communities has led to people being engaged in places far away with those they’ve never met as the Web has evolved to include more social and networked forms of communication, particularly on news sites that cater to niche interests. At the center of this divergence is the question of how and when the use of social networks online isolates users, enhances offline actions, or represents a new type of engagement. Recent research on Americans’ Internet use from the USC Annenberg School for Communication adds to the picture. In 2013, about 62% of Americans reported some type of activity in an online community, defined as a range of uses from specific sites built to cater to user interests to social media sites such as Facebook or dating sites. This percentage reflects accelerated growth from the 2009 version of the study, wherein only 15% of respondents reported the same type of activity (Center for the Digital Future, 2009). In addition, 76% of respondents in the 2013 study reported that online involvement has not detracted from their offline community participation, and 33% of online community members reported taking an offline action due to some online activity at least once a month (Center for the Digital Future, 2013).

The purpose of this research is to understand the relationship between online community participation on online news sites that offer community forums, specifically by examining the benefits that come with that type of network engagement via a rethinking of social capital research. Whereas past research tends to focus on online participation for offline benefit, this study also is interested in understanding actions that are specifically about benefiting the online community itself. Such actions can be a stabilizing force for the community itself as well as a driver of continued engagement with the news content. News use in particular is highly correlated with community engagement (Beaudoin & Thorson, 2004; Shah et al., 2001b), so a logical next step would be to understand the role news communities themselves play. Traditional social capital measures, which measure network strength and attempt to assess community engagement, are inadequate for understanding how online communities are built and maintained. Understanding how communities built around news exchange work would help create new communities and improve existing ones. Given that both engagement with news and involvement in one’s community (whether local or virtual) is a byproduct, it is a question worth exploring for news practitioners.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Online media in the age of the “networked individual”

Internet use among Americans is higher than it has ever been, with time spent online at 20.4 hours per week on average.  Most of the distribution of time spent seems to be clustered with either light or heavy users of the Internet, with light users reporting an average of 2.8 hours per week compared to 42 hours per week for heavy users.  While some forms of Internet use can take place via web pages, self-reports of use of online communities has been on a steady rise the past few years (Center for the Digital Future, 2013).

The term “community” as applied to online (or “virtual”) worlds has undergone a steady evolution as the Web has evolved from a static product to one that is more interactive . Wellman and Gulia (1999) note that offline communities are traditionally defined in terms of geographic space but that online communities that exist have complicated the picture because of the Internet’s ability to transcend local ties. Thus came attempts to define “virtual” forms of community, which consist of organizations of people made possible by communication technology. Rheingold (1994, p. 58) was the first to define virtual community, saying it is a group of people who “exchange words and ideas” through a technologically created medium such as an online bulletin board, but this definition was not specific enough given the rapid development in ways people communicate online via different social offerings. Others have added layers of refinement by describing other features and uses. Virtual community is community enabled by the use of a networked communication technology, bonding people along lines other than geography (Hiltz & Wellman, 1997). While virtual community does not preclude bonding along geographic lines, other factors that aid in the formation of virtual communities include shared interests, purpose, goals, and values.  Early research explored geographic features and boundaries (Preece, 2000; Dennis, Pootheri & Natarajan, 1998) as well as characteristics that make up interpersonal relationships such as shared traits or affiliations (Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 1998; Preece, 2000; Wellman, 1997). Preece (2000, p. 3) defines online community as “any virtual social space where people come together to get and give information or support, to learn, or to find company” and notes that it exists independent of geographic borders.

The “locality” in this sense is in the shared interest, not in the geographic sense of place, and it is important to news organizations because they traditionally have organized themselves by geographic region.  As one would find in a real-world community, the common bond is a shared interest and the existence of norms and protocols that govern virtual community life (Brint, 2001; Wilson & Peterson, 2002) as well as information exchange. Porter (2004, para. 10) defined virtual community as “an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported and/or mediated by technology and guided by some protocols or norms.” Ridings and Gefen (2004) note two other factors that are critical in defining virtual community. The first is that the collection of people must be defined as more than having a virtual space to visit; there must be clear structures that facilitate community norms and building long-term relationships with one another. Second, in virtual communities people form an attachment to the group such that they visit often.

For the purpose of this research, a study by Ridings, Gefen and Arize (2002) offers a definition of virtual community that seems the most complete and flexible given the different types of community that have emerged on the web, and indeed it is commonly used among those who research virtual community. Ridings et al. define virtual community as “groups of people with common interests and practices that communicate regularly and for some duration in an organized way over the Internet through a common location or mechanism” (p. 273). This definition is far-reaching and flexible enough to encapsulate participation in many types of Web-based communities, from bulletin boards to social networks such as Facebook.

Scholars such as Putnam (1995) have famously argued that online associations have the potential to balkanize people rather than bring them together, but there is evidence to support the idea that the Internet can bring people together. The Internet’s relatively short history does show that the first adopters to any new communication technology trend often have been people who are marginalized due to holding a minority viewpoint or because they are a particular minority group in real-world culture (Rodzvilla, 2002), but the Internet also plays a strong role in bonding people of like interests, beliefs, and life experiences together (Norris, 2002) and has the power to create bridges between disparate groups due to egalitarian discourse online (Lin, 2007) or to accomplish other types of goals. For example, adolescents have reported finding greater social satisfaction and connection online, and people with disabilities also have used the Web to create social connections that are difficult in everyday life (Hasselbring & Glaser, 2000). Similarly, in virtual gaming worlds players accomplish tasks together in cooperation for mutual benefit (Ducheneaut et al., 2006). As it relates to online communities, online community members tend to be highly social and possess strong communication skills (Lee & Lee, 2010).

In thinking about people and how they interact both online and offline, the notion that these are separate experience arguably is a false dichotomy. Rainie and Wellman (2012) argue for the concept of the “networked individual” in an era where much of our web interaction is socially connected. In their model, which provides a theoretical layer to understanding Internet use from a networked perspective, individuals do not exist solely offline or online. Instead, individuals shift with ease between online and offline spaces, often occupying both at the same time. Offline community life and online community life are constantly interfacing with one another even while serving as discrete modes of communication at times.  In this view, while online communities do represent a new type of public that is distinct from offline publics, they are not distinct by the fact that they are separate. Instead, the conclusion from Rainie and Wilson is that we need to define online vs. offline community according to their respective functions, the actions one takes in those communities, and the locus of who is affected by those actions.

To do so requires examining network characteristics and outcomes, and the framework used for this study is the concept of social capital. Popularized by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, social capital is the idea that communities gain strength and work better when people take advantage of social ties to work together for mutual benefit in the form of civic engagement behaviors such as voting, volunteering, or aiding others in need (Putnam, 2000).  The core benefit is that people gain a sense of efficacy needed to change their communities for the better when they are empowered to help others through social relationships. People’s attitudes toward institutions such as government are key markers of social capital, but so is a person’s use of news for democratic purpose and association with civic groups because the latter creates networks necessary for exchange and reciprocity (Putnam, 1995, 2000).

Social capital research has two distinct scholarly streams of progression.  The first path, which invokes Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988), focuses on networks between people as a type of roadway for reciprocity.  In Bourdieu’s view, economic transaction is still the building block of societal relations, but it is built within a system of social exchange.  He defines social capital as networked obligations (“connections”) that in certain circumstances can be converted to economic capital. Coleman builds on Bourdieu’s thinking as it relates to the use of social capital in the transmission of resources.  He defines social capital as a network or social structure that allows for certain actions by actors to take place within that system.  For Coleman, the benefit of social capital is that it allows a person in a community to access resources via weak-tie affiliations that they do not have via their own bonded networks (Coleman, 1988). Social capital, which he calls the changes in relationships between people that facilitate action, benefits everyone in a community when it is invested, and the benefit is that it gives people in that community access to physical and human capital.  Similarly, Lin (2001, p. 6) defines social capital as “investment in relationships with expected returns” by using network relationships to serve as ways of helping and vouching for one another in economic or idea exchange.

A second stream made famous several years later by Putnam (2000) takes a less-networked approach and homes in more on the idea of generalized trust (Foley & Edwards, 1999).  In the Putnam conception of social capital, a “virtuous circle” exists between norms, networks, and social trust that spur participation in one’s community in a self-feeding way. Network is merely a variable in social capital, not the basis of the concept itself (Putnam, 2000).  This conception combines networks and participation efforts into a definition of social capital that is distinctly different from the Bourdieu and Coleman conception because engagement then becomes a measure of networks rather than an outcome variable. Unlike the Bourdieu/Coleman branch of research, which sees engagement as an outcome of social capital created by networks (engagement is a dependent variable predicted by social capital), Putnam tends to argue that engagement is a sign of social capital.  This different conception of the relationship between networks and engagement is one reason why scholars have argued that social capital is an ill-defined concept in scholarship (Edwards & Foley, 1998).

The drawback to Putnam’s approach is there is no measure of network quality embedded in his conception. Merely having trust networks are a factor leading an individual around the virtuous circle, in Putnam’s conception, but this relationship doesn’t include measures of network importance, cohesion, type, or quality. In doing so, this conception assumes that networks lead to other factors on the virtuous circle without looking at the factors of how or why. This is why scholars have attempted to understand networks better, and in doing so treat community engagement as the outgrowth of strong, high-quality networks. This research will operate under the same principle and use Coleman’s conception of social capital.

Within the concept of social capital are two distinct forms: bridging and bonding. Bonding social capital exists between members of groups, binding together small homogeneous units such as families, ethnic groups, or religious communities. Bridging social capital consists of heterogeneous ideological and social connections between members of separate bonded groups that provide an avenue for both groups to benefit via a transfer of knowledge or resources (Putnam, 1995). Bridging social capital works because of these “weak-tie” relationships that exist between bonded members, allowing a members of a bonded community to share resources using the social connection created by the weak-tie bridge (Granovetter, 1973). The Internet is good at making weak-tie connections and diversifying a person’s real-world connections, but it also is useful in bonding groups in online community environments (Norris 2002; Hampton, Lee & Her, 2011). An even better predictor is news use. Researchers have found a consistent link between news use and social capital in communities both at the local and regional level, particularly for print and Internet-based sites (Beaudoin & Thorson, 2004; Shah et al., 2001b)

As noted earlier, most scholarship looks at social capital with offline forms of engagement as an outcome variable. Shah et al.  (2002) found that time spent online had positive relationships with engagement in the form of volunteerism and associations.  Others pointed to clear signs that reciprocity was not only happening online, but also that it was serving the purpose of bringing people together across geography for offline action (Wellman et al., 2001; Wellman & Hampton, 1999).  Shah found the same use differences that helped determine whether television use was positively or negatively correlated with social capital (entertainment vs.  information seeking) also applied to the Web, and in fact that generations that were heavily criticized by Putnam as low social capital generators actually were showing more signs of using the Web to connect socially with others in prosocial offline ways (Shah et al., 2001a; Shah et al., 2001b).  Still, there seems to be some real-world influence that is necessary to connect social capital with online community use. Lee and Lee (2010) found that key markers such as trust were missing in online community users unless they possessed high amounts of it in the real world, underscoring Rainie and Wellman’s argument that the online and offline self influence one another.

Williams (2006) found support for the existence of both online and offline social capital that contains both bridging and bonding forms. In this conception, offline social capital is offline engagement for offline benefits and online social capital is engagement in online community for offline benefits. This research attempts to expand on Williams’ work. Rainie and Wellman (2102) argue that online and offline community are distinct elements even as they are intertwined. If this is true, then we should be able to identify a type of social capital that is created online for the benefit of an online community. This research seeks to uncover that variable, called “web-network social capital.”

The research reported here uses the conceptions found in Williams, but for the sake of clarity the variables are renamed.  The “offline” social capital that Williams used will be “local community social capital” for this research, while the “online” version will be “Web-local social capital” to emphasize the ties that are created online for offline benefit in local community, as illustrated in the following figure:

FIGURE 1: COMPARISON OF LOCAL COMMUNITY, WEB-LOCAL, AND WEB-NETWORK SOCIAL CAPITAL

	Localcommunity	Web-local	Web- network
Relationships formed …	Locally	Online	Online
Benefits of formed relationships exist …	Locally	Locally	Online

The reason for this renaming is that “Web-network social capital,” will be introduced in this study as a way of distinguishing online ties created for the benefit of online networks and communities.  These concepts inform the following research question.

RQ1: Is web-network social capital a concept that is distinct from offline and online forms of social capital?

Social capital and local engagement

This network approach is how Williams (2006) conceived of the relationship between online media and social capital.  By extending on the work Norris (2002) did, Williams conceived of social capital much as Coleman did by noting that it was explained by network ties via bridging and bonding.  Williams then measured bridging and bonding within both online and offline contexts, accounting for results that show social capital can be created in both contexts and that these network ties can be separate from one another.   Online community users report more involvement in clubs and volunteer organizations than non-online community users (Center for the Digital Future, 2009), and thus those who use these communities who report high levels of local-community and Web-local should report higher levels of different types of engagement as their media usage creates stronger and wider social bonds via social capital.  The following hypotheses, then, will serve to examine whether the measures used in this study are in line with past findings.

H_1a: There is a positive relationship between local community bonding social capital and local civic engagement in virtual communities.

H_1b: There is a positive relationship between local community bridging social capital and local civic engagement in virtual communities.

H_2a: There is a positive relationship between Web-local bonding social capital and local civic engagement in virtual communities.

H_2b: There is a positive relationship between Web-local bridging social capital and local civic engagement in virtual communities.

These hypotheses, based on the past research previously discussed, will be used for two purposes.  First, they test to see whether relationships that have been previously found in online research apply to online communities.  Second, they are a test of whether social capital as it exists in the real world applies to these online settings.  In that way, these hypotheses are the beginning of an argument about how social capital exists in virtual communities and offer a way of determining face validity to the Web-network social capital construct that will be discussed in the next section.

Social capital and distance engagement

One additional problem comes in differentiating engagement behaviors Putnam (2000) noted as types of “checkbook democracy.”  He posited that a weaker form of engagement is affiliation in national groups that do advocacy but require no commitment beyond a donation.  The ease of joining such groups, he argued, meant it was a form of joining but not as meaningful as joining in a local community.  At the same time, recent presidential election cycles showed a new type of trend on the Web, that of people volunteering to staff phone banks for candidates in faraway districts or donating money to candidates for whom they could not vote due to regional location (Banks, 2009).  In addition, research has shown that reciprocity between people who have never met in the real world but know one another online is taking place in the context of Web communities.  Traditional social capital research has not been able to capture this type of non-local civic engagement, but it seems as if this is fundamentally distinct from checkbook democracy.

This research proposes that behaviors that constitute this non-local type of civic engagement be added to Putnam’s checkbook democracy measure to split out some types of engagement from traditional community-based ones.  One of these non-local indices is based on non-geographic political and cause-based work (distance activism) and one is based on acts of reciprocity and aid through distance (distance helping).  The following hypotheses examine these relationships.

H_3a: There is a relationship between Web-local social capital (both bridging and bonding) and distance helping in virtual communities.

H_3b: There is a  relationship between Web-local social capital (both bridging and bonding) and distance activism in virtual communities.

H_4a: There is a positive relationship between Web-network social capital (both bridging and bonding) and distance helping in virtual communities.

H_4b: There is a  relationship between Web-network social capital (both bridging and bonding) and distance activism in virtual communities.

METHOD

This research employed an online survey method that sampled users from four different niche online news communities.  The specific communities used were chosen because they tend to transcend geography, and thus the topic and theme for the site was more important than the location.  Past research has shown strong gravitation to topics such as politics, parenting, sports, and religion, among others (Porter, 2004; Preece, 2000, 2001) and this served as the starting point in choosing sites.  The survey sampled users from a political Web community, a parenting Web community, a religion Web community, and a sports Web community.  All of the sites used in this study tend to draw mostly users from the United States, according to the sites’ Webmasters, but within that context the sites draw users from many parts of the country. The sites contain both a mix of content and community discussion through forums that users can use to interact with one another via the Web. This mixture was a key characteristic of the sites chosen, as we were interested in news sites that had a forum for community conversation, not merely sites that were entirely built around a forum.

A key methodological problem with online surveys is that they are a convenience sample, and thus not always an accurate look at the population being studied (Williams & Monge, 2001).  To mitigate this problem, the method used for this study employed a random sampling technique by contacting individual members of the community in order to solicit responses in coordination with a message from the site operators so that users would know it was coming from a trusted source.  From this we generated a response rate statistic. The number of surveys filled out served as the numerator, while the number of potential participants served as the denominator.

Responses to the survey (N=582) were generated over a six-week period, across the four sites.  The response rate for the four sites, based on using only the randomly selected participants as outlined in the methods section, was 32.1%, which represents 582 responses from 1,808 selected users.  Several variables were scales constructed from several items.  All of these scales were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Varimax rotation, and values below an absolute value of 0.6 were not included in the scale.  Only factors with an Eigenvalue greater than 1.0 were accepted for analysis.  The indices also were tested for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha, with a minimum threshold of 0.7 required for a reliable scale.

Independent variables

Three independent variables measuring the types of social capital proposed by this research were used in this study (local community social capital, Web-local social capital, and Web-network social capital).  Each of these variables consisted of multi-item indices for the factors of bridging and bonding, consistent with past research, and the questions used to build each are found in the appendix.   The local community social capital and Web-local social capital scales come from Williams (2006), and the Web-network social capital scale was created by using the questions and making them specific to online networks only.

Local community social capital is defined as the degree to which people were connected socially to people in their local community.  It had two facets consistent with the literature, “bonding” and “bridging” and is consistent with Williams’ version of offline social capital.  Bonding is typified by such questions as, “The people I interact with in my neighborhood or community would be good job references for me.”  Bridging is typified by such questions as, “Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community gives me new people to talk to.”  The variable based on this construct was measured using a 5-point Likert scale.  EFA found two factors that accounted for 65.03% of the variance and values under 0.6 were discarded (see Appendix 1 for the questions).  Reliability scores for local community bonding ( = .92) and local community bridging ( =.94) were both acceptable using the .70 threshold.

Web-local social capital (IV/DV₂) was defined as the degree to which people are connected socially to people in their online community in ways that bring offline benefit and is based on Williams’ version of online social capital. What distinguishes this version from the local community social capital construct is that while the benefits come to people in terms of improved trust and contentment in the context of their home community, the networks and relationships that facilitate these benefits are created in online contexts similar to what Norris (2002) found. Consistent with the local community version of this measure, it has two facets found in the literature, “bonding” and “bridging.” Bonding is typified by such questions as “When I feel lonely, there are several people on this community site I can talk to.” Bridging is typified by such questions “Interacting with people on this community site makes me interested in things that happen outside of my town.” This variable was measured using a 5-point Likert scale. Factor analysis for Web-local social capital was performed using the same method as the method for local community social capital. EFA found two factors that accounted for 62.67% of the variance and values under 0.6 were discarded (see Appendix 1 for the questions).  Reliability scores for Web-local bonding ( = .94) and Web-local bridging ( = .92) were both acceptable using the .70 threshold.

The final independent variable used for this research is the new construct being tested in this research. Web-network social capital (IV/DV₃) was defined as the degree to which people are connected socially to people in their online community in ways that bring benefit to the online community in which they participate. What distinguishes this Web-network social capital from the other two versions being measured in this research is that it examines the networks of relationships that exist within the context of that online community in order to see what civic-type behaviors exist that might help build and maintain that online community. Consistent with both the Web-local and local community versions of this measure, Web-network social capital maintains two facets consistent with the literature, “bonding” and “bridging.” Web-network social capital from bonding comes from the results of relationships that help people find connections with groups or individuals that share common traits such as common ideals, beliefs, or interests that form the common reason for their Web community’s existence. It is typified by such questions as, “There are several people on this community site I trust to help solve problems I am having with the site.” Web-local social capital from bridging comes from the result of relationships that expose the person to a set of ideas or people outside their own Web community and indicate interest in what other Web communities are doing.  It is typified by such questions as, “Interacting with people in this community site makes me interested in things that are happening in other Web communities” and “Interacting with people in this community site gives me new people to read about on the Web.” This variable was measured using a 5-point Likert scale. Because this is a new variable being tested in this study, factor analysis and reliability results are contained in the next section as the answer to RQ₁.

