The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. - Benjamin Disraeli

Using local coverage to keep readers

by Jason Preston

VHS to DVDIn the 2008 throwaway Jack Black comedy Be Kind Rewind, a local VHS rental store tries to save itself from bankruptcy and eviction by remaking classic movies with a cast and crew of neighborhood faces.

While the movie itself is mediocre, it’s one hell of an allegory for the news industry.

A recent case study (pdf) conducted by Digital Edge chronicles the ways in which the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Manchester Union Leader, the Fort Myers News-Press and Morris Communications have all dealt with the uprise of citizen journalism on their turf.

After reading through all four stories, two things in particular seemed worth drawing attention to:

  1. People love to volunteer
  2. Papers are finding success with hyper-local coverage

Like the fictional community in Be Kind Rewind, people in the real world love to be involved in anything high-profile, regardless of whether you offer to pay them. Being part of the reporting process is reward enough for many “ordinary” folks.

And they’re going to buy three copies of anything they’re in.

Also, now that the internet makes it easy for someone in Louisville to read the national news from any outlet she chooses, there’s little if any reason for the Courier-Journal to cover the same national story as everyone else. Why waste the inches or the AP licensing fees? Given a choice on national news, readers will regularly choose the national brand.

So how do you beat the New York Times? By realizing that no other paper in the world* is as uniquely qualified to cover Louisville as the Courier-Journal. Especially if people in the community are involved in the coverage.

It’s not just about changing your VHS stock to DVDs; you have to get involved with the people whose lives and issues you are covering. That’s how you generate brand loyalty in today’s market.

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* The obvious exception being, of course, another local newspaper. This is capitalism after all!

April 9, 2008 | Filed Under Observations 

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8 comments so far:

  1. On April 28th, 2008, Hillary wrote:

    I wonder what would happen if more national newspapers started to open local offices in various locations that could supplement their own national coverage with localized content.

  2. On April 28th, 2008, Monica Guzman wrote:

    Mayhem for local newspapers, perhaps. But unless they get lots of new staff or sacrifice some of their national content, they could stretch themselves a little thin trying to go too local. What’s amazing to me is how hard it is even for local papers to tap into the local. A lot of big-city neighborhood blogs seem to have more street-by-street passion and 24/7 neighborhood dedication than your average reporter.

  3. On April 28th, 2008, jope wrote:

    “you have to get involved with the people whose lives and issues you are covering. That’s how you generate brand loyalty in today’s market.”

    Yeah, I was trying to convey that point to Mónica at one point last year, though I suspect that I was preaching to the choir. But the journalistic code of ethics, in its current form, bars such involvement, yes? Changing that institution can happen, but doing so is different from changing the newspaper businesses themselves.

  4. On April 29th, 2008, Jason Preston wrote:

    @jope - you’re right that there’s a tension between involvement and the journalistic code of ethics.

    I think it was Walter Lippman who claimed that journalism had an arc from partisan to impartial to totally objective, ranging from essentially crap to the holy grail of reporting.

    He’s right that some kinds of reporting is best done objectively. But it might be worth asking if there isn’t room for journalism that gains authority not from perceived lack of bias (which is flimsy because everyone has opinions and everyone else knows that) but from respect for the journalist.

    Maybe certain