Dependent variables

The final two variables are purely dependent variables used to test the hypotheses and the ultimate goal of the model: local engagement and distance engagement.

Local engagement was defined as actions done within a local community that help others or further civic or democratic goals. The measurement in this case would scale different types of democratic or pro-social behaviors and is split among three different facets:  participation in community activities, work on community projects, and activism within the community. This variable was measured using a 5-point Likert scale.  EFA resulted in three factors accounting for 64.68% of the variance. The first factor, called “community issues,” grouped questions related to working in local politics or working to create change in communities using awareness and the political process. The second factor was related to involvement and work in organizations such as churches or charities, and thus the factor was called “service.” The third factor grouped questions about helping neighbors or socializing with them, and thus this social bonding variable was labeled “neighbors” due to the strength of connections being measured in this index. “Voting” loaded as a fourth separate factor as a single item measuring voting frequency. Reliability scores for community issues ( = .88), service ( = .79), and community ( = .81) were both acceptable using the .70 threshold.

Distance engagement was defined as actions done that help others or further civic or democratic goals in places other than where a person lives. The measurement in this case was split between two different facets: involvement in issues of national interest and giving to national causes or campaigns. This variable was measured using a 5-point Likert scale.  EFA found two factors that accounted for 58.00% of the variance. The first factor grouped contributions or work done for national campaigns, issue advocacy, or candidates in regions other than the participants’ local home, and the factor was named “distance activism” to account for this. The second factor encompassed the aspect of helping others financially or otherwise when the only bond between the helper and the person being helped is that the connection was forged first online. Thus the variable was named “distance helping.” Reliability scores for distance activism ( = .87) and helping ( = .79) were both acceptable using the .70 threshold.

RESULTS

This study attempts to determine the existence of Web-network social capital as a distinct concept. RQ₁ asked whether Web-network social capital is distinguishable from Web-local social capital. The results indicate there is support for these scales. EFA on the 20 Web-network questions (10 for bonding and 10 for bridging) along with the 40 questions for the local community and Web-local social capital scales showed that each of these three types of social capital was distinct from one another and that each factor split along bridging and bonding facets. Table 1 indicates these six factors accounted for 64.50% of the variance and provided the first evidence that Web-network social capital is a separate construct from the other two measures of social capital and describes something new about online communities. A separate EFA on just the Web-network bridging and bonding factors, done in order to confirm that these two facets were indeed separate from one another simply in the context of the construct Web-network social capital, found that these factors accounted for 57.32% of the variance that emerged in the factor analysis. Thus, support was found for the notion of Web-network social capital having bonding and bridging factors through this exploratory factor analysis.

TABLE 1

Factor loadings based on Principal Component Analysis with Direct Oblimin rotation for 60 items involving Local Community, Web-Local, and Web-network social capital (N = 582)

	Local Bridging	Local Bonding	Web-local Bridging	Web-local Bonding	Web-network Bridging	Web-network Bonding
LCBr1	.67
LCBr2	.70					.52
LCBr3	.68
LCBr4	.72
LCBr5	.88	-.51
LCBr6	.79
LCBr7	.72
LCBr8	.82
LCBO1		.84
LCBO2		.80
LCBO3		.83
LCBO4		.86
LCBO5		.90
LCBO6		.78
LCBO7		.72
LCBO8		.83
WLBr1			.67
WLBr2			.69
WLBr3			.77
WLBr4			.62
WLBr5			.82
WLBr6			.91
WLBr7			.85
WLBr8			.86
WLBr9			.71
WLBr10			.58
WLBO1				.53
WLBO2			.52	.67
WLBO3				.83
WLBO4				.76
WLBO5				.79
WLBO6				.83
WLBO7				.90
WNBR1					.83
WNBR2					.66
WNBR3					.74
WNBR4					.83
WNBR5					.82
WNBO1						.77
WNBO2						.91
WNBO3						.90
WNBO4						.94
WNBO5						.74

The final step was to do a confirmatory factor analysis in order to determine whether the theoretical basis for these factors would hold up under more robust factor analysis testing. The CFA was done in AMOS 16.0 using only the loadings that were over .60 in the EFA run beforehand. The final Web-network social capital model presented two different factors (bonding and bridging) and was found to be a good fit without losing any questions from the EFA (² = 1.85, df = 9, CMIN = 0.21, p > .05; GFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.01). Reliability tests found these two facets to be above the .70 threshold. Thus, the results show support for the existence of Web-network social capital as a construct that is distinct from two other forms of social capital previously seen in mass communication research.

H_1a predicted there is a positive relationship between local community bonding social capital and local engagement among users of virtual communities. Table 2 indicates this hypothesis was supported. Local community bonding (M = 3.38, SD = .95, N = 582) had a highly significant positive relationship with community issues (M = 2.25, SD = 1.15, N = 582; r(580) = .21, p < .01), service (M =2.59, SD = 1.31, N = 582; r(580) = .26, p < .01), neighbors (M = 3.36, SD = .99, N = 582; r(580) = .49, p < .01), and voting (M = 4.48, SD = 1.08, N = 582; r(580) = .12, p < .01).

H_1b predicted there is a positive relationship between local community bridging social capital and local engagement among users of virtual communities. Table 2 indicates this hypothesis was supported. Local community bridging social capital (M = 3.57, SD = .85, N = 582) also had a highly significant positive relationship with community issues (M = 2.25, SD = 1.15, N = 582; r(580) = .17, p < .01), service (M = 2.59, SD = 1.31, N = 582; r(580) = .26, p < .01), neighbors (M = 3.36, SD = .99, N = 582; r(580) = .33, p < .01) and voting (M = 4.48, SD = 1.08, N = 582; r(580) = .13, p < .01).

TABLE 2

Correlations between the measures of Local Community social capital and the measures of Local Engagement (N = 582)

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Local Community Bonding	1.00	.66**	.21**	.26**	.49**	.12**
2. Local Community Bridging		1.00	.17**	.26**	.33**	.13**
3. Local: Community Issues			1.00	.12**	.23**	.27**
4. Local: Service				1.00	.30**	.19**
5. Local: Neighbors					1.00	.17**
6. Local: Voting						1.00

** p < 0.01

The results of this hypothesis are in line with the literature that finds a strong relationship between social capital built in local communities and people’s engagement in those communities. Recall from previous research that high social capital in local communities tends to predict civic activity. The results from these hypotheses serve as face validity for the measurements given that the results are in line with previous research.

H_2a predicted a positive relationship between Web-local bonding social capital and local engagement in virtual communities. This hypothesis was partially supported. Web-local bonding social capital (M = 3.07, SD = 1.05, N = 582) was positively associated only with neighbors (r(580) = .08, p < .05) while it was negatively associated with community issues (r(580) = -.04, p < .01). Table 3 indicates web-local bonding was not significantly correlated with service or voting, although the relationship was approaching significance. H_2b predicted a positive relationship between Web-local bridging social capital and local engagement in virtual communities. Table 3 indicates this hypothesis was supported.  Web-local bridging (M = 4.12, SD = .65, N = 582) had a significant positive relationship with community issues (r(580) = .12, p < .01), service (r(580) = .08, p < .05), neighbors (r(580) = .16, p < .01), and voting (r(580) = .15, p < .01), although none of the three Pearson correlation figures was above .20.

The results of this hypothesis are in line with the finding of Norris (2002) that the ties created by Web-local bridging are more effective at creating engagement in local community than Web-local bonding. While the literature review noted that bonding can play a role in creating engagement in communities, it is considered a weaker predictor because it is a more insular form of networking than the weak ties created by bridges.

TABLE 3

Correlations between the measures of Web-Local social capital and the measures of Local Engagement (N = 582)

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Web-Local Bonding social capital	1.00	.45**	-.04**	.03	.08*	-.03
2. Web-Local Bridging social capital		1.00	.12**	.08*	.16**	.15**
3. Local: Community Issues			1.00	.12**	.23**	.27**
4. Local: Service				1.00	.30**	.19**
5. Local: Neighbors					1.00	.17**
6. Local: Voting						1.00

** p < 0.01 ; * p < 0.05

H_3a predicted a relationship between Web-local social capital (bridging and bonding) and distance helping in virtual communities. This hypothesis was supported. Web-local bonding was positively correlated with distance helping (M = 2.90, SD = 1.26, N = 582; r(580) = .38, p < .01) as was Web-local bridging (r(580) = .31, p < .01). H_3b predicted a relationship between Web-local social capital (bridging and bonding) and distance activism in virtual communities. Table 4 indicates this hypothesis was not supported. Web-local bonding was negatively correlated with distance activism (M = 2.34, SD = 1.33, N = 582; r(580) = -.20, p < .01) but Web-local bridging was not associated with the dependent variable.

The correlations for distance helping were stronger than they were for forms of activism.  The hypotheses did not predict a direction because of the nature of the Web-local social capital construct. These are online community users used to making connections online, but it was unclear whether those online ties would lead to online forms of engagement. It should be noted that Web-local bonding and bridging both are highly correlated (r(580) = .45, p < .01) and thus these factors are working together with each of the distance engagement variables.

TABLE 4

Correlations between the measures of Web-Local social capital and the measures of Distance Engagement (N = 582)

	1	2	3	4
1. Web-Local Bonding social capital	1.00	.45**	-.20**	.38**
2. Web-Local Bridging social capital		1.00	.05	.31**
3. Distance: Activism			1.00	.19**
4. Distance: Helping				1.00

** p < 0.01

H_4a predicted a positive relationship between Web-network social capital (bridging and bonding) and distance helping in virtual communities. Table 5 indicates this hypothesis was supported.  Web-network bonding (M = 3.68, SD = .78, N = 582) was positively correlated with distance helping (M = 2.90, SD = 1.26, N = 582; r(573) = .34, p < .01) and Web-network bridging (M = 3.50, SD = .69, N = 582) also was positively correlated with distance helping (r(580) = .15, p < .01). H_4b predicted a relationship between Web-network social capital (bridging and bonding) and distance activism in virtual communities. Table 5 indicates this hypothesis was not supported. Web-network bonding was negatively correlated with distance activism (M = 2.34, SD = 1.33, N = 582; r(573) = -.23, p < .01) but Web-network bridging had no relationship with the dependent variable

Taken together, H₃ and H₄ seem to support that activity online is not necessarily strong for political engagement, but it is strongly associated with helping others that one meets online.  Just as was the case with Web-local social capital, the stronger correlations were found with helping others whom a person meets online. The results indicate that the relationships built offline connect people to resources both within the community and beyond that network and that the result is that users of these communities are more likely to help people they meet online as a result of those connections.

TABLE 5

Correlations between the measures of Web-network social capital and the measures of Distance Engagement (N = 582)

	1	2	3	4
1. Web-network Bonding Social Capital	1.00	.23**	-.23**	.34**
2. Web-network Bridging Social Capital		1.00	.08	.15**
3. Distance: Activism			1.00	.19**
4. Distance: Helping				1.00

** p < 0.01

The question, then, is whether ties created offline via local community social capital behave in the same way. An additional analysis, examining the correlation between local community social capital and the distance engagement variables , as shown in Table 6, shows differences. In this analysis, distance activism (M = 2.34, SD = 1.33, N = 582) was positively correlated with local community bonding (r(580) = .12, p < .01) and local community bridging (r(580) = .12, p < .01). But for distance helping, it was positively correlated with local community bonding only (M = 2.90, SD = 1.26, N = 582; r(580) = .14, p < .01)

Given the results in H₃ and H₄ plus the extra analysis with local community social capital, it seems clear that these six social capital variables are behaving differently depending on whether the form of engagement is local or over distance due to online ties. Regression analysis was used as the next step in order to determine which forms of social capital were having the most impact on the distance engagement variables after accounting for demographics. The hierarchical regression employed entered demographic variables into the first block, followed by a block consisting of local community bonding social capital, local community bridging social capital, Web-local bonding social capital, Web-local bridging social capital, Web-network bonding social capital, and Web-network bridging social capital. A separate regression was run for each of the two distance engagement factors, activism and helping.

TABLE 6

Correlations between the measures of Local Community social capital and the measures of Distance Engagement (N = 582)

	1	2	3	4
1. Local Community Bonding	1.00	.66**	.12**	.14**
2. Local Community Bridging		1.00	.12**	.03
3. Distance: Activism			1.00	.19**
4. Distance: Helping				1.00

** p < 0.01

TABLE 7

Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for Demographics and Social Capital variables predicting the measures of Distance Activism (N = 582)

	Model 1 Demographics	Model 2 Social Capital
Demographics	B	SE	b	B	SE	b
Gender (Female = 0, Male = 1)	.20	.11	.07	.23	.11	.08 *
U.S. Citizen? (No = 0, Yes = 1)	-.45	.21	-.08*	-.52	.21	-.09*
Education	.10	.03	.11**	.08	.03	.09*
Employment	.04	.02	.07	.03	.02	.07
Income	.06	.02	.12**	.06	.02	.12**
Marital (Unmarried = 0, Married = 1)	-.03	.08	-.02	-.08	.08	-.04
Ethnicity	.11	.07	.06	.04	.07	.02
Time Online (Hours per day)	.01	.01	.02	.01	.01	.02
Posts per day	-.03	.01	-.12**	-.03	.01	-.12**
Age	.05	.01	.44**	.05	.01	.11**
Social Capital		B	SE	b
Local Community Bonding		.17	.07	.40**
Local Community Bridging		-.01	.08	-.01
Web-Local Bonding Social Capital		-.07	.08	-.05
Web-Local Bridging Social Capital		.28	.11	.12*
Web-network Bonding Social Capital		-.14	.12	-.08
Web-network Bridging Social Capital		.05	.09	.03
R2	.53	.56
Adjusted R2	.29	.32
F for R2 change	22.31 (p < .01)	15.95 (p < .01)

* p < .05
** p < .01

The final model, shown in Table 7, explained a strongly significant proportion of variance distance activism (R² = .32, F(16, 553) = 15.95, p < .01). Of the social capital constructs, the strongest predictor in the whole model was local community bonding (b = .42, t(553) = 2.51, p < .01) and Web-local bridging (b = .18, t(553) = 2.51, p < .05) also was a strong predictor. No other social capital indices were significant.

The second regression looked at helping others online. The final model, shown in Table 8, explained a significant proportion of variance in distance helping (R² = .27, F(16, 553) = 12.79, p < .01). Of the social capital predictors in the final model, Web-network bonding (b = .37, t(553) = 5.73, p < .01) emerged as the strongest predictor in the whole model and also got positive prediction from Web-network bridging (b = .16, t(553) = 2.80, p < .01) and local community bonding (b = .18, t(553) = 3.47, p< .01). Local community bridging, on the other hand, was a negative predictor (b = -.20, t(553) = -3.84, p < .01).

TABLE 8

Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for Demographics and Social Capital variables predicting the measures of Distance Helping among online community users (N = 582)

	Model 1 Demographics	Model 2 Social Capital
Demographics	B	SE	b	B	SE	b
Gender (Female = 0, Male = 1)	-.73	.11	-.27**	-.49	.11	-.18**
U.S. Citizen? (No = 0, Yes = 1)	.50	.22	.09*	.41	.21	.07
Education	.11	.03	.14**	.14	.03	.17**
Employment	.03	.02	.06	-.01	.02	-.01
Income	-.05	.02	-.10*	-.04	.02	-.08*
Marital (Unmarried = 0, Married = 1)	-.00	.08	-.00	-.01	.07	-.01
Ethnicity	.20	.07	.12**	.06	.07	.04
Time Online (Hours per day)	.02	.02	.05	.00	.01	.01
Posts per day	.04	.01	.19**	.02	.01	.08*
Age	-.04	.01	-.04	-.00	.00	-.03
Social capital		B	SE	b
Local Community Bonding		.24	.07	.18**
Local Community Bridging		-.30	.08	-.20**
Web-Local Bonding Social Capital		-.19	.12	-.12
Web-Local Bridging Social Capital		.04	.08	.02
Web-network Bonding Social Capital		.45	.08	.37**
Web-network Bridging Social Capital		.31	.11	.16**
R2	.39	.52
Adjusted R2	.15	.27
F for R2 change	10.15 (p < .01)	12.70 (p < .01)

** p < .01
* p < .05

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Considering the context of this research, that it was conducted by surveying users of online community news sites, the results show there is promise in building places for community conversation into news sites. Past research already has shown a strong link between news use and social capital in local communities, and with the emergence of the Web-network social capital variable in this research it shows that giving people forums for comment and discussion beyond the comments section of a news story offers people another avenue for building and spending social capital. When news sites give users online community tools, they are cultivating a new type of audience that has different characteristics than its offline readership.

Given the strong link between news use and involvement in communities, the results here have several implications. First, giving local users some ability to participate on the site and get to know one another in a community forum could help local engagement. One way to think about this is as a step-ladder of engagement based on what past research has shown, where association with neighbors is considered the easiest form of civic engagement because you live in the same area and see one another; bonding and bridging were both positively associated with this construct. Next in the thread is voting, volunteering, or doing service in the community, and while the Web-local bridging was positively associated with it, bonding was showed no relationship. The step that requires the most effort is activism, which requires a continuous investment of time, effort and attention to community issues. In this case, bonding is a negative predictor and bridging is a positive predictor. As one goes up the ladder, bridging takes on more importance as bonding’s role decreases.

Second, the key finding in this research is that the new concept of “Web-network” exists as a way to describe the makeup of online communities, and the results of the final regressions show how it can help predict offline activity in concert with a user’s local place of residence.  Like the Web-local version of social capital, which consists of ties created online that extend into one’s local community offline, Web-network social capital in online communities appears to work best when paired with local community social capital. While the Web-network and local community measures are distinct per the factor analyses, the final regression model shows that the two are working together to predict non-local forms of engagement. This also offers some validation to the theoretical layering offered by Rainie and Wellman (2012), which noted a distinct but intertwined relationship between the online and offline self. The web-network social capital generated by the online self is distinct from the local networks built in geographic communities, but they do influence one another and work together.

The final regressions suggest a window into how news sites can encourage online community behaviors that have an impact on faraway causes, a topic traditionally unexplored because so much social capital and news research is done at the local or regional level. The presence of a strong bonding predictor matches some of what Putnam (2000) notes when he talks about how the “checkbook democracy” that comes with giving money to causes rather than doing the harder work in local community is an indicator of insular ties that are akin to bonding rather than ties created across people groups in local community. Web-local bridging’s presence is an indicator that people are using their online ties to get involved in causes outside their local community. While this might seem contradictory to the local community bonding argument, consider that it might be that these two variables work together when it comes to distance activism. Because the literature defines Web-local social capital as networks created online for the purpose of local offline action, perhaps in the case of distance activism the Web-local bridging in online communities serves as a bridge to resources online as well. That is, an unengaged person in a local community might not think to be involved locally or by distance even if they have only strong local community bonding in their network of relationships.

Web-local bonding, then, might work to spur a person to begin turning their attention outward. In a sense, local community social capital is a precursor to online forms of engagement (either helping or distance activism), Web-network social capital is the conduit that allows people to direct their offline resources toward reciprocity in the form of helping others online, while Web-local social capital is what helps users direct resources in the form of distance activism. Thus, a user of these communities enters having the trait of high local community social capital, but the networks and relationships created online via social capital allow the user to extend that trait to people they meet virtually and to treat online communities in a similar way to how they regard offline civic community. A person’s Web-network social capital could be at work in online interactions while also serving as a conduit to online forms of helping that is a natural extension of a user’s proclivity toward offline engagement.

With Web-network social capital established as a concept, there are future research directions worth pursuing. First, past research has shown that motivations for using different types of media have played a role in determining how traditional social capital works. It would be worthwhile to see how motivations for online news community use work with Web-network social capital. Second, this study aggregated results without attention paid to the topic that bound the user’s particular community together. It could be that different communities behave differently when it comes to web-network social capital depending on the community’s common interests (i.e. some communities might tend toward activism or helping others depending on topic). Third, it might be useful to further explore the concept of distance engagement now that it is a distinct variable from local forms within this strain of social capital research. Perhaps there are differences between helping other institutions and helping individuals met online. Finally, it might be that certain types of communities might be more or less prone to generating web-network social capital. Perhaps certain structures (such as chat, web forum, or diary-based formats) are better at creating this web-network social capital than others.

As with any research, this study has limitations. The sample pulled from users of news communities, and thus the results might not be indicative of all online community users. Second,  because users were sampled after posting or commenting, it should be understood that this was a sample of active online community members. Because of this, the conception of what it means to be a community member is different than if a researcher were sampling a real-world population because in that case there would be a mix of active and non-active members.

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APPENDIX: SURVEY QUESTIONS

IV: Local community social capital

Measurement: 5-point Likert scale

Factor 1: Local community bonding

1. There is someone in my neighborhood or community I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions.
2. There is no one in my neighborhood or community that I feel comfortable talking to about intimate personal problems.  (reversed)
3. When I feel lonely, there are several people in my neighborhood or community I can talk to.
4. If I needed an emergency loan of $100, I know someone in my neighborhood or community I can turn to.
5. The people I interact with in my neighborhood or community would put their reputation on the line for me.
6. The people I interact with in my neighborhood or community would be good job references for me.
7. The people I interact with in my neighborhood or community would share their last dollar with me.
8. I do not know people in my neighborhood or community well enough to get them to do anything important.  (reversed)

Factor 2: Local community bridging

1. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community makes me interested in things that happen outside of my town.
2. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community makes me want to try new things.
3. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community makes me interested in what people unlike me are thinking.
4. Talking with people in my neighborhood or community makes me curious about other places in the world.
5. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community makes me feel like part of a larger community.
6. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community makes me feel connected to the bigger picture.
7. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community reminds me that everyone in the world is connected.
8. Interacting with people in my neighborhood or community gives me new people to talk to.

IV: Web-local social capital

Measurement: 5-point Likert scale

Factor 1: Web-local bonding

1. There are several people on [enter Web community site here] I trust to help solve my problems.
2. There is someone on [enter Web community site here] I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions.
3. When I feel lonely, there are several people on [enter Web community site here] I can talk to.
4. If I needed an emergency loan of $500, I know someone on [enter Web community site here] I can turn to.
5. The people I interact with on [enter Web community site here] would put their reputation on the line for me.
6. The people I interact with on [enter Web community site here] would be good job references for me.
7. The people I interact with on [enter Web community site here] would share their last dollar with me.

Factor 2: Web-local bridging

1. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me interested in things that happen outside of my town.
2. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me want to try new things.
3. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me interested in what people unlike me are thinking.
4. Talking with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me curious about other places in the world.
5. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me feel like part of a larger community.
6. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me feel connected to the bigger picture.
7. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] reminds me that everyone in the world is connected.
8. I am willing to spend time to support general [enter Web community site here] activities.
9. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] gives me new people to talk to.
10. On [enter Web community site here], I come in contact with new people all the time.

IV: Web-network social capital

Measurement: 5-point Likert scale

Factor 1: Web-network bonding

1. There are several people on [enter Web community site here] I trust to help solve problems I am having with the site.
2. There is someone on [enter Web community site here] I can turn to for advice about the site
3. There is no one on [enter Web community site here] that I feel comfortable talking to about intimate personal problems.  (reversed)
4. The people I interact with on [enter Web community site here] would put their reputation on the line for me if I was involved in a dispute on the site.
5. The people I interact with on [enter Web community site here] would help me freely if I had any questions.

Factor 2: Web-network bridging

1. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me interested in things that are happening in other Web communities.
2. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me want to be a part of other Web communities.
3. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me interested in other Web communities are talking about.
4. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] makes me feel like part of a larger network of Web communities.
5. Interacting with people on [enter Web community site here] reminds me that everyone on the Web is connected.

DV: Local engagement

Measurement: 1-5 semantic differential scale, Never to Regularly

Factor 1: Community Issues

1. I work for local political campaigns
2. I help with local efforts to get petition signatures
3. I work to help raise awareness on important issues in my community

Factor 2: Service

1. I volunteer or work for a local charity.
2. I work on activities through my local church or service organization.
3. I attend religious services.

Factor 3: Neighbors

1. I help neighbors when they are in need.
2. I take care of my neighbors’ children when the need arises.
3. I host or attend dinner parties with friends or neighbors

DV: Distance engagement

Measurement: 1-5 semantic differential scale, Never to Regularly

Factor 1: Distance Activism

1. I have contributed money to candidates running in areas outside my community even though I cannot vote for them
2. I donate to national or state political campaigns
3. I have campaigned for candidates running in areas outside my community even if I cannot vote for them
4. I am a member of a national issue-advocacy organization (such as the NRA or Sierra Club)
5. I donate money to national causes that I care about

Factor 2: Helping

1. I have helped out someone that I have never met in-person via the Internet
2. I have given money to help out someone I first met online

 

Susan Currie Sivek

The urban information environment in which city magazines operate is changing dramatically, with the decline of local newspapers and the growth of user-generated local content. City magazine editors are re-envisioning their purpose as local information providers. This study provides a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with senior editors at 15 award-winning city magazines. The editors’ responses speak to the changing role of their publications today; the function of new technologies in informing local communities; and the public service that local journalism organizations offer in a constrained economic situation. 

Today’s global magazine industry is adapting rapidly to incorporate new technologies, changes in readers’ habits, and opportunities newly available due to shifts in complementary media industries. In particular, city magazines in the U.S. face serious competition from digital media, often based on user-generated content, that now supplant the magazines’ traditional local functions. However, city magazines also have new possibilities for public service journalism due to rapid changes in other local news outlets, particularly the decline of newspapers and the loss of much of their “watchdog” function within their communities. City magazines may in fact be developing into local news sources that can challenge the dominance of newspapers as providers of in-depth local journalism. Editors of these magazines express a blend of fear and excitement brought about both by this change and by the shifts in power among local information providers and audiences.

This study is part of a larger research project regarding the function of the U.S. city magazine (Sivek, 2014). The current study examines these magazines’ production processes through a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with senior editors at 15 award-winning city magazines. These magazines represent a mix of ownership, readership, and geographic circumstances. The editors’ responses reveal the current and developing roles of old and new technologies in informing local communities; the nature of local journalism in a shifting media environment, especially as audiences now can inform each other directly through social media; and the public service that local media can offer in a tightly constrained economic situation. More broadly, this study provides additional insights into the production and distribution of geographically focused journalism in a time of instability for the profession and industry.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Role of City Magazines Within Local Communities

Many local media provide both information and emotional connections for citizens within cities. The role of journalism within geographically defined communities has been studied extensively, though scholars’ engagement with the term “community” has varied widely (Lowrey, Brozana, & Mackay, 2008). As these authors note, “community” may refer to shared physical location or to shared interest in a specific identity or symbols  (as in “imagined” or “interpretive” communities) – or to both of these.

In examining a wide variety of publications, magazine researchers have often analyzed the role of the magazine medium in creating the latter type of community. As Frith states, existing research supports “a shared belief that magazines can play a role in creating and reflecting community” (2012, p. 234). For example, Frau-Meigs (2000) examines the construction of the “netizens” in the early years of Wired magazine; Sender (2001) argues that The Advocate magazine crafted an imagined community of gay consumers through its gradually shifting content; and Théberge (1991) demonstrates how magazines for musicians in the 1980s represented musicians both to each other and to marketers as consumers of music products.

The present study unites both approaches to “community” because it addresses a media product that is primarily relevant to the needs of individuals within a physically defined location, but that can also be consumed by others outside that location. Thanks to digital technology, the community constructed by these city magazines is simultaneously based in both geography and imagination, without regard to where the individual audience member is located. This study examines how city magazine editors construct a shared understanding of this community through selection and representation of the locale’s primary symbols, stories, and concerns, all while responding to rapid changes in the local media environment. With this construction, city magazines, just like other local news media, highlight and define key local symbols, bring specific narratives to public attention, and even attempt to provoke action among citizens with regard to significant issues.

Most research in this area has focused on newspapers’ performance of these functions, but as Hatcher and Reader (2012) describe, there are now a wide variety of community information providers in traditional and digital media, including city magazines. For the purpose of this study, city magazines are defined along the lines used by the City and Regional Magazine Association (2014): general-interest consumer publications packaged in a traditional print magazine format, usually published on a monthly or bimonthly basis. Magazines that focus on specific topics within an urban area (e.g., parenting and family life, business) do not meet the “general-interest” qualification. Typical general-interest topics include travel and local attractions, food and dining, local personalities and leaders, local culture, business, and shopping.  Additionally, like the CRMA, this study considered only magazines that “demonstrate a commitment to editorial independent of advertiser interests”; in other words, magazines created by chambers of commerce or similar promotional publications would not qualify. These magazines represent community journalism through their focus on a specific, defined physical location, as well as through their presentation of a local identity in their depiction of key people, places, and issues within their cities.

Though city magazines of this type have come and gone over the years, the genre has persisted. Two of the magazines included in this study are notable examples of this longevity: Honolulu has been published since 1888 (under its original title Paradise of the Pacific), and Philadelphia since 1909 (Riley & Selnow, 1991). Riley and Selnow’s encyclopedic 1991 volume of profiles of regional and city magazines found that 920 such magazines were published between 1950 to 1988; 470 remained in operation in 1991 (Riley & Selnow, 1991). A similarly comprehensive survey of these magazines has not been repeated since Riley and Selnow’s book, but the city magazine genre still appears to be going strong.

Part of city magazines’ resilience may be attributed to the fact that they typically appeal to an upscale local audience that interests advertisers. A 2010 presentation by the CRMA offers some internal and external data on the medium. The presentation should be regarded with some skepticism, as its goal is to convince prospective advertisers of the value of city magazine advertising, but the presentation does at least reveal how the medium desires to present itself. The presentation claims that the association’s member magazines reach “an affluent, active audience” of over 18 million readers that is about 55 percent female, with a median age of 45 and a median household income of about $83,000 (CRMA, 2010, pp. 6-8). CRMA ranks its members’ publications, considered in aggregate, at 12^th on a list of 15 U.S. magazines with “most affluent” readerships (CRMA, 2010, p. 17). Finally, CRMA cites an Erdos and Morgan study to argue that city magazines matter to local opinion leaders, claiming that “better than 8 of every 10…[read] one or more of the last four issues of their city magazine” (CRMA, 2010, p. 22).

This CRMA sales pitch provides some rare comprehensive data currently available on city magazines. This medium is undergoing a great deal of change at present, just like other news media, and few current studies have sought to explore their production, content, or reception.  Three decades ago, a set of studies was published in Journalism Quarterly that provided insights into city magazines. Their findings are still relevant to the current research because they explored the attitudes of city and regional magazine publishers regarding the perceived function of the city magazine. For example, Hayes (1981) found that magazine publishers believed that readers were “champions” for their cities; readers were thought to be interested in city magazines because the publications supported their pride in the cities. The editors Hayes surveyed also felt their magazines were popular because their service stories helped “educated, upwardly mobile, credit-card-carrying adults” effectively use their “increased leisure time and money” (1981, p. 295).

City magazine editors also wanted to offer readers a visually attractive, upscale, and lasting medium that addressed the city in an authentic, knowledgeable local voice: “Metropolitan or city magazines provide the only medium which has the capability of establishing the ‘identity and flavor’ of a market … to capture the true ‘picture’ of the market it serves” (Fletcher & VandenBergh, 1982, p. 14). Of greater specific relevance to this study, city magazines were found by Hynds (1979) to be unique providers (during that study’s time) of perspectives and information newspapers didn’t offer, specifically entertainment, food, and lifestyle coverage. Hynds also asked editors about their perceptions of the city magazine’s function in its community, and found that most expressed “some interest in pointing out local problems and needs … about half see themselves as possible alternative voices to local newspapers” (p. 622).

A somewhat more recent study by Greenberg (2000) provides a critical look at city magazines that combines an analysis of their content and design with insights into their ownership. Greenberg’s analysis found that when major media companies purchased city magazines from their formerly independent publishers, the magazines lost their unique local feel. Instead, their design and content began to match that found in the other city magazines already owned by the major companies. That formula usually provided “toned down and reduced editorial content, increased pages of advertising and lifestyle reporting, new ‘special sections’ filled with consumer reports, and encyclopedic high-end listing sections at the back” (Greenberg, 2000, p. 251). Greenberg argues that this formula addresses local readers not as active citizens of their cities who might be concerned with significant local issues, but rather as consumers of products and services made available by magazine advertisers.

These older studies suggest that city magazine publishers and owners may primarily seek to advocate for their cities and to profit from advertising within the pages of a generally promotional publication — as opposed to seeking to provide serious local journalism. This study explores whether these findings from decades ago continue to represent correctly today’s city magazines. Though it may be tempting for the casual viewer to dismiss city magazines as more entertainment than journalism, these publications do represent a prominent way in which citizens learn about their communities. Though she focuses on local newspapers and television, Kaniss (1991) argues that local news media define urban issues and influence policymaking through their definition of local identity. City magazines also play a part in this process. City magazines claim a particular kind of authority over local identity within their communities. They typically use their cities’ names in their titles. They assess local businesses, personalities, and events in the creation of “best of” lists or local awards that they adjudicate. They are highly visible on newsstands in stores and suggest through their covers what is of value in the local community, based upon their assertion of local expertise.

Moreover, although this study focuses on American city magazines, insights here may also speak to similar publications offered in other countries. For example, Cook and Darby (2013) found that British “county magazines” tended to construct an idealized vision of life in their areas in order to present a positive environment for readers’ encounter with advertising; however, they also argue that the magazines represented a missed opportunity to “fill the news gap” left by weak local newspapers.

City Magazines and the Changing Local Information Environment

Cook and Darby (2013) suggest that space may be opening for city magazines to become more robust local information providers, especially as newspapers’ resources for original, in-depth reporting diminish. In addition, city magazines’ presentation of certain types of information may be best positioned to compete with user-generated media in terms of its innate authority and credibility.

Though local newspapers continue to provide the foundation of original reporting upon which other local news media typically rely (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010), they have also suffered deeply in recent years. Economic turmoil and increased competition from digital media have led to shrinking papers and dramatic layoffs. Between 2000 and 2012, U.S. newspapers reduced their editorial staffs by roughly one-third, from 56,400 to 38,000 (Edmonds, 2013). Decreased resources have limited the amount of in-depth coverage that newspapers can provide. The Federal Communications Commission’s report on the information needs of local communities (2011) found that newspapers’ coverage of local and state politics, crime, and health has diminished the most, though these remain issues of significant public concern.

Newspapers also have not performed well online in terms of constructing strong visual and content linkages to their local areas. Funk (2013) found that newspapers’ websites do not express a strong sense of local identity or of their specific communities, sometimes omitting the names of their communities entirely from the banners of their websites in favor of more “professional” images. As such, online audiences may not sense the newspapers’ local contribution as deeply, experiencing them only as yet another website to be surfed, not as a distinctly local resource. In contrast, city magazines cannot help but proclaim their local connections, given that most of them are titled with some variation of their cities’ names both in print and online.

New media consumption patterns, such as digital magazine editions, social media, and mobile reading, could generate more audience interest in such strongly local magazine content, while public interest in print newspapers declines. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (2012) found that almost three quarters of survey respondents followed local news “closely”; this audience generally preferred the local newspaper for their news. However, younger local news enthusiasts – the city magazine subscribers of the future – paid attention to a wider variety of local news sources, including traditional media, websites, and/or social media (PEJ, 2012). Younger local news users gather local information from varied sources, which may include city magazines’ print and digital products, both today and in the future. This shift in audience preferences may represent a concern and an opportunity for city magazine editors.

City Magazine Structure and Management

City magazine editors may be relatively well positioned to guide their publications’ efforts during this time of change. Although, like newspapers, they must address rising printing expenses and diminishing advertisers’ support, magazines can often better compensate for economic challenges and technological innovations. With non-unionized employees and a significant reliance on freelance writers, magazines can shed staff when resources are tight, rehire new employees with up-to-date technological skills, and assign and pay for work on a more flexible basis (Ekinsmyth, 2002). They do not have to fill a daily news hole. Magazines’ designers are also better equipped to create visual products suited for digital media distribution, such as tablet editions, than most newspaper designers; the print magazine format is easier to translate to digital media.

While adaptation to this new context will always be subject to publishers’ and advertisers’ desires, editors maintain some power to shape their magazines’ futures. While they know their print publications may be imperiled, they are also attempting to innovate so that their publications remain profitable and useful within their communities (e.g., Carr, 2013; Landau, 2014; Mickey, 2013). Editors are particularly critical to this development. They are “community connectors,” with both personal and professional interests in their local communities, fitting Hatcher and Reader’s description (2012) of community journalists. These editors respond to the changes in their local environment and audience based on those interests; they then conceptualize the right blend of content to accommodate those changes and allocate resources accordingly. For some magazines, this transformation has involved a greater investment in investigative public interest journalism; for others, audience engagement and community outreach, in both online and face-to-face forms, have become paramount.

City magazine editors may now choose to move beyond the narrow range of lifestyle topics upon which their coverage has traditionally focused. They may also be motivated to explore new topics by the fact that some of their “turf” — the restaurant and entertainment information for which they have been known — has now been encroached upon by online sources. Over half of Americans, and especially those ages 18-39, use online sources for such information, according to a 2011 survey (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2011); that statistic is likely now much higher. Moreover, city magazines themselves are no longer limited to the print format, and can reach audiences at all times, instantaneously, through their own websites and through social media — tools for which they may already be better prepared, in terms of staffing, than newspapers. Clearly, this is an intriguing set of circumstances for city magazines; “creative destruction” of the old model of city magazine publishing is possible, but the degree to which these publications will choose to shift their mission and format is as of yet unknown.

Though city magazine editors may represent just one genre of journalism, their perspectives reveal larger insights about the impact of changing economic and technological structures on the production of journalism as a whole. To determine whether and how citizens are informed about their cities, it is important to understand how each local information provider develops and distributes its own unique contribution to a city’s information environment.

Given the existing knowledge about the state of city magazines today and the various market and technological forces to which they are subject, this study explored the following research questions:

RQ1. What do city magazine editors perceive to be the role of city magazines in their communities today?

RQ1a. How do the city magazine editors differentiate their magazines’ journalism from that provided by other local news organizations?

RQ1b. Whom do city magazine editors perceive to be the audience for their publications?

RQ1c. What are city magazine editors’ criteria for selecting the major stories their magazines will cover?

RQ2. Are city magazines trying to use new digital technologies to engage their audiences in significant local issues, and if so, how?

RQ3. What are city magazine editors’ strategies for developing their medium in the future?

METHOD

This study explores these questions through interviews with editors at a number of U.S. city magazines. The selection of these magazines began with the compilation of a list of winners of City and Regional Magazine Awards (CRMA, 2013) from 2008 to 2012. CRMA award-winning magazines were selected because these would presumably be magazines doing the “best” work in the field, with regard to satisfying the journalistic norms valued by their peers. This list included magazines receiving awards in these specific categories: General Excellence, Reporting, Personality Profile, Feature Story, Reader Service, Civic Journalism, Community Service Project, Excellence Online, and Multimedia. These award categories are all specifically relevant to editorial content and the magazines’ community engagement. Additionally, all of these awards are given across three different circulation ranges, permitting the inclusion of publications in cities of various sizes.

This initial list was then reduced to include magazines focused on specific cities, as opposed to state or regional magazines. This narrowed list included just 20 magazines for further analysis. This shortened list of magazines also represents diversity in other key factors, including city size, geographic region, circulation, and ownership (independent vs. chain). Magazines’ content, technological savvy, and resources may differ based on city size, ownership, and popularity. The final list of magazines in the study represents variation in these factors.

With this list in hand, highly placed editors at each magazine were contacted via email and asked to participate in an in-depth interview regarding their magazines. These were editors-in-chief, managing editors, or senior editors of long tenure at their magazines. Editors were appropriate interviewees for the gathering of insights about these magazines. They possess unique insights both into the construction of their magazines and into their publications’ perceived functions in their communities. As Holmes and Nice describe, magazine professionals “must have a keen sense of audience and market imperatives and a finely tuned understanding of the culture and power nexus in a specific subject matter” (2012, p. 52). These established professionals know their magazines, their audiences, their communities, and the needs of each. As such, they were able to characterize their magazines’ content, functions, goals, and opportunities.

Of the 20 magazines contacted, interviews were completed with 15, resulting in a 75% response rate. Magazines whose editors participated were: 5280 (Denver), Atlanta Magazine, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, D Magazine (Dallas), Evansville Living, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Madison, Memphis, MPLS St. Paul, Philadelphia, Portland Monthly, and Washingtonian. Table 1 provides additional detail on participating magazines’ circulation, city population, and ownership.

TABLE 1: CITY MAGAZINE CIRCULATION, LOCAL POPULATION, AND OWNERSHIP

Magazine Name and State	Circulation	U.S. CensusLocal Population	Ownership
5280 (Denver, CO)	77,027	610,345	Independent
Atlanta Magazine (GA)	66,996	540,922	Emmis Publishing
Boston (MA)	110,390	645,169	Metrocorp
Charlotte (NC)	35,000	704,422	Independent
Cincinnati (OH)	37,426	333,012	Emmis Publishing
D Magazine (TX)	22,000	1,299,542	Independent
Evansville Living (IN)	13,000	116,584	Independent
Honolulu (HI)	35,000	390,738	Independent
Indianapolis Monthly (IN)	41,000	820,445	Emmis Publishing
Madison (WI)	20,833	235,419	Independent
Memphis (TN)	22,500	676,640	Independent
MPLS St. Paul (MN)	17,710	2,968,806	Independent
Philadelphia (PA)	116,840	1,547,297	Metrocorp
Portland Monthly (OR)	52,892	566,143	SagaCity Media
Washingtonian (DC)	137,002	599,657	Independent

“Independent” ownership refers to local ownership, versus ownership by a larger, national magazine publishing group. Magazines marked “independent” may be one of a few magazines published within their cities by the same publisher, but the publisher focuses solely on one metropolitan area. (Complementary publications often include a business- or family-focused magazine.) Circulation and census data gathered at time of interviews (spring/fall 2012).

The researcher conducted these interviews during spring and fall 2012 by phone. Interviews averaged 30 to 45 minutes in length. The interviews followed an informal format, structured by an outline of key questions (see Appendix), but not confined exclusively to those questions (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). Such interviews permit the researcher and respondent to together explore the respondent’s experiences and the issues they represent: “The subjects not only answer questions prepared by an expert, but themselves formulate in a dialogue their own conceptions of their lived world … [gaining] knowledge that can be used to enhance the human condition” (Kvale, 1996, p. 11).

The editors’ interview responses were then summarized and analyzed to answer the research questions above. All interviews were transcribed by the researcher, and portions of responses representing the issues identified in the research questions were gathered for analysis. Among those responses, common themes, as well as points of divergence, were noted and developed for presentation here by the researcher. To encourage greater freedom of expression in discussions of business and editorial strategy, editors were promised that their interview responses would not be attributed to them by name.

In combination with the other components of the aforementioned larger research project on city magazines, the interviews provide insights into the editorial and business concerns of these magazines, and illuminate the findings of other portions of the study, such as the magazines’ content and their uses of social media. The triangulation provided through the application of these multiple methods will lead to a deeper understanding of all aspects of today’s city magazines in the U.S.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

City magazine editors are aware of and are responding to the changing status of their publications in their local information environments. They are actively working to adapt both the format and content of their magazines to take advantage of new opportunities in ways that will still represent their defining attributes and appeal to their key audiences. Editors were able to clearly articulate a distinct function for their publications within their cities, which included the provision of not only service journalism, but also, in many cases, in-depth, long-form journalism on substantive local issues. The editors offered nuanced descriptions of their audiences that revealed a thorough understanding of their readers, beyond simple demographic descriptions that advertising sales staff might use. Editors also provided detailed story selection criteria that reflected their desire to continue to improve the journalism offered in their publications, while maintaining the types of coverage for which they were known. This blend of the new and familiar was thought to be most likely to sustain their publications during technological change.

Finally, the editors were both excited and daunted by the ways their staffs were working to engage more readers in the magazines’ coverage through social media and other digital tools, and they recognized the possibilities for the transformation of their publications through these media. Though experimentation with these methods varied greatly among the 15 magazines included in the study, the range of uses offered an intriguing snapshot of the opportunities offered by digital media for the reinvention of today’s city magazine.

Editors’ Perception of the City Magazine’s Local Role

Research question 1 concerned editors’ perceptions of their magazines’ role in local communities.  Editors were asked to describe what they believed their magazines did or should do for their local audiences. A frequent, broad response to this question included variations on the concept of the city magazine as an “owner’s manual” for the city. Editors said their goal was to help readers “get the most out of living in their city” and “decipher the city they live in.” The editors were somewhat divided on how true this representation of their cities ought to be to reality. For example, one editor said that the magazine offered “generally a positive picture” of the city, a sentiment echoed by others; yet some editors felt that the representation of the city in the magazine ought to include “what’s good about the city and also what’s bad … we also do a lot of critical stories because we want to call it like we see it.” As one editor put it, “We certainly don’t want to be like a Chamber [of Commerce] piece … [we think,] ‘Is this [story] going to help folks live their lives better here?’” Unlike Hayes’ findings (1981), the city magazine editors interviewed for this study appeared to be interested in presenting a well-rounded picture of their cities, even if it challenges readers’ pride.

Specific topics mentioned by these editors as recurring within their coverage included “our lifestyle coverage, whether that’s dining or travel or restaurants” and “everything from politics to sports to business to style to health … that kind of broad view.” Another editor noted the magazine’s use of content “that’s, frankly, more geared toward conspicuous consumption … that’s part of the equation … of what city magazines do.” Another type of content perceived by an editor to be essential to the city magazine was the usual “‘best of,’ ‘top docs’ [stories] — the things you have to do to sell the magazine.”

These findings resemble those of Hayes (1981) and Fletcher and VandenBergh (1982), revealing little change in this aspect of city magazine coverage in three decades. The “formula” of service content described by many of the editors also sounds quite similar to the model articulated by Greenberg (2000), which appears to be concerned primarily with readers’ role as local consumers. Yet many editors strove to venture beyond this familiar formula of service content in their publications. Regarding this content, one editor explained,

The analogy I’ve always given for it is in Hollywood: you’ll see stars doing a blockbuster movie, or they can do the indie project. That’s what I see us doing. We do the ‘best restaurants’ [story]. It helps pay the bills and it sells on newsstands, but right next to it … we’re tucking a serious investigative piece about a business, or government, or politician, that is paid for by that other story.

That type of substantial content was not often mentioned as a primary purpose of the city magazine, but editors did feel it was important and sometimes indirectly rewarding from a financial perspective:

The journalism is what resonates with people … The fact that we’re putting such clear attention and thought, heart, soul, money, resources into the journalism tells the community, ‘You are important to us. This place is important to us. We’re not just phoning this in.’ … You get that back in advertising dollars because your advertisers know people are paying attention; it’s being discussed.

Finally, one editor noted that the city magazine was more resilient during difficult economic times because it is “tied to local, not national, advertising accounts,” permitting a wider variety of coverage even when market conditions would seem to encourage an emphasis on easier-to-sell content.

Differentiating the city magazine from other local information sources.

Research question 1a addressed how editors differentiated their publications from other local information sources. First, it is worth noting that most of the city magazine editors felt little competition from their local newspapers in terms of coverage or advertising. Newspapers were uniformly recognized to be struggling, and that struggle had varying effects on the city magazines. One editor stated:

15 years ago, 12 years ago, we worried a lot about what the newspaper might do before we started to do a story. Now we don’t even really consider it … recognizing they’re not doing the kinds of stories they used to do.

Newspapers were perceived to lack the resources to investigate and promptly break major investigative stories. Moreover, the editors believed city magazines could cover those stories differently, and perhaps more effectively. The city magazines could offer the “context and perspective in a way that newspapers don’t”; they “can do a more in-depth story that would give more perspective”; they “might not break the news, but … can tell [readers] what news matters and what it really means”; they “do the how and the why, whereas newspapers really focus on the who, what, where, and when.”

City magazines’ ability to build stories during a slower news cycle and to publish longer-format stories allows them, as one editor stated, to “pick up the accountability function that newspapers offered,” though within some limits. Constantly providing fast-paced, breaking news was beyond the scope of the city magazines’ structural and staff resources. But they could do in-depth service ‘packages’ on topics “no one else does, that require work and time other local media don’t have or aren’t willing to invest in, whether the best breakfast in town or a full-scale look at [the local] start-up economy.” In general, while newspapers’ decline was apparent to these editors and they welcomed the opportunity to engage with some of the stories newspapers might once have covered, they also expressed civic concerns about their ability to “fill the role that daily newspapers do and take up their slack,” given their different structures, publishing pace, and advertiser and audience expectations.

This mode of differentiation from newspapers is distinct from that seen in the responses from editors interviewed by Hynds (1979), revealing change in the perceived function of the city magazine in the interim. Hynds found that only 61 percent of the city magazine editors in his survey felt it was important for their magazines to provide “an alternative viewpoint to that of the local newspaper” (1979, p. 621). In contrast, the editors interviewed in this study could readily articulate the relationship between what their city magazine produced and what the local newspaper produced, offering clear explanations of the two information sources’ complementary roles. As media enterprises’ economic situation has become direr and new technologies have offered challenges, perhaps it has become more pressing for city magazines to contemplate their position as local information providers and to determine the best way they can serve audiences and advertisers in this volatile time. As mentioned above, Cook and Darby (2013) describe the growing “news gap” in many communities resulting from newspapers’ decline. It seems city magazine editors are quite aware of this dilemma. Many are actively working to find ways to help fill the gap, within the constraints of their audience’s and advertisers’ expectations.

The editors also noted two other key differences between their publications and other local information sources. One of these was their writing and visual style. The city magazines felt they could provide a point of view and storytelling structure in their stories that newspapers could not. Magazines can “have a voice … and not worry with objectivity in the same way” that newspapers must. Magazines can even choose to advocate for a specific position on an issue: “It’s OK to pick a side as long as you can intellectually and emotionally defend it, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s the right side to be on.” Magazines’ writers can have “recognizable individual voices … it makes the stories memorable regardless of topic.” One editor also suggested that when newspapers did long-form articles, they tended to be “badly edited and clichéd” and didn’t “really tell stories.” Multiple editors also mentioned the appeal of their magazines’ “beautiful design” that could appeal to readers and represent topics in visually attractive and informative ways: “A magazine … it’s just prettier. It’s glossy. The photos look much more clean and clear, and the color sparkles in a way that you never get out of a newspaper.”

A second important difference from other local information sources was the degree of authority that city magazines could assert in their content. For example, one editor argued that user-generated online content about topics like local destinations or dining (as on Yelp or similar sites) couldn’t replace the city magazines’ “unbiased” and trustworthy critical analysis of service information. That analysis offered a “curated or authoritative edge” that other media couldn’t provide. That distinctive quality was a key feature of the city magazine, one editor said, and “is certainly something we’ve played up in recent years because it’s such a singular thing,” not found in other information sources. As one editor said, “User-generated content is awesome, but there’s still a place for someone who tells me where the best restaurant is this month, or five things I’ve got to put on my calendar this month.”

Perceived audience for the city magazine

Research question 1b asked about editors’ perceptions of their audience, which the editors described in relatively similar terms. Beyond simple demographics of relatively high wealth and education, editors often described readers similarly: “the leaders of the city”; “smart … sophisticated … we’re aiming for their brains”; “free time and free cash”; “curious about the city.” Editors also often made statements like “great stories transcend demographics … they resonate with everyone.” The editors believe their readers are enthusiastic about the city (“all magazines are enthusiast publications”) and about journalism. They also see themselves as similar to their readers, at least with regard to their shared attitude about the city. In other ways, they were rather different from the readers: “None of us who work at this magazine are anywhere near the demographic of it.” Therefore, they tended to use their own values and preferences to shape the magazine. Many editors suggested their staffs aimed to create “a magazine we’d want to read.”

Editors’ story selection criteria

Research question 1c asked about the criteria editors use when selecting the major stories their magazines choose to cover. The editors gave a variety of responses when asked about the criteria they used to select specific stories — particularly long-form or investigative stories — for their magazines to cover. These criteria incorporated assumptions about the audience, as described above, but also basic storytelling, competitive, and financial considerations. The editors often first responded that they just wanted “good stories,” which, upon elaboration, they explained meant “human stories” that “transcend just the people involved,” stories with “existential” significance, and stories that created “an emotional connection between us and our audience.” The stories needed to have strong narratives and contain suspense so that readers asked, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen next?” Stories also had to have true, not just tangential, local connections that deepened readers’ understanding of the city: “It’s easy to fall into a trap of what looks like a really interesting story, but when you’re done with it, your understanding of the city isn’t improved … Our big stories tell a story about the city.”

In order to maintain their differentiation from other local information sources, the city magazines also sought to be ambitious with their stories, but not too ambitious in terms of the investment required for any one story. Generally, articles needed to “advance the story” beyond the newspaper’s coverage, if any existed: “We’re choosing stories we know we can do in our own way, put our imprint on … really bring more nuance and depth to than anyone else in our market.” One editor said that rather than commissioning long-form stories, the city magazine was planning to publish excerpts of recently published books on locally relevant topics. This approach was “overcoming the challenge in producing some coverage without resources.”

Finally, one editor mentioned the key role of visual components to the city magazine’s stories, and stated that stories with strong “visual storytelling” opportunities would be more likely to be covered in the magazine. For example, this editor wanted to create more infographics, though it had been difficult to “find an illustrator who could translate what we wanted in an easy-to-understand graphic.”

Digital Technologies for Audience Engagement in Local Issues

Research question 2 addressed the extent to which city magazine editors use digital technology to reach their audiences. Perhaps the most clearly transformative issue for city magazines today is their engagement with digital media. Both their actual social network accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, and their own websites provide opportunities for the immediate publication and distribution of content. Readers can respond to magazines’ content through comments and conversation, share their own “user-generated” content, and interact with the magazines’ staff and with each other.

While the city magazine editors often noted the “challenge of keeping up with new innovations,” they also described many ways in which the web and social media provided new opportunities to serve readers. The editors saw other websites as potential competition for some of their content, particularly service content about dining and travel, but recognized the opportunities for reporting and engaging with readers that the web and social media offer. They also mentioned that digital media could generate “more eyeballs” for advertisers, making digital outreach potentially profitable.

The city magazines’ websites were central to their digital strategies. Notably, they saw their websites as “news sources,” though not typically as providing breaking news. As one editor stated, “We don’t have enough boots on the ground to do [city hall or the state capital]. We have to be more reactive on things like that. We rely on other media,” like local television news or the newspaper, to provide initial coverage that could be pursued further on the magazine’s website.

The magazines’ websites were also places to use their writers’ expertise on a daily basis, complementing long-form pieces in the print magazines. One editor explained the relationship between the website and the print magazine:

Before, they [our writers who are experts on local topics] might only be able to do a story two months down the road, and maybe it’s really long. And now they can provide you with constant updates and analysis and commentary on the same topic. So I think they complement each other, the very short [posts on the website/blogs] and the very long.

The city magazines saw their websites and social media outreach as engaging readers between print issues. With these digital tools, “rarely does a day go by that we don’t have a connection with our readers.” One editor described re-posting stories from the magazine that had been previously published in response to news events. The republication could “make a connection that this was happening in our community today, and we’d published this piece. We already knew this [personality in the news].” This re-posting allowed the no-cost reuse of existing content, connected the magazine’s audience to the news, and demonstrated the magazine’s authority on community matters.

The websites also serve as hubs for video and other multimedia content to complement print articles. The magazines’ online content tended to reach a younger audience than their print editions. That more youthful audience appeals to advertisers. On the websites, the magazines sought to foster interactions with their readers through comments and social media integration. Multiple editors mentioned the value of having conversations with readers about stories on their website, with dialogues and sharing of stories even occurring on a national and international level, well beyond the city magazine’s local focus. The interactions were “definitely a two-way operation or a multi-way operation. [The website] isn’t just us broadcasting out, for sure.” One editor mentioned that a cover story had developed in response to a reader comment on a blog post on the magazine’s site.

Social media similarly enabled these conversations between magazine staffers and the public. One editor commented on the natural fit between the typical style of social media communication and magazines’ conversational, personal voice. Editors appreciated that social media allowed readers to share the magazines’ longer stories widely, and that social media could “reach an audience that the magazine doesn’t and prepare them for future digital products” that the magazine might offer. The social media audience likely skews younger than the audience for the print publications, given the PEJ (2012) findings described above, and so these magazines’ digital outreach may indeed be anticipating the youthful audience’s future desire for more sophisticated local news products. Some editors also described uses of social media for contests and promotions.

One editor noted the more serious potential for city magazines’ social media use: its ability to maximize an investigative story’s impact on not only the audience, but also on relevant policymakers. In this case, the magazine’s writers followed through with social media activity during legislative action pertaining to an investigative story:

As that bill was moving through … [we] were tweeting about it like crazy … Those tweets became part of the debate. The state reps started re-tweeting our tweets, which had links to the piece. And … everybody who had anything to do with this decision has read our piece, and it has dramatically reshaped the debate. And that’s all because of social media.

This example demonstrates how sophisticated use of social media can enable city magazines to disseminate their work, gain support for a specific perspective, and enable conversations around topics that matter within a local area or region.

As a whole, editors saw digital technology as supporting and maximizing the print publication’s circulation and advertising, but also as creating new opportunities for online advertising, interaction with the public, and multimedia reporting. As one editor described, “We try to create a virtuous circle where people are moving back and forth between the website and the print magazine,” with references to each medium embedded within the other, and subscription offers everywhere. While the editors felt the impact of their digital efforts on their print circulation was hard to quantify, some were fairly confident that “all these little [digital] touches” through the website and social media could “get a reader committed” to a print subscription. One editor also mentioned the hope that these interactions could serve a mutual benefit, so that readers also could “get something else out of … interacting with us via Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest.”

City Magazine Editors’ Strategies for the Future

Research question 3 concerned editors’ strategies for developing city magazines in the future. Although many of the plans for their publications’ futures revolved around digital technology, these city magazine editors also stated their intent to continue developing their print products as well. As one editor stated, “people still value the physical object of the magazine as a luxury good or leisure activity … sometimes people are disappointed to find that they were interviewed for our website and not for the ‘real magazine.’ Things in the magazine seem more real and valuable.” The print magazine still holds a certain social prestige among its audience. Within that print publication, editors often said that a major goal was to continue to improve the writing within the magazine: “I want the magazine to really become known to good writers as their home.” That writing would also ideally be applied to a greater variety of topics, for some editors. One editor would like to “put less service on the covers of the magazine and try to do at least two more covers each year that were not service covers … whether it’s profiles, or just important investigative stories.” This editor noted that some in the city magazine business argue that service covers are more appealing on the newsstand than serious topics, but still felt that shifting some covers toward serious topics would be a worthy goal.

In terms of digital strategies, the city magazine editors described the challenge for small publishing companies of taking risks with digital formats. As one editor said, the current situation is one of “confusion in the market,” with many different platforms and tools available to publishers and audiences. Some expressed a desire to let larger publishers “figure it out and make the tools cheap enough for us … without having critical mass, we risk getting caught in between and not being able to keep up.” There was some experimentation occurring, as at one city magazine that had chosen to publish a Kindle Single (one long-form story, sold as a standalone digital product through Amazon) of one of its major stories. This magazine was actively thinking about ways to address its “non-paginated economic future” — a future in which a print publication with static paper pages would no longer be central to its business. Along the same lines, another editor referred to the magazine as a “multimedia event company,” drawing income from not just the print magazine, but also from its online products and from its sponsorship and organization of local events.

Overall, as one editor stated, these city magazines are well positioned in many ways to serve local audiences and advertisers:

It’s really a great market for city magazines because we consumers increasingly want more and more local content. Advertisers and marketers are continuing to look for ways to drill down and be more local. All that speaks really well to city magazines and to making ourselves relevant across media platforms.

As these interviews demonstrated, city magazine editors are working today to explore their magazines’ capabilities in both print and digital media, to differentiate their product from other competing local information sources, to understand and interact with their audiences, and to select stories that serve that audience and take advantage of their medium’s distinctive qualities.

CONCLUSION

This study has demonstrated city magazines’ ongoing adaptation to changes in the local information environment. As newspapers’ resources and influence have declined, digital media have developed to compete with some aspects of their coverage, and with that of city magazines. City magazines have identified key strengths of their own medium and coverage style that can continue to distinguish them to audiences even as this environment and audiences’ preferences shift toward digital media. While they remain fairly focused on specific audience segments traditionally targeted by city magazines – the wealthy and the well educated – they also recognize the potential for digital media to bring their content to broader audiences and to affect local and/or regional opinion leaders.

Data on the media preferences and habits of younger media audiences, mentioned above, suggest that these editors may need to accelerate their magazines’ movement toward digital and mobile platforms. Younger readers, and especially those with higher education and income, use mobile and other digital media for local news and information (Caumont, 2013). Some of these media have encroached upon city magazines’ traditional topic areas, and have done so with user-generated content that costs nothing to produce. For example, Yelp and similar websites/mobile applications collect crowdsourced restaurant reviews that are free and easy to access anywhere. Other sites/apps offer entertainment and local event information.

These sites have only grown since the 2011 Pew report, cited above, which showed that over half of Americans use these sources for food and entertainment information – particularly those aged 18-39, those with greater education and income, and those who use mobile devices, precisely the demographic that city magazines traditionally target. Moreover, most of these young news users have not developed habits of seeking local information in print media and will need to be convinced of the city magazines’ unique utility. Whether these users will consider city magazines’ distinctive presentation of this kind of service information to be worth the magazines’ cost remains to be seen. The availability and popularity of these digital local information sources should encourage city magazine editors to differentiate their magazines’ entertainment and food coverage – along with all of their local content – and to better market their publications’ unique qualities.

This study presents a snapshot of the perspectives of a small group of city magazine editors at a time of volatility for the magazine industry and for journalism as a whole. Though the 15 editors represented a variety of publications, the study does not comprehensively cover all American city magazines, each of which faces a unique set of local circumstances and constraints. Additionally, although the editors expressed their own beliefs about their magazines’ contributions to local information, these views were not gathered concurrently with those of newspaper or television journalists, nor were they tested within this study against actual analysis of their magazines’ content (a final component of the larger research project that is still underway).

Future research should look more closely at these city magazines’ content to determine to what degree they are in fact engaging in the kind of investigative or “serious” coverage that many editors mentioned as desirable, versus city magazines’ traditional focus on service stories. A longitudinal examination of city magazines’ content would document their shift to fill the “news gap” left by newspapers’ decline, if that movement is indeed occurring. Finally, contrasting this coverage with that of local newspapers or local digital news providers would illuminate the differences in coverage content and style among these media. As the literature review revealed, most of the research on city magazines prior to this research project is quite outdated. This study can inform additional research on these publications’ contemporary status and function.

This study also raises questions about how city magazines form and engage a community of readers within a defined geographic area, suggesting that this medium should also be incorporated into future studies of community journalism. The effects of city magazine readership on local audiences should be examined. Do these local readers actually connect with the magazines’ coverage of their cities in the ways imagined by these editors? How does city magazines’ print and digital content invite the formation of a community, and who is or is not included in that community, given these magazines’ traditionally wealthy and educated readership? Do city magazine readers possess deeper understanding of or stronger emotional connections to their cities? To what degree does reading a city magazine support a relationship to the city, or to specific communities within the city? An analysis of uses and effects of local information sources that includes these magazines would aid both researchers who seek to understand the changing urban information environment and all local journalists (magazine and otherwise) who must plan effective content and digital strategies.

Overall, extending our analysis and understanding of information providers within cities beyond just newspapers appears to be increasingly important during this time of transformation in the local information environment.

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About the Author

Dr. Susan Currie Sivek is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College.

 

Marcus Funk

Community newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina hold a front row seat to critical early presidential primary elections; they cover those elections, however, with an exclusive focus on coverage of candidate visits to local communities. Unlike national media, which focus primarily on “horse race” campaign coverage, community newspaper editors and publishers say they consider a candidate’s standing in state and national polls unimportant to their coverage; equally inconsequential are a candidate’s character, values, issues and policies. This survey of community newspaper editors and publishers supports gatekeeping theory but refutes its focus on normative, labeling and conscious deviance. It also helps develop literature on the “relentlessly local” focus of community journalism.

In 2008, Bill Tubbs had a question. The publisher of The North Scott Press in Eldridge, Iowa, asked the Scott County Democratic and Republican parties why their candidates for president were stumping in Davenport, a regional hub, but avoiding other nearby communities. They listened. By the time the Iowa Caucus was over, the Press had face-to-face interviews in Eldridge with the future president, vice president, and secretary of state, as well as a former senator and governor who would be embroiled in scandals within a year.

Eldridge, Iowa, is home to about 5,600 people. Tubbs’ newspaper publishes 5,000 copies every Wednesday. But during the Iowa caucus, Tubbs and journalists like him have more access to national politicians than Rupert Murdoch, Arianna Huffington or Rush Limbaugh – and, arguably, more influence over who will ultimately become president of the United States.

“Our rule: It has to be the CANDIDATE – not his/her sister, brother, husband/wife, or other surrogate. Only the candidate. If they come to our small towns and rural areas, we’ll be there,” Tubbs said.[1] “In Iowa, it’s about retail politics. The candidate who meets the most people and is the most authentic does the best.”

Local newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina play a unique role in the American political process. Every four years, men and women vying to be the next American president walk into the offices of community journalists and ask for local news coverage. Their visits are reported more or less verbatim; their speeches are quoted, local questions are asked and the visit itself becomes the news item.

Academic analyses have indicated that, on the whole, community newspapers are more locally focused, and more locally accountable, than larger publications (Hume, 2005; Lauterer, 2006; Reader, 2006; Smethers, Bressers, Willard, Harvey, & Freeland, 2007). There is also evidence that, under normal circumstances, smaller newspapers offer kinder coverage to visiting presidents than national media (Eshbaugh-Soha, 2008; Eshbaugh-Soha & Peake, 2008; Peake, 2007). Research on early presidential caucuses and primaries, however, has been surprisingly thin, and more focused on broad trends (Palser, 2004; Patterson, 1980; Tewksbury, 2006) and the New Hampshire primary (Freitag, 2000; Golan & Wanta, 2001; Kendall, 2005) than the Iowa caucus (Heim, 2013; Len-Rios, 2002; Schreurs, 1996) or South Carolina primary (Vinson & Moore, 2007). As the first three states in both the Republican and Democratic nomination process, these elections have incredible authority determining who will, and will not, be elected president of the United States. Often, they are decided by a thin margin of votes; in the 2012 GOP Iowa caucus, for example, only 34 votes ultimately separated former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) from former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

There exists in these states a paramount opportunity to research the intersection between local newspapers and the most national of American politics. Conversing with community newspaper editors and publishers, rather than about them, allows researchers to better understand them. What motivates these journalists? What influences their coverage? What do they think of the job they are doing? And, what might their answers illustrate about gatekeeping theory and its focus on deviance?

This study offers scholars an illustrative look at perhaps the most influential community newspapers in the country, as well as an opportunity to test Gatekeeping theory (Lewin, 1947; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009; White, 1950) in a unique environment. Additionally, for professional journalists, this study offers insights, ideas and perhaps inspiration to community newspapers in other states. And, given the surprising length of presidential primaries in 2008 and 2012, it is also possible that party elections in states like Florida, Nevada, Minnesota and Missouri will continue to grow in importance; if so, community journalists in those states could benefit from learning the coverage practices of their colleagues in earlier states.

LITERATURE REVIEW

News Coverage of Presidential Primaries

While scholarly research has scrutinized general elections in remarkable detail (Brubaker, 2011; Davisson, 2011; Delavande & Manski, 2010; Hardy & Jamieson, 2011; Hill, Pitts, Smith, & Smith, 2010; Johnson & Perlmutter, 2009; Ragas & Kiousis, 2010; Woolley, Limperos, & Oliver, 2010), considerably less attention has been devoted to crucial early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Published research offers interesting direction for the current study, but does not offer a comparable analysis of community journalism.

The broadest analyses have indicated a general shift toward “horse race” coverage among national newspapers and television media during the primaries. Freitag (2000) found that themes of “campaigning,” or news concerning strategy, style, strengths and weaknesses, occupied a total of 47 percent of news coverage of the New Hampshire primary between 1952 and 1996 in The Boston Globe and The New York Times; news on issues and qualifications occupied only 12 percent of the coverage. Similarly, Benoit, Hemmer and Stein (2010) found that “horse race” coverage was the most common overall topic (66 percent) among New York Times articles on primaries between 1952 and 2004. The bulk of that coverage focused on campaign strategy (45 percent), polls (11 percent) and campaign events (nine percent). Coverage of the “game,” including “horse race” coverage, also accounted for nearly two thirds of major media coverage of the 1976 primaries (Patterson, 1980). The consequences of an election are also considered factors in media consumption of political news surrounding a primary; high-stake elections see more reader interest than low-consequence ones (Tewksbury, 2006).

A study of the 2000 New Hampshire primary by Golan and Wanta (2001) found that generally, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was treated more favorably in regional media than Texas Governor George W. Bush; McCain was positively associated with reform, leadership and patriotism, while Bush was considered more electable with the best chance to win. An intermedia agenda-setting analysis of the 2008 Iowa caucus found that neutral and liberal political blogs tended to follow the mainstream media’s agenda, while conservative blogs remained independent; agenda setting effects were also present between the media and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) campaign agenda (Heim, 2013). Farnsworth and Lichter (2006) found strong “network news effects” concerning relationships between “horse race” news coverage and poll changes in New Hampshire. Kendall (2005) found a close interaction between media and candidates on the campaign trail over many election cycles, but argued that online and social media are making that interaction less logistically co-dependent.

More specific scholarship has been devoted to political advertising in New Hampshire, which skyrocketed to more than $4.8 million in 2004 – up from $3 million during the 2000 campaign, and even more so from previous election cycles (Devlin, 1994; 2005). A number of studies have investigated the gendered (and arguably sexist) coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) emotional speech during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Bligh, Merolla, Schroedel, & Gonzalez, 2010; Falk, 2009; Shepard, 2009), and one analysis argues that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) reshaped the media narrative surrounding national security and “national insecurity” throughout the primary season (Ivie & Giner, 2009).

Perhaps most interesting for professional journalists is the innovative success of the Iowa Caucus Research Guide, a state-run program designed to piggyback news coverage of local economic development among the deluge of political reporting of the Iowa caucus. The promotion was designed to funnel news coverage, and subsequent revenue, from the caucus to local businesses and programs; estimates valued the program’s benefits at $1.4 million (Schreurs, 1996). Also noteworthy is research by political scientists Vinson and Moore (2007), who argued that local media in South Carolina had greater “local flavor” and tended to be more accurate than national media concerning the importance of “crossover voters,” negative campaigning and veteran’s issues. Coverage of character was also an important issue for local papers; it was less of an issue for national media.

“From our vantage point as scholars living in South Carolina and researching campaign spending in the 2000 presidential primary, we often wondered if the national media were covering the same event we were watching” (Vinson & Moore, 2007, p393).

Outside the election season, there is evidence that metropolitan newspapers are kinder to visiting presidents than the traveling White House press corps. President George W. Bush, in particular, was fond of shopping his policies to voters in their own backyards; Eshbaugh-Soha (2008; 2010) and Peake (2008) and found that, generally speaking, metropolitan newspapers covered presidential visits more positively than the national media. That support fluctuated based upon a newspaper’s resources, corporate ownership and local support for the president, as did support for the Iraq War. The pair also found most (73 percent) of the coverage of the president’s visits tended to be descriptive of the event itself – not a fundamental discussion of policy (Eshbaugh-Soha, 2008; 2010). There is also evidence that coverage of congressional representatives is highly related to geographic overlap between the congressional district and a newspaper’s circulation area (Schaffner & Sellers, 2003), and that local demographics and ideologies can shift metropolitan newspaper coverage in specific directions (Pollock, 2007).

Local Newspapers

However, the definition of “local” media in these studies refers more to metropolitan journalism than community journalism. Studies that specify local newspapers have referred to metropolitan publications like The Charleston Post and Courier and New Hampshire Union-Leader (Devlin, 1994; Freitag, 2000; Golan & Wanta, 2001; Vinson & Moore, 2007). While there is certainly a considerable gap between The New York Times and The Des Moines Register, there is arguably a larger gulf between the Times and the weekly Hampton Chronicle in Hampton, Iowa.

How might the Chronicle cover the caucus? Here, scholarship is blank. The researcher found no scholarship that has explicitly explored the role of community newspapers in the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary or South Carolina primary. While there is considerable evidence that community newspapers are more locally focused and locally accountable to local audiences, both offline (Burmester, 2011; Funk, 2010; Hume, 2005; Lauterer, 2006; Reader, 2006; Smethers et al., 2007) and online (Anderson & DeVault, 2009; Gilligan, 2011; Greer & Yan, 2010; Mersey, 2009), less scholarship is concerned with community newspapers and elections (Shaker, 2011). Community newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina potentially influence major elections; how would they characterize the effectiveness of their coverage, and what influences that coverage?

Gatekeeping theory

Here, Gatekeeping theory has clear utility. The theory is based upon studies of a Cold War-era wire editor at a major newspaper who documented his reasons for accepting, or rejecting, wire articles for publication. Some reasons were entirely practical, like not having enough space or feeling the topic had been fully covered already, but others like “He’s too red” (communist) were entirely subjective (White, 1950). The foundation expanded the World War I persuasion techniques documented by Kurt Lewin (1947), who argued that any number of deliberate or accidental forces could influence what food reaches the domestic dinner table, and what food does not. It has since been considered an individual- and organizational-level influence in Shoemaker and Reese’s Hierarchy of Influences model (1996) and has been expanded into a variety of news formats and environments (Cassidy, 2006; Cheesman & Nohl, 2011; Cuillier, 2012; Haiqing, 2011; Hardin, 2005; Hun Shik, 2010; Minic, 2008). That homogenization of media content has been abundantly illustrated by framing theory (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001), which considers media content (and, in turn, media homogenization) more specifically than media production, which tends to be the realm of gatekeeping theory.

The national media’s preference for “horse race” coverage, often considered as a news frame, can also be considered a Gatekeeping effect. Journalists and editors crafting that coverage are mindful of an artificial industry standard, effectively, of the link between “horse race” coverage and professional newspapers. In a similar way, community newspapers writ large adopt a clear priority on their local communities. If community newspapers behave in unison concerning their communities, and national media homogenously focus on “horse race” campaigns, it seems logical that community newspapers might structure their approach to primary election coverage in similar ways.

Generally, gatekeeping theory can be considered relatively shallow. In their formative work on the subject, Shoemaker & Vos (2009) acknowledge that, “Regrettably, theorizing about gatekeeping has not been in large supply” (p11); the theory can even be considered primarily a tactic of the news-making process. While it dovetails with media sociology (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) and framing (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001) nicely, it arguably lacks the same rigor. There are two reasons, however, why it is a strong choice for this study.

First, although the theory is relatively shallow, that lack of depth makes it highly tangible. Studies that directly address practical news-making decisions, like this one, are better suited using a highly practical theoretical framework such as gatekeeping theory. Of critical interest here are an editor’s practical decisions; those decisions are best considered using practical theory.

Second, a highly theoretical consideration of news as deviance has evolved from that practical focus (Arpan & Tuzunkan, 2011; Boyle & Armstrong, 2009; Breen, 1997; Jong Hyuk, 2008; Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Danielian, 1991; Shoemaker, 1996). On a sociological level, news is like the canary in the coal mine – a barometer for potential threats, both real and imagined, meant to satisfy a basic human need for awareness and security. That focus on deviance, according to the theory, is derived from a lack of interaction between journalists and audiences (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009):

People routinely survey their environments for things that are deviant or unusual because they pose potential threats. These can be as common as a car darting in front of someone on a busy street to less frequent threats like invading armies. … The difference between professional information gatherers such as journalists and the rest of us is that journalists’ surveillance is institutionalized and sanctioned, whereas we generally survey the environment for our more informal and personal purposes. Journalists fulfill people’s innate desire to detect threats in the environment, keep informed about the world, and devise methods of dealing with those threats, whether real or potential (Shoemaker, 1996, p32).

The theory is focused on journalism and media studies, and has its roots in older analyses of social control (Lauderdale & Estep, 1980; Miliband, 1969). The general idea is broadly applied, however. Put another way, in a popular self-help book on anxiety:

The shape on the horizon was either a bear or a blueberry bush, and the only way to find out was to go and see for yourself. If you go off toward the vague shape often enough, eventually it turns out to be a bear, and that day you’re the bear’s lunch. … We’re the children of the children of the children (and so forth) of the ones that played it safe and went back to the cave” (Wilson & Dufrene, 2010, p30).

In journalism studies, deviance has been operationalized under three definitions: normative deviance, labeling deviance, and conscious deviance (Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).  Shoemaker & Vos’ (2009) operationalizations are used here:

Normative Deviance: Behavior, ideas, groups, or events are deviant when they break social rules or norms.

Labeling Deviance: Behavior, ideas, groups, or events are deviant when an individual or group calls them deviant.

Conscious Deviance: A person or group is deviant when aware that their behavior is in some sense wrong or disapproved.

Gatekeeping theory offers fertile ground to study deviance because it is primarily concerned with editorial decisions – deviant or otherwise – and less concerned with the effects or implications generated by the final editorial product. This study on community newspaper coverage of early presidential primaries offers an intriguing window into the study of deviance as well. For most community newspapers, a visiting presidential candidate would be considered extremely deviant – an out of the ordinary event by any measure, if not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. In Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, however, such visits are regular and routine. How might community newspaper editors’ editorial decisions surrounding those visits clarify or complicate the academic understanding of news as deviance?

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This study focuses on the motivations and influences on community newspaper editors covering the 2012 Republican Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary. Relatively little research has been done on American primary elections; much current scholarship has been devoted to the “horse race” focus of national media. As such, this study pursues five research questions.

RQ1: How important are a candidate’s visits to a community to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

RQ2: How important are state or national polls to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

RQ3: How important are a candidate’s character, values, issues and policies to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

RQ4: How do community newspaper editors characterize the value, strengths and weaknesses of their coverage of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

RQ5: Does community newspaper coverage of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary reflect Shoemaker and Vos’ (2009) concepts of normative, labeling, or conscious deviance?

METHODOLOGY

To measure these research questions, this study utilized a 10-question survey of a sample of weekly and bi-weekly community newspaper editors in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The survey was conducted online via Qualtrics, a detailed and highly customizable web survey platform. Technically, different surveys were conducted for newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina; in each, the names of the state and caucus / primary were changed as appropriate, but otherwise the survey content was identical.

Originally, the sample was designed to be generated randomly among 40 community newspapers each from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Email addresses of newsrooms and newspaper editors were collected from online databases from the Iowa Newspaper Association, the New England Newspaper and Press Association, and the South Carolina Press Association. Forty community newspapers were randomly selected from databases in Iowa and South Carolina; however, given the small number of newspapers in New Hampshire, a large random sample was infeasible. Instead, a sample of 20 newspapers was chosen, which effectively represented a census of all independently operated weekly and bi-weekly newspapers in the state; several weekly publications are operated by the same editors and staff, which limited the potential dataset. Furthermore, while there are more than 40 independently operated community newspapers in Iowa and South Carolina, there are not many more. Given the small sizes of these states, too, this dataset represents the lion’s share of community newspapers in Iowa and South Carolina; as such, this sample can only barely be considered randomly generated.

The survey was emailed four times in March and April of 2012, and participants reached a 16 percent response rate. Fifteen completed surveys and one partially completed survey were returned. Although a higher response rate would obviously be preferable, it is important to note the small size of the potential dataset. Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are all relatively small states; indeed, that’s part of their value as early primary states. This sample reached the majority of community newspaper editors in these states, and the dataset cannot be significantly expanded; also, as Lewis and Reese noted, journalists in the digital era are busy professionals who are “simply hard to pin down for an interview” (Lewis & Reese, 2009, p.89).

Responses and response information was kept entirely confidential. For each quantitative question, identical 10-question Likert-type scales were used, with one being “rarely” and ten being “very often.” To conserve space, similar questions were combined into matrixes on the Qualtrics survey.[2]

To answer RQ1, respondents were asked “Roughly how often did your newspaper write about presidential candidates who were …” followed by “Visiting your community?” and “Not visiting your community?” Respondents were then asked how often the newspapers ran Associated Press or other wire service articles concerning the presidential candidates. An additional question asked, “If you had unlimited resources, how many articles would your newspaper write about presidential candidates who were …” followed by 10-point scales for “Visiting your community?” and “Not visiting your community?”

To answer RQ2 and RQ3, a three-item matrix question utilized the same 10-point Likert scale. The question read, “Before the (Iowa Caucus / New Hampshire Primary / South Carolina Primary) in January, how much did you consider the following when planning your coverage of a particular candidate?” Three queries followed: “State or national polls?” “A candidate’s character or values?” and “A candidate’s issues or policies?”

A pair of open-ended questions was used to measure RQ4. Editors were asked “How important a role do you think local newspapers play in the (Iowa Caucus / New Hampshire Primary / South Carolina Primary)?” And “In general, what do you think about the way local newspapers covered the (Iowa Caucus / New Hampshire Primary / South Carolina Primary)?” Responses were analyzed qualitatively to determine majority and minority opinions. Samples culled from the responses and presented here are intended to reflect the majority opinion unless otherwise noted.

RQ5 was also determined qualitatively. Analysis of the open-ended survey questions, as well as qualitative results for RQ4, determined if editor’s perspectives and editorial philosophies were consistent or at odds with Shoemaker & Vos’ (2009) operationalizations of normative, labeling, and conscious deviance; operationalizations are also consistent with a bevy of literature on deviance (Arpan & Tuzunkan, 2011; Boyle & Armstrong, 2009; Jong Hyuk, 2008; Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Danielian, 1991).

RESULTS

Community newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina treated the 2012 Republican caucus and primaries as local news. Community newspaper editors and publishers bucked previous research on national media, which emphasized “horse race” campaign coverage; editors and publishers also argued that their coverage serves an important function in key elections.

RQ1: How important are a candidate’s visits to a community to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

Survey results indicated that candidate visits to a community are quite important to community newspaper editors. On a scale of one to 10, with one being rarely and 10 being very often, community newspaper editors in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina reported an average 7.69 level of coverage of candidates visiting a local community (N = 16, SD = 3.05); conversely, editors and publishers said they reported on candidates who did not visit a local community with an average 1.44 level (N = 16, SD = 0.81). Respondents were also asked, given unlimited resources, how much coverage would be given to candidates who were visiting, and not visiting, a local community; editors and publishers responded with an ideal 8.31 for visiting candidates (N = 16, SD = 2.5), and 2.25 for non-visiting candidates (N = 16, SD = 2.27).

Community newspapers also reported a 1.13 (out of 10) regarding use of Associated Press or wire articles on the caucus and primaries (N = 15, SD = 0.52).

RQ2: How important are state or national polls to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

State and national polls were not important to community newspaper editors and publishers covering the Iowa Caucus, New Hampshire Primary and South Carolina Primary. On a scale of one to 10, with one being rarely and 10 being very often, respondents reported an average of 2.00 (N = 15, SD = 2.07).

RQ3: How important are a candidate’s character, values, issues and policies to community newspapers covering the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

Community newspaper editors and publishers did not consider a candidate’s character, values, issues or policies important when determining news coverage. On a scale of one to 10, responses placed “Character or Values” at 2.20 (N = 15, SD = 1.97) and “Issues or Policies” at 2.80 (N = 15, SD = 2.91).

RQ4: How do community newspaper editors and publishers characterize the value, strengths and weaknesses of their coverage of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary?

Generally speaking, community newspaper editors and publishers considered their coverage an important part of the early caucus and primaries; they also routinely emphasized their local focus on, and value to, their local communities. That local focus effectively meant that if a candidate did not step into a community newspaper’s footprint, they would be ignored entirely.  Representative comments include the following:

“We do not do any stories on candidates who do not visit our area. Simple reason is we only cover local events. If you are not physically in the area, you don’t exist.” (New Hampshire)

“We all do it differently. I don’t understand why a *local* newspaper would send a reporter far afield of its own coverage area to chase candidates. Our policy is they get coverage only if they step foot in our coverage area, period.” (New Hampshire)

“We know the communities, i.e., the voters, and they know us. I believe the community places more trust in my reporting than what other, larger media outlets say.” (Iowa)

“Small local newspapers are not likely to spend a lot of space on a candidate who doesn’t appear in our community or at least send representatives to our community. Only when we can localize the information do we do that in [our newspaper]. We leave it to larger media outlets to print a candidate’s campaign promises, etc., unless we can relate them to something that directly affects our readers.” (South Carolina)

For candidates who did visit, however, that local emphasis brought with it three important attributes: specificity, accountability, and availability. Coverage was specifically tailored to particular communities, editors and publishers said, rather than the broad-spectrum approach used by the national media. Because community newspapers are already more accountable to local audiences, editors and publishers said, their coverage seemed more genuine to local readers as well.  Representative comments include:

“[The Iowa Caucus is] very important. Candidates tend to speak more specifically to small-town audiences, and must answer questions that address smaller portions of Americans. When speaking to a national audience, candidates must speak more broadly. Both specific and broad answers help us get a better picture of each candidate.” (Iowa)

“Local newspapers are in a better position to show how a candidate’s stances affect that community.” (South Carolina)

“I truly enjoy grassroots campaigning, so I enjoy the caucus. Our readership pays attention and appreciates the unbiased, complete and honest reports we provide regarding visits by the candidates.” (Iowa)

“Local newspapers play a critical role in educating voters in New Hampshire. As a small (7,000 circ bi-weekly), we are not able to cover candidates to the extent dailies can, but we cover all visits to the region and look for local angles of national campaigns.” (New Hampshire)

That local focus and accountability was particularly important for rural readers. Many editors and publishers acknowledged the authority national media and metropolitan newspapers carried when covering the caucus and primaries, but in isolated communities, local media adopted increased importance.

“Large dailies…. [the Iowa Caucus] is vital. Rural weeklies like ours, not much. They look to us for local unbiased coverage.” (Iowa)

“With the electronic media leaning to the left or right, the importance of local newspapers ranks very high.” (South Carolina)

“In rural towns, where the local newspaper is people’s first source of information, very important. But the cities have the numbers so that may be a non-factor.” (New Hampshire)

Most community newspaper editors and publishers also felt their coverage of the early caucus and primaries was generally well done. There was a small undercurrent of cynicism, and an acknowledgement that national politics are not the forte of community newspapers, but confidence was generally standard.

“[Community newspaper coverage is important] somewhat. The papers are still the best delivery system to let voters know about appearances by candidates. However, I think this time around most voters were already leaning to Gingrich since he was the lone Southerner in the race.” (South Carolina)

“Studies should be done of the work candidates do to become acquainted with the voters of small towns. Other than the local fans of individual candidates, there is a deep skepticism of the process.” (Iowa)

“Local newspapers give way too much credit to the caucus and the candidates. It’s a giant advertising campaign for both the candidates and the state, with very little substance to it.” (Iowa)

RQ5: Does community newspaper coverage of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary reflect Shoemaker and Vos’ (2009) concepts of normative, labeling, or conscious deviance?

This question was also assessed qualitatively. It considered editors’ philosophies and choices concerning three types of news deviance common in gatekeeping literature: normative deviance, labeling deviance and conscious deviance. Each is based on the notion that news effectively serves as a sociological alarm bell for potential threats, and that news is based on events which are out of the ordinary of day-to-day life – and thus, potentially threatening (Breen, 1997; Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Danielian, 1991; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009; Shoemaker, 1996).

Results consistently rebuked all three forms of deviance.

Normative Deviance: In most communities, particularly small towns, a visit by the American presidential candidate would unequivocally qualify as normative deviance. In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, however, such visits are routine and commonplace – so much so that community newspaper editors expect them, and deny coverage to candidates who do not visit the local community. These visits do not break social norms; instead, they clearly are the norm.

Labeling Deviance: Similarly, in most communities, the coverage of an unusual or rare visit by a presidential candidate would be openly acknowledged as unusual or rare, and thus deviant; literature indicates this is true of sitting presidents as well (Eshbaugh-Soha, 2008; Eshbaugh-Soha & Peake, 2008; Peake, 2007). This is not the case in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, however, where newspaper editors and their readers are both accustomed to being visited early and often by aspiring presidents. No labeling deviance is present because community newspaper editors do not consider the visits unusual or out of the ordinary; in fact, quite the opposite is true.

Conscious Deviance: Qualitative analysis also indicates that conscious deviance is not present in community newspaper coverage of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary. Editors are aware of the importance of their coverage, and the early primaries as a whole, and generally take the elections seriously; however, there is no sense that these states’ privilege, or the primary system in general, is in some sense wrong or disapproved. Conscious deviance does not apply.

DISCUSSION

Practical Implications

Community newspapers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina serve an important function in American politics. They cover among the most critical national elections, the nation’s first Republican and Democratic primaries, and arguably have considerable emphasis over who will, and will not, be president of the United States.

It is intriguing, then, that community newspapers do not give these key elections special weight or unique coverage. Editors and publishers take the caucus and primaries seriously, but only as they impact their local audience and communities. In a sense, community newspapers cover these important elections in the same way they would cover any important election – with an exclusive emphasis on local ideas, audiences and individuals.

It’s almost as if these newspapers provide a window, or an intermediary of some sort, between a local community and a national election. National figures step up to that window to speak with the local community, but only in this one-on-one context does the nation writ large exist. For audience or political science research, this is oversimplified; community newspaper readers have ample access to state, national and international media, and it’s safe to say that voters in these states fully appreciate the national implications of their ballots. However, for the particular study of community journalism, it is interesting to note that the predominant emphasis on local communities trumps the paramount non-local importance of the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina primary.

Community newspaper editors and publishers were unswayed by state or national polls, a candidate’s character of values, or their issues or policies. Front-runners and also-rans, as well as mavericks and partisan whips, were given equal consideration provided they were present and available in the community newspaper’s local coverage area. This places community newspaper coverage in stark contrast with national media, which tend to focus on “horse race” campaign coverage; it also speaks to the well-documented local focus of community journalism, and adds scholarship to the study of gatekeeping theory. Indeed, at least in these instances, media do allow some objective forces (local availability) to influence their coverage while ignoring others (character, values, issues and policies). This is entirely consistent with the notion of gatekeeping.

This study speaks, too, to political science and the American electorate. Community newspapers in these states cover the early caucus and primaries much as any community newspaper might cover a statewide election; this is worth noting given that legislatures in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina invest a great deal of effort to remain at the front of the national primary schedule. These three states occupy a privileged position in American politics; their community newspapers, however, do not treat these elections any differently than any other non-local election. What might that say about the importance and function of the Iowa Caucus, New Hampshire Primary and South Carolina Primary? Further research specifically aimed at political science would be required to explore these questions, but they are certainly intriguing.

Theoretical Implications

As an academic theory, gatekeeping is relatively shallow and perhaps lacking in theoretical development (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). This study argues that its shallow focus is a highly tangible boon – by retaining a practical focus on editorial decisions, the theory empowers practical discussion of extant news coverage and clear editorial decisions. This paper is one such example. Gatekeeping theory allows a salient, practical discussion of the logic and motivations behind community newspaper coverage of the three most critical elections in the American political cycle.

However, there is certainly room for theoretical development and consideration. One of gatekeeping theory’s most intriguing theoretical concepts is the notion of deviance, which has evolved out of classic studies of social control (Lauderdale & Estep, 1980; Miliband, 1969) and stems from a sociological need for humans to recognize and address potential threats of all shapes and sizes (Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Danielian, 1991; Shoemaker, 1996). News media accomplish that threat watching efficiently and expediently (Arpan & Tuzunkan, 2011; Boyle & Armstrong, 2009; Breen, 1997; Jong Hyuk, 2008). Concerning community newspaper coverage of these crucial elections, however, the concept simply fails to apply.

Three prominent perspectives on deviance – normative deviance, labeling deviance and conscious deviance – are plainly inconsistent with community newspaper editors’ reported perspectives and policies. News in this case is not about threats, or unusual events; instead, editorial decisions reflect an important but highly routine ritual of candidate visits, speeches, and politicking. In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, such visits are highly commonplace, and get covered as routine events – even despite the power and authority that one candidate will ultimately assume.

This complicates the notion of gatekeeping as deviance. Perhaps deviance is not as essential to the newsmaking process as previous literature has argued (Shoemaker, 1984; Shoemaker & Danielian, 1991; Shoemaker, 1996); or, perhaps it is inconsistent with the “relentlessly local” (Lauterer, 2006) orientation of community journalism (Pollock, 2007; Reader, 2006; Shaker, 2011; Smethers, Bressers, Willard, Harvey, & Freeland, 2007). Further research will be required to explore the relationship between deviance and community newspapers.

CONCLUSION

This study investigates a curious intersection in American media and politics. At the start of the presidential election process lie the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary and the South Carolina primary; these elections are generally treated as important but highly routine events by community newspaper editors in those states. These editors have the unusual privilege of meeting and covering presidential contenders and, through their coverage, potentially exerting heavy influence over who will, and will not, ultimately become president of the United States.

As these findings indicate, these editors consider these critical elections with national consequences purely within a hyperlocal lens. The news is not about the nation as a whole; it is about a visit to a particular local community, and indeed a routine and expected visit. It is not curious that local newspapers focus exhaustively on local news – that is highly consistent with their editorial mission, and with a range of academic literature (Brewer & McCombs, 1996; Hume, 2005; Lauterer, 2006; Shaker, 2011; Smethers, et al., 2007). However, if ever there were an opportunity for a community newspaper to depart from its “relentlessly local” (Lauterer, 2006) focus, it would be for news coverage of a critical and prominent election like the Iowa caucus. That local newspaper editors stay true to their business model, even here, is highly noteworthy.

Findings presented here overlap also into a number of other theoretical avenues. Although not explicitly explored here, there is clear utility for Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined community (2006); how community newspaper editors and their coverage imagine their hyper-local readership within the context of major elections with national consequences deserves more direct consideration. Similarly, community newspaper coverage of these early primaries deserves explicit consideration concerning media sociology and the hierarchy of influences model (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996), classic analyses of newsmaking (Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978), and the structural pluralism model (McCombs & Funk, 2011; Pollock, 2007; Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1973, 1980). Given the significance of these editors’ coverage of these elections, it would be highly fruitful to consider them from a variety of deeper theoretical perspectives.

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APPENDIX 1: FULL SURVEY

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[1] Tubbs made this comment in his survey response. The mention of Tubbs and The North Scott Press in the introduction was included only after Mr. Tubbs previewed and approved the segment.

[2] See Appendix 1 for full version of the survey as it appeared on the Qualtrics web site.

About the Author

Marcus Funk is a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Michael Fuhlhage

This qualitative historical case study examines how the Garden City Telegram, a small community daily newspaper, diverged from an episodic, conflict-driven frame for the debate over federal immigration reform in the 1980s and 1990s by promoting immigrants as potential citizens rather than outsiders. Qualitative content assessment of locally originated articles, opinion pieces, and wire stories in the Telegram found it promoted community dialogue by including Latino leaders in the conversation. It emphasized thematic coverage that explored the reasons for immigrants’ presence and contributions to life in southwest Kansas.

A bellicose scenario has become familiar in American discourse about immigration reform. Advocates for English as the government’s official language bellow that printing ballots and legal documents in Spanish kowtows to foreigners and wastes millions of tax dollars (U.S. English, 1983). Meanwhile, blue-collar nativists rage that “illegal aliens” take jobs away from Americans (Borjas, 1996). And conservative elites argue that accommodating foreign newcomers would undermine American culture (Buchanan, 2002). The scene is not Montgomery, Ala., where Gov. Robert Bentley enacted House Bill 56, which prohibited citizens from doing business with undocumented immigrants and required migrants and those who look like they might be migrants to prove their legal presence in the United States on demand. The year is not 2011, when that law took effect. The debate has nothing to do with the current mania for “securing our borders.”  Instead, this scenario occurred in the early 1990s. The place was Garden City, Kan.

Latino immigration has been commonly associated with urban areas and the states along the U.S.-Mexico border (Chávez, 2009). Because of this geographical assumption, it might have been easy for scholars of community journalism and diversity to ignore this small meatpacking town in a remote corner of the High Plains. But if journalists in the rest of the country had paid more attention, they might have recognized that neither Alabama nor Arizona, whose S.B. 1070 provided a model for H.B. 56, has had a monopoly on debates between nativists and those who advocate for Latino immigrants’ rights. They might have recognized the growing pains experienced by journalists caught in the demographic upheaval of immigration. Further, news media might have resisted the urge to frame the story in ways that promote conflict and threat perception and the incivility that has marked nativist responses to media discourse about immigration (Chavez, 2008). The Garden City Telegram, a newspaper with a daily circulation of 9,000 at its peak in the late 1990s (11,700 including its 2,700-circulation weekly Spanish-language supplement), struggled to make sense of the stream of Latino newcomers who came to town after IBP built the world’s largest beef packing plant outside town. Once it recognized these were foreigners, the newspaper attempted to help the immigrants find a place in the community, earn U.S. citizenship, and learn to follow local laws while preserving their cultural identity. The purpose of this article is to examine one rural community newspaper’s response to demographic change. Using the methods of the qualitative historical case study, this research shows that the Telegram served as a cultural mediator for Spanish-speaking newcomers and longtime residents by providing a locally generated alternative to the conflict frame prevalent in typical coverage of immigration. The paper’s editors and reporters promoted understanding among disparate ethnic groups, provided a voice for immigrants, and cultivated readership among Spanish-speaking immigrants who needed information to orient themselves to their new home. This research is important because it reveals in the Telegram a model for similarly situated news organizations facing similar demographic changes today as Latino immigrants take up residence in rural communities that have long been mostly white and black.

LITERATURE REVIEW: HISPANICS AS TROUBLEMAKERS AND TROUBLED PEOPLE

Hispanics — this article uses the term interchangeably with “Latinos” in reference to people with heritage in the Spanish-speaking countries of Spain and Latin America — have been virtually invisible to mainstream news media unless they were portrayed as troublemakers and victims of crimes committed by other Hispanics. American journalism has neglected Hispanics with the exception of sensational coverage of violent outbursts, such as the Zoot Suit Riot of 1943 (Salwen & Soruco, 1997). At the macro level, that is, at the level of the narrative frame, 1970s news coverage of illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border was biased by its reliance on Border Patrol spokespeople and other institutional sources who had an interest in portraying illegal immigration as a growing problem and portrayed immigration in a negative way (Fernández & Pedroza, 1981). That study found that news organizations relied mainly on non-Hispanic reporters and that a reporters’ Hispanic ethnicity had a positive correlation with their likelihood of getting their information from non-institutional sources such as illegal immigrants. Several late-twentieth-century studies found the news disproportionately represented Latino naturalized citizens and immigrants as criminals and as drains on government social services (Fernández & Pedroza, 1982; Greenberg, Heeter, Burgoon, Burgoon & Korzenny, 1983; Ramírez-Berg, 1997; Rodríguez, 1999). Patterns have included an emphasis on sensationalism, exaggerations of the extent of illegal immigration, harsh tones in reporting on the subject, and lack of critical inquiry into assertions that illegal immigration heavily burdens taxpayers (Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, 1994). Speakers and participants at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference in 1993 noted mainstream media cover Hispanics without a grasp of their historical context, resulting in superficial coverage, while business coverage has focused on strikes and portrayed peaceful labor actions as violent, further promoting the conflict frame (Gersh, 1993). News reports have represented Hispanics and African-Americans as lawbreakers and underrepresented as law enforcers relative to their representation in criminal and police populations (Dixon & Linz, 2000).

At the micro level of analysis — the level of linguistic choices involving phrasing and preferred terminology — news media have depicted Hispanics as foreign to America; used dehumanizing nouns such as “aliens” and “illegals” to characterize undocumented immigrants; and included Hispanics only in the context of crime, entertainment and civil rights (Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, 1994). Los Angeles Times articles about the debate over the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 found that metaphors reflected anti-immigrant sentiment (Santa Ana, 1999). The following metaphors were used in Proposition 187 discourse: immigrants as animals, as debased people, as weeds, and as commodities.

Research on the news media’s role in the portrayal of immigration in rural areas beyond the Borderlands states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas is sparse. Most scholars have focused on the zone along the U.S.-Mexico border and cities where Mexican immigrants have tended to settle since the 1900s. More recent research has delved into media representation of Latinos in communities where their presence is relatively new. Lauterer (2006) examined how seven North Carolina newspapers accommodated Hispanic immigrant populations. The independent English/Spanish bilingual newspaper Idaho Unido subverted the dominant media paradigm in rural Idaho (Beachboard, 2007). Vargas’ content and textual analysis (2000) found news reports in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer newspaper gendered Latino news as feminine and reproduced a stereotype of Latinos as underclass peons. Paulin (2004) found in a broader study of five Southern mainstream newspapers that most did not portray immigration negatively, attempted to portray Latinos positively, and promoted social understanding. Still, Latinos were portrayed as victims who lacked control over their circumstances. A mixed-methods study (Stewart, Pitts & Osbourne, 2011) of the Virginian Pilot found that the newspaper attached negative stereotypes to Latino illegal immigrants and stigmatized them as members of an out-group.

Framing theory has played a prominent role in studies of media-constructed difference among ethnic groups. Framing involves selecting aspects of perceived reality and making them more salient in a way that promotes a particular definition of a problem, interpretation of cause, evaluation of morality or recommendation for treatment of whatever the text describes (Entman, 1991). Micro-level indicators of framing include the selection of sources and details (Entman, 1991; Fernández  & Pedroza, 1981). Macro-level indicators include organization, storytelling, and narrative emphasis (Iyengar, 1993; Domke, McCoy & Torres, 1999; Kellstedt, 2003). Frames are persistent (Reese, 2001), but can shift, change and be replaced (Hertog & McLeod, 2001). Framing’s focus on the connection between changes in social conditions and the construction of reality make it an appropriate theory to apply in the present study.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS: HISTORICAL CASE STUDY WITH TEXTUAL ASSESSMENT

This historical case study examines the Telegram’s negotiation of the tension between American demand for undocumented Latino immigrant labor and nativists’ urge to push immigrants back to countries of origin during debate over and implementation of immigration reforms from 1986 through the mid-1990s. Construction and meatpacking jobs in the Midwest and Southeast have given those regions the fastest-growing Hispanic immigrant populations in the United States (Durand, Massey & Charvet, 2000). By focusing on coverage in a community beyond the Borderlands, this study addresses a neglected area of research. The following research question guided a qualitative textual analysis of 47 locally originated articles, editorials, columns, and wire service stories in the Telegram:

RQ: How did framing of Latino immigration change during federal immigration reform in the 1980s-90s?

This project, which also employed interviews with four Telegram journalists and two community service providers, sprang from a larger cultural historical case study that used guided in-depth interviews with journalists and community leaders, archive research, and qualitative textual analysis of 461 articles, editorials, columns, and letters to the editor, to examine how the Garden City (Kan.) Telegram covered public debate surrounding changes in public policy and culture concerning Latino immigration in southwest Kansas.

Historical case studies aim to understand a situation from multiple perspectives. Sources may include published communication artifacts, such as books, periodicals, and government documents; and private communication artifacts, such as company reports and personal correspondence. The method of “content assessment” has been used by media historians who are interested in the cultural context of journalistic products and practices (Kitch, 1997; Marzolf, 1978). This method relies on “reading, sifting, weighing, comparing and analyzing the evidence in order to tell the story” (Marzolf, 1978, p. 16). This approach has three prongs: assessment of content for the ways media convey values, attitudes, and social norms and embrace or exclude groups; examination of the backgrounds and social systems of the producers of media content; and the significance of journalism’s presentation of information, values, and opinions. Sources in the present study include Telegram articles, interviews with newspaper staff and community stakeholders, and documents concerning the Garden City’s changing population. Content assessment is appropriate because this study set out to examine the way media content changed as demographics shifted.

FINDINGS: THEMATIC VS. EPISODIC COVERAGE IN THE TELEGRAM

The present study found the Telegram promoted community dialogue by making Latino leaders part of the conversation and emphasized thematic coverage of public debate that explored the reasons for the presence of undocumented immigrants in southwest Kansas. The Associated Press and Harris News Service, on which the Telegram depended for statewide, national and international news, emphasized episodic coverage that relied on the news value of conflict. This was not wholly unexpected since conflict, not understanding, is prominent in the criteria detailed in Tuchman’s pioneering 1973 study of news work routines. Conflict is also prominent among indicators of news value values in two of the most commonly used college reporting textbooks (Mencher, 2011; Brooks, Kennedy, Moen & Ranly, 2008). Nonetheless, understanding was a vital element in the Telegram’s local articles.

Garden City’s history of Hispanic immigration is so long and complex that the journalists of the Telegram had difficulty recognizing the change taking place around them in the early 1980s. In 1986, The Telegram was just beginning to grasp the extent of a demographic shift triggered in 1980, when IBP Inc. built the world’s largest packinghouse in Garden City (Broadway, 2000). From 1980 to 1990, the southwest Kansas town’s population rose to 24,318 from 18,246, a gain of 33 percent, and with the population increase came increased demand for police and firefighting services (Donelson, 1997). By 2000, 43.9 percent of Garden City’s 28,451 people were Hispanic, a startlingly high proportion given that Hispanics constitute just 7 percent of the population statewide (Census, 2011). Most of the growth came from Spanish-speaking immigrants drawn by low-skill jobs at the packing plants, where as much as 80 percent of the work force was Hispanic (Leiker, 2002).

For the most part, the Telegram showed little awareness of immigration issues relating to Hispanics through the late 1980s. It took wire service reports about pending immigration reform in Congress and Hispanic community leaders’ agitation about police harassment of Mexican-Americans and Latino immigrants for the paper to realize the nature of the demographic change in their midst. The Telegram’s small reporting staff devoted itself to covering the local community. Because the newspaper’s reporters failed to acknowledge the presence of recent immigrants in and around Garden City, the Telegram relied heavily on AP articles for immigration news through 1989. This is not to say that Hispanics were left out of the newspaper; rather, the Telegram did not recognize that the newcomers were any different from the town’s assimilated Hispanic population. Mexican-Americans had been part of the community since migrant workers came to southwest Kansas as sugar beet and wheat farmworkers and Santa Fe Railroad maintenance workers around the turn of the twentieth century (Oppenheimer, 2003).

In the late 1980s, both the Kansas government and the journalists at the Telegram became increasingly aware that native-born Mexican-Americans were not the only kind of Hispanics in the state. Nominal and structural changes in Kansas’ bureaucracy provide evidence of this. In 1986, the Senate Committee on Governmental Organization endorsed a bill changing the name of the Kansas Advisory Committee on Mexican-American Affairs to the Kansas Advisory Committee on Hispanic affairs (Associated Press, March 16, 1986, p. 7). As of 1986, 21 percent of Kansas’ nearly 62,000 Hispanics were of Cuban, Central American, Puerto Rican or other descent, and the state changed the name of the committee to acknowledge a growing percentage of the state’s Hispanics were of non-Mexican lineage.

The Telegram relied on Harris News Service, owned by the paper’s parent company Harris Enterprises, for reports on the beginnings of immigration reform in 1983. Harris reported U.S. Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas voted with the majority when the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to overhaul immigration regulations in an effort at “curbing the flow of illegal aliens into this country by creating a system of civil and criminal penalties against employees who knowingly hire such aliens” (Harris News Service, 1983, p. 1). The legislation stalled for three years but ultimately became the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Newton, 2008). Congressional debate and talks leading to passage of the IRCA nearly went unnoticed by the Telegram until the bill reached a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of immigration reform, when it became front-page news (Associated Press, October 10, 1986, p. 1).

Covering the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

If there were any doubts whether there were foreign-born Hispanics in Garden City, they were erased in the late 1980s, but the Telegram was slow in picking up on radical changes to immigration laws that were in the works in Congress. Buried on page 8 on June 26, 1986, the paper carried an Associated Press article that reported the House Judiciary Committee approved a measure designed to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants —AP wrote “illegal aliens” — and improve conditions for those already in the United States (Associated Press, June 26, 1986, p. 8). Assuming the editors were aware of illegal immigrants in the community, the article would have had two main audiences: Residents with acquaintances or relatives who were illegal immigrants, or employers with workers who were in the country illegally. Then the story disappeared for three and a half months when, out of nowhere, news of possible immigration legislation popped up on the front page. The lead front-page headline blared, “Immigration bill revived” (Associated Press, October 10, 1986, p. 1). The bill was referred to as “the immigration bill” or “immigration reform legislation” throughout the legislative process. Not until the following spring did articles in the Telegram refer to the Immigration Reform and Control Act by its proper name  (May 1, 1987, p. 2). The banner headline October 15 announced, “Immigration bill nears compromise” (October 15, 1986, p. 1). The lead emphasized the reason for the flow of immigrants:

After years of failure, Congress is within a whisker of approving a bill designed to shut down the stream of illegal aliens crossing the border for new job opportunities in the United States [emphasis added]. Compromise legislation was approved Tuesday by House-Senate conferees, who took a cue from successful tax bill writers earlier in the session: They locked out the lobbyists and negotiated in secret (p. 1).

The phrase “for new job opportunities” fits a macro-level narrative frame of illegal immigrants as participants in the American dream — that is, people seeking opportunity they could not find in their home countries. The article detailed the bill’s provisions: “an amnesty program for long-term illegal aliens and a system of fines against employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. The amnesty would apply to those who came to this country before 1982.”

The complications that amnesty might pose — chief among them was fake documentation — were noted in a local sidebar, the first Telegram staff reporting on the topic since immigration reform reappeared in 1986 (Zubeck, 1986, p. 1). The sidebar reported an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 undocumented immigrants were in southwest Kansas, with 35,000 in the state. Although Garden City had an INS field office, its officers referred questions to an INS deputy district director. The director said that during the previous year, the INS concentrated on identifying and deporting illegal immigrants who were criminals or who were holding jobs that could be held by U.S. citizens or foreigners who were in the country legally. Only 1,750 had been taken into custody in Kansas and Missouri, the two states administered by the regional office in Kansas City, Mo., combined. That such a small number were deported suggests the rest were not entirely unwelcome. Story framing can be defined as much by what is left out as by what is included. In this case, the only sources represented federal agencies, whereas the reporter could have sought comment from local immigrant or minority advocacy groups such as United Methodist Mexican American Ministries, the G.I. Forum, or the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Society, all of which were active in the Garden City area. Instead, the Telegram let a bureaucracy story remain a bureaucracy story rather than humanizing it with the voices of immigrants or their advocates. The paper also ignored businesses that might have been affected by the new rules for employing immigrants.

Although the Telegram carried a story on House approval (Associated Press, October 16, 1986, p. 1) and how the bill awaited final approval in the Senate with the endorsement of President Ronald Reagan (Associated Press, October 17, 1986, p. 1), the newspaper ran nothing about Reagan signing the bill into law. Instead, the story went dormant until just before the IRCA was to be implemented. Members of the community, however, did not keep quiet about it. A letter to the editor from Roman Catholic Bishop Stanley Schlarman of the Diocese of Dodge City (Dec. 20, 1986) during Christmas week read:

Over the past few years, thousands have left their homelands for political, religious and economic reasons and have migrated to our area of Southwest Kansas in search of a better life. These newly arriving immigrants, representing many nationalities, whose religious and cultural backgrounds are very different, form an impressive mosaic of people. They help form our one nation under God. They bring special gifts that enrich our communities and our lives, and should be seen as blessings from God. … Let us take to our heart the words of the Divine Immigrant, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35) (p. 4).

Letters on controversies have the potential to trigger a series of letters in response. Yet this one did not. Between the bishop’s letter and implementation of immigration reform in May, the topic came up four more times. Telegram columnist Dolores Hope (March 4, 1987) wrote:

Garden City now embraces a diverse population. While many who have roots here are still around, many others have moved in … some of them, perhaps, to live here for a long time and others very briefly. The experiences of the newcomers must vary greatly, depending on both their circumstances and their personalities. Some may prefer anonymity while others seek inclusion in the life of the community. You may not know them personally, but maybe that won’t matter if you need help … or if they do (p. 4).

In an interview conducted for this study, Hope seemed unaware of how much she had written about Latinos and immigration and did not perceive her own writing as unusually empathetic or sensitive about them when asked about her connection to those topics. Her treatment of these subjects may be explained by her family’s membership in the Roman Catholic Church. Hope’s columns reflected church teachings on social justice, including the ideas that it should not be illegal to cross a border to escape poverty and that all human life is sacred (H. Hope, 1988; Blume, 1996). The Catholic and United Methodist churches took the most active role in helping immigrants relocate in southwest Kansas. The Telegram also pointed amnesty-seekers to the Catholic Agency for Migration and Refugee Service in Elkhart, southwest of Garden City and just north of the Oklahoma state line (Garden City Telegram, March 11, 1987, p. 3). The Telegram also publicized a public meeting about the new immigration law where an immigration lawyer was available to explain the law. Employers were encouraged to attend, and information was to be provided in both English and Spanish (Garden City Telegram, April 1, 1987, p. 3).

Not all in Garden City were so welcoming. A letter to the editor (Todd, 1987) complained that illegal immigrants were keeping the writer from getting work:

I have lived here for two years and have 100 job applications out to which no one has had the courtesy to answer. But I keep seeing their help wanted ads in The Telegram. IBP, The Hilton, K-Bobs Steakhouse, Val Agri and the list goes on. The joke about it all is that they claim to be Equal Opportunity Employers. The only way I have been able to survive in Garden City is that a man and his wife asked me to take care of their rentals, and in return my family and I get our rent and utilities. But a man can’t support a family this way. I want to take care of my family and have pride in doing so. Why won’t anyone give me a chance? If more personnel managers were in my place they might understand how I feel. People that are citizens of the United States are not being given a chance because employers would rather hire non-citizens with no experience just because they will work for a cheaper rate or because they feel sorry for them. Well it’s time that you take a look at our community and feel sorry for the citizens of the U.S. We need work too! (p. 4)

“Both sides of the story” vs. “all sides of the story”

While the Telegram showed its awareness of immigration issues, federal officials responsible for putting the law into effect acted as if implementation took them by surprise in the spring of 1987. So did employers. A wire story (Associated Press, May 1, 1987) explained:

Even before historic immigration reforms take effect next week, critics are saying the government has botched the law so badly that extensions may be necessary to accommodate a flood of illegal aliens applying for amnesty. The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s final rules governing the immigration were published today in the Federal Register, just two business days before the opening of the amnesty program and a month before the start of employer sanctions. (p. 2)

U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer, one of the bill’s principal writers, suggested the deadline for amnesty applications should be extended because of disarray at INS offices (Associated Press, May 1, 1987a, p. 2). A wire sidebar warned that employers were unprepared, noting, “Many employers, ranging from farmers to restaurateurs, are not ready for the new immigration law a little more than a month before it bars the hiring of illegal aliens, business and worker representatives say” (Associated Press, May 1, 1987b, p. 2). The sidebar cited the concerns of business and labor leaders such as Frederick Krebs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who lamented, “You’ve got a lot of employers out there who, despite all the publicity, don’t know. Others are aware and want to do something, but they’re not sure what they want to do.”  The sidebar quoted leaders with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and the National Council of La Raza who bemoaned employers’ pre-emptive efforts to fire or lay off workers suspected of being in the country illegally.

A comparison of Associated Press and Telegram coverage yielded a notable contrast. The Associated Press portrayed stories with a frame of conflict, a natural byproduct of the journalistic admonition to “always tell both sides of the story.” This approach can preclude moderate viewpoints from being represented. With this approach, reporting becomes a game of opposites without middle ground in which a reporter quotes one Democrat for every Republican or one labor source for every employer source. The Telegram, in contrast, framed its coverage in terms of stakeholders, not opponents, thus providing a continuum of points of view rather than opposites (Neufeld, May 5, 1987, p. 1). The sources were Mike Heston of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty office in Garden City; Jim Bennett, an INS enforcement agent in Garden City; Luisa Galeano, manager of Harvest America, a social service nonprofit that aided rural migrant and seasonal farmworkers and poor Hispanics; and the Rev. Penney Schwab, director of United Methodist Mexican American Ministries, which provided health care and translation services for poor Hispanics. The accent was not on showing conflict, but on telling about the procedures and potential difficulties in applying for amnesty. Adding to this pragmatic approach was a sidebar telling amnesty applicants and employers about their rights and responsibilities under the new law, including a list of things one must do to apply. At the end of the article was a paragraph in shaky Spanish that told Latino immigrants whom to call for help with applying for citizenship: INS, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, and the United Methodist Care Center.

The Telegram’s terminology was also significantly different from AP’s. The lead of the Telegram’s first local story on the new amnesty avoided the label “illegal aliens” in favor of a more descriptive phrase: “Thousands of people [emphasis added]— perhaps millions — who have lived and worked illegally in the United States now have the chance to live legally and openly” (Neufeld, May 5, 1987, p. 1). The offensive term “illegal aliens,” however, did not entirely disappear from the Telegramuntil the early 1990s after the arrival of reporter Sarah Kessinger, who became the first editor of La Semana. An example typical of her approach appeared in a September 1991 report that under a new federal law, annual immigration would be increased by 100,000 a year. The terms she used were “local immigrants,” “people,” “immigrants,” “residents who had been in the United States since before 1982,” “foreigners” and “personnel from a Canadian or Mexican branch” (Kessinger, Sept. 28, 1991, p. A1).

The first wave of applicants was a mere trickle. The Telegram devoted a quarter of the front page May 6 to a photo of one INS staffer sitting alone at a table next to rows of empty chairs in the Garden City immigration legalization office, another photo of two INS officials examining an immigration legalization form, and a story on the first day of the amnesty. Again, the lead avoided using “illegal aliens” as its subject. Rather, it read, “Sixteen people showed up Tuesday on the first day of business at Garden City’s immigration legalization office, but an official expects activity to pick up as people gain confidence in the amnesty process” (Garden City Telegram, May 6, 1987, p. 1). An AP article told a similar story nationwide at legalization offices in Connecticut, New Jersey, Boston and Los Angeles, but unlike all of the AP’s previous articles, its lead used “illegal immigrants” instead of “illegal aliens” (Associated Press, May 6, 1987, p. 1).

A month later, and with 11 months remaining, a Telegram reporter wrote that applications were still slow, with a misleading headline that read, “Chances are running out for amnesty” (Neufeld, June 11, 1987, p. 1). The headline took its cue from INS district director Ron Sanders, who said, “We can’t overemphasize that the clock’s running and time’s running out on the program.” The article provided some reasons for the lack of applicants, including office hours of 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Such hours would be difficult for working people to fit into their schedules, given that many worked at the IBP meatpacking plant, where strict work rules made it tough to get time off for any reason (Stull, 2003). One reason there were few applicants, the Telegram found, was that although the Garden City office had a phone, INS officials set it up with an unlisted number to “protect confidentiality.” The Telegram listed the toll-free number to give amnesty-seekers a chance to apply (Neufeld, June 11, 1987, p. 1). Schwab, of United Methodist Mexican American Ministries of Garden City, wasn’t puzzled by the initial lack of applicants and argued that the number was unlisted because the INS did not want to be inundated with phone calls. Interviewed for the present study in 2007, Schwab said:

We were processing paperwork during the amnesty, and Immigration set up this office.  They had an unlisted phone number — they wouldn’t run it in the phone book, and they never had anybody come to the office and they had to close the office because of it.

Regardless of the reasons, the article noted the most pragmatic and common reason in favor of the amnesty — immigrant labor was needed, regardless of nativist opposition:

Recent news reports have said cherry, strawberry and other perishable crops are rotting in California and Oregon because there aren’t enough immigrant workers — legal or illegal — to pick them (Neufeld, June 11, 1987, p. 1).

The scenario represented an interesting turnabout in the framing of immigration. Whereas “illegal alien as troublemaker” or “illegal alien as drag on society” have been the most common frames for immigrants in the news, it was the INS that got labeled as a burden in the Telegram. The headline on Telegram Managing Editor Fred Brooks’ June 16, 1987, editorial read, “INS red tape.” It noted:

Red tape is killing the federal government’s illegal alien amnesty program. Much of the red tape is needless. Most of it is wasteful. All of it is frustrating. … Frustrating are the bureaucratic explanations and the excuses for problems. That’s to be expected with any new government program, but the illegal alien amnesty program has been particularly blessed with a good number of bureaucratic gremlins. There’s still time for the INS to salvage things, if it’s willing to cut the red tape (Brooks, June 16, 1987, p. 4).

Two years later, after the INS closed the Garden City enforcement office, Telegram editor and publisher Jim Bloom wrote:

Closing the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Garden City office is a foolish decision. But foolish decisions are the norm from the knucklehead higher-ups in the INS. … It is difficult to believe the INS, by retreating to Wichita, will do a better job of enforcing immigration laws on the frontlines in southwestern Kansas (Bloom,  November 29, 1989, p. 4).

The Telegram also blamed companies that hire illegal immigrants. A June 26, 1987, article noted the paperwork employers were required to check to verify workers’ identity and work eligibility (Neufeld, June 26, 1987, p. 1). In news articles through that date, it was frequently workers who were labeled “illegal,” not their scofflaw employers. That was not the case in that day’s house editorial, which called the required I-9 employment eligibility form “the backbone of the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986” (Brooks, June 26, 1987, p. 4). The editorial at long last provided acknowledgment of the companies that hire illegal workers as lawbreakers, comparing them to speed-limit scofflaws:

There will, of course, be a few “speed traps” set by the INS every so often. Fines will be stiff, from $100 to $1,000 for each ineligible employee. That threat should catch the attention of most employers. We hope it does, because the only way for the U.S. to regain control of its borders is to eliminate the economic incentive for companies to hire, and thus implicitly recruit, illegal aliens. (p. 4).

The frame of “scofflaw employers” resurfaced in an editorial that Bloom wrote in response to a New York Times report headlined “Vast fraud by migrants found in amnesty plan.” Bloom wrote:

Alas, in the face of considerable lobbying by fruit and vegetable growers in Texas and California, Congress created a loophole. The growers wanted to protect their cheap labor force. So instead of having to prove nearly five years of continuous residence, most agricultural worker applicants had to show only that they had done 90 days of farm work between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986. … Now the Immigration and Naturalization Service has identified 398,000 possible fraud cases among the farm program applications. … To sum up, the amnesty program and the stiffer immigration laws outlined in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 are as open today as they were when the act was passed.” (Nov. 22, 1989, p. 4)

Not all of the Telegram’s attention to immigration matters went to undocumented workers. The newspaper also celebrated members of the community who successfully completed the path to U.S. citizenship. “New citizens: Doctor and Mrs. Arroyo make it official,” read the headline on December 10, 1987. Zefarino and Violeta Arroyo, immigrants from the Philippines who came to Garden City in 1968, became legal residents in 1972 and were sworn in as naturalized citizens with about 140 others from western Kansas, mostly Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians (Post, Dec. 10, 1987, p. 2). “We’ve been paying our fair share [of taxes],” Violeta Arroyo noted, reinforcing the story’s immigrant-as-exemplar frame.

The amnesty program then went unmentioned in the Telegram until April 1988, when only a week remained for people to apply. The front-page article reminded prospective applicants which documents were necessary and informed readers that the INS would accept incomplete applications and file supporting documents later (Neufeld, April 27, 1988, p. 1). The article also noted the INS closed the Garden City legalization office because it wasn’t processing many applications, although social service agencies continued to assist with them. A total of 2,200 people applied during the general amnesty period in Kansas City, 1,975 in Wichita, 967 in Garden City and 490 in St. Louis (Harris News Service, May 5, 1988, p. 3). In southwest Kansas, about 500 applied under the special agriculture worker amnesty at the United Methodist Mexican American Ministries office in Garden City and the Harvest America office in Leoti (Neufeld, Dec. 2, 1988, p. 1). In national wire coverage, an Associated Press story quoted INS spokesman Greg Leo on the eve of the May 5, 1988, general amnesty deadline: “At this time, it appears we will break 2 million” for the combined programs (Associated Press, May 5, 1988, p. 9). The AP story used the term “illegal immigrants” in the lead, although “illegal aliens” and “aliens” appeared further down in the story, an indicator that the wire service was making strides toward more inclusive language but was inconsistent.

Immigration reform in the 1990s

As the Telegram became more aware of Hispanic immigrants in Garden City, its use of stories about immigration legislation from the wire services increased. An October 1990 Telegram article reported that the U.S. House was prepared to approve a measure designed to reunite families kept apart by previous immigration law and end 25-year-old barriers against would-be immigrants from northern European nations and others that had sent immigrants to the United States (Associated Press, Oct. 3, 1990, p. 1). The measure also was intended to increase the number of “highly skilled and otherwise needed foreign workers who would be allowed into the U.S.”

Immigration legislation received no further mention until the Telegram covered Proposition 187, a California ballot that would deny illegal immigrants access to health care, public education and other social services, on its op-ed page in October 1994. Telegram editors deemed interest in 187 to be high enough that they included a brief on the front page about 70,000 protesters marching on Los Angeles City Hall to protest the proposition (Associated Press, Oct. 17, 1994, p. 1). The lead on an in-depth explanation of it took a narrative approach:

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Mary Sanchez is fed up with illegal immigrants soliciting work from street corners in her suburb, then getting paid under the table and paying no income taxes. On Nov. 8 she will vote for Proposition 187, one of the most incendiary ballot measures to hit California since the English-only initiative passed in 1986 (Associated Press, Oct. 26, 1994, p. 8).

The article noted that Sanchez was “not Hispanic but is married to a man of Mexican descent.” When the proposition passed on Election Day with 59 percent of the vote, the Telegram carried an AP story that framed the story as anti-crime, not anti-minority.  The Telegram localized few national stories, but immigration was an exception. Given the transnational nature of Garden City’s Latino immigrants and their habit of maintaining social networks over vast distances, the California vote was played much like a local issue. A local sidebar by Telegram reporter Itzel Stewart quoted Garden Citians who opposed the measure. Her sources said that children should not be deprived of an education and that it is cruel to deny medical and educational services (Stewart, Nov. 10, 1994, p. 1). One source pointed out that contrary to Sanchez’s assertion, income tax is deducted from undocumented workers’ paychecks and that illegal immigrants pay sales tax every time they make a purchase, like everybody else. A federal judge blocked enforcement of 187 because it was unconstitutional (Associated Press, Nov. 17, 1994, p. 5). Stewart, a naturalized citizen born in Panama, was the only Hispanic on the Telegram staff. Her byline appeared as “Itzel Rodriguez” after she remarried in the late 1990s.

Given that story selection and placement are among the elements of framing, the decision to give front-page, above-the-fold play to Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s November 1994 invitation for Mexicans in the United States to come home indicates that editors perceived it as important and highly interesting to their readers. The article carries the frame of “immigrant as hard worker,” and its position suggests the editors believed it was important to promote this frame:

Salinas said Mexicans go to the United States in search of jobs — not the public services that California would deny to illegal immigrants under the state’s newly passed Proposition 187 (Associated Press, Nov. 14, 1994, p. 1).

The article’s selection contested the nativist frame of “immigrant as parasite” promoted a few days before by Telegram reader Rob Andrews, whose letter to the editor blamed immigration for crowding in Garden City’s public schools and contended Kansas should follow other states’ lead and discourage immigrants from coming for “freebies”:

An elementary school teacher told me a story about six girls in her third grade class talking about impending births in their families. Becoming curious, she asked how many of them were expecting another baby in their families soon. Five out of six. I asked her how many were Hispanic? “Oh — all of them.” … California and Texas have both passed initiatives restricting the freebies provided by the state and community to illegal aliens. The fate of these laws is still in question, but with the recent election reflecting a strong shift to the right in American thinking, proposition such as 187 are raising a lot of eyebrows. If you were an illegal alien in California or Texas, what would you be thinking? Colorado? Kansas? Garden City? … If we had enacted something like Proposition 187 four years ago, we might not need new schools now” (Andrews, Nov. 11, 1994, p. 4).

Bloom, who remained Telegram editor and publisher until 1997, didn’t miss the opportunity to respond by selecting a syndicated editorial cartoon labeled “California: The Nation’s Trendsetter.” The Golden State is depicted on a map of the Western United States with a huge “Yes on 187” yard sign sticking out of the San Joaquin Valley and a voice balloon stating, “I say we blame our problems on poor kids” (Pett, Nov. 21, 1994, p. 4). Latino community leader Norma DeLaO (1994, p. 4) wrote in a letter to the editor the next day, “We should be addressing this problem with education instead of trying to find someone to blame.” Her response evoked the “immigrant seeking opportunity” frame:

The United States is seen as a land of opportunity. People come here for a better life. We are so lucky to live in a democratic society where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are so much valued. The immigrants who come here are fleeing persecution, poverty or war. … We should be proud of the way Garden City has embraced immigrants. The community has grown both in size and in cultural diversity that has gained nationwide recognition. Our immigrants have worked hard and have made their home here. We have many businesses that are owned by Third World immigrants. I am proud to be a member of this group (DeLaO, 1994, p. 4).

Bloom selected an editorial (Statesman-Journal, 1994) from a paper in Salem, Ore., to run in place of the house editorial that asked, “Are Americans so callous that we would take from the lowest economic rung of our population just to give the rest of us a few more pennies?” Congress turned out to be “that callous” in 1996, when it passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, creating harsher penalties for illegal immigration, restricting welfare benefits to recent immigrants, and making the deportation process easier for U.S. administrators. The Telegramdetailed the impact: “Gloomy notices will be arriving in hundreds of thousands of mailboxes in the next few weeks: The government is cutting off disability benefits for up to half a million elderly and disabled legal immigrants (Associated Press, Feb. 15, 1997, p. A7). The story quoted advocate Muriel Heiberger of the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition in Boston, who said, “People are going to be in absolutely desperate straits. This is the money they have to pay rent, to buy prescription medication to buy the basics for survival.” Other advocates pointed to hardship cases that included Cuban and Vietnamese refugees with no family to care for them. U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, representing the Republicans who created the legislation, was quoted as saying, “It shows how the immigrants are really coming here and using the U.S. as a retirement program.” The story employed a sympathetic frame that juxtaposed pitiably helpless people against heartless bureaucrats. Examples likely to evoke sympathy got three times the space of the explanation of why the bill was deemed necessary.

CONCLUSION: TALKING TO, NOT JUST ABOUT, IMMIGRANTS AND PROPOSING COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS

A Chinese proverb states, “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” The Telegram’s reporters and editors have seen the road ahead when it comes to Hispanic immigration into the nation’s interior. Community journalists, particularly in rural areas of the Midwest and Southeast that are seeing the most rapid growth in Latino immigrant population, would do well to heed the example of the Garden City Telegram and learn from its experience. By 2050, Hispanics are projected to be 24.4 percent of the American population, up from 12.6 percent in 2000 (Census, 2006). If reporters, editors and executives want a taste of what is coming their way, they need to look at how Garden City and its newspaper evolved in their coverage and inclusion of Hispanics. They also must acknowledge what scholar Arlene Dávila argued in 2008: Contrary to nativist portrayals of Latino immigrants as social liabilities, a growing consensus argues these newcomers contribute to the economies of the communities that receive them, they are moving up, and they are in some ways more “American” in their values than the native-born (Dávila, 2008). News media must embrace this change if they hope to remain socially relevant, but they also must pay attention to Hispanics to remain economically viable. Wilson, Gutierréz & Chao (2003) elaborate on this point:

More than population growth and technological advances, however, it is the economic mechanisms of support that control the development of media in the United States. Corporate advertisers largely support print and broadcast media. When advertising is increased for a particular segment of the population, the media that reach and influence that segment gain increased advertising dollars. These dollars also make it more economically profitable for managers of existing media to consider changes to formats and content to try to attract that segment and the advertising dollars that will follow (Wilson et. al, 2003, p. 297).

Community journalists should feel compelled to fulfill two needs that are quite different from the concerns of large market news organizations. The first is immigrants’ need for information to help them acculturate to the United States, a role that Latino-oriented publications have long fulfilled in places with long histories as immigration gateways (Rodríguez, 1999). The second is publishers’ need to profit. Immigrants are an engine of small-business creation and population growth in rural areas, which have suffered declining populations for decades (Farmer & Moon, 2011). These entrepreneurial immigrants have begun to create cultural, sports, and business ventures that serve receiving communities’ native and immigrant populations alike (Hernández-León and Zúñiga, 2002). Latino immigrants represent a potential new market for community publishers to sell advertising and build circulations through the introduction of bilingual and immigrant-oriented niche advertisements, features, sections, and publications.

Asked in an interview for this project what lessons the Telegram held for newspapers in markets experiencing an influx of immigrants, Bloom said, “Be aware that change is occurring in the community, and know that attitude means a lot. You can say, ‘This place is changing, and that’s bad,’ or you can make the most of things and try to make it a better place.”

The stance of the Telegram seems clear after a review of its editorials: While the paper assumed illegal entry into the United States was not praiseworthy, it saw that the local, state and national economies needed it. This pragmatism reflected the business realities of the Garden City region. Although the newspaper respected the traditional firewall between the opinion pages and the news pages as demanded by the journalistic orthodoxy of objectivity, its approaches to covering immigration were subtly tilted in favor of immigrants. Its shift to more inclusive language and away from dehumanizing terms such as “illegal alien” provides evidence of this at the micro level of word usage. But at the macro level of narrative, pragmatism was evidenced by Telegram articles’ inclusion of the defense of immigrants. Pragmatism was evidenced by journalists’ source selection, which included stakeholders such as social service providers and the immigrants themselves and thus provided points of view beyond those of INS bureaucrats and law enforcement officials.

Further, when the 1986 immigration reforms were implemented, the Telegram sought to reveal problems in INS bureaucracy and offer solutions. And last, by including information on how an illegal immigrant could apply for amnesty, the Telegram did not speak about immigrants in the third person, but directly to them. These aspects of reporting and editorializing might not reflect just sympathy so much as pragmatism: There was hard, low-paying work to do, and there were not enough people in southwest Kansas to do it, so what was the matter with bringing in help from south of the border? All of these factors combined in a strain of journalism that sought to be inclusive of foreign newcomers. In doing so, the Telegram provided a model for how community news organizations in similar situations can promote a positive context of reception for immigrants.

This is significant because, as a study of immigration discourse in the Virginian Pilot newspaper revealed, media discourse can shape the perception of real and imagined intergroup threats, leading to negative in-group perceptions and behaviors that discriminate against members of the marginalized Latino immigrant out-group (Stewart et. al, 2011). Stewart et. al explained such behavior with Tajfel & Turner’s social identity theory (1986). Social identity theory proposes that members of a dominant in-group, such as whites in a majority-white community, maintain their power and gain competitive advantage over members of marginalized out-groups, such as immigrants, by promoting and maintaining a positive image of the in-group while doing the same with negative images of out-groups. The result can be spiraling social and economic inequality and the assignment of out-group members to status as members of a permanent inferior class. In contrast to the Virginia study’s demonstration of the consequences of the symbolic construction of Latino newcomers as illegal immigrants, the present case study provides an example of an alternative construction of Latino immigrant newcomers as potential citizens and contributors to society rather than threats to the communities receiving them. The present study points to a key difference between community journalism and metro journalism. In the journalism of smaller communities in which people share an identity of place, the urge to accept may be stronger than the urge to divide. By this logic, community and in-group membership are the same.

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About the Author

Michael Fuhlhage, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University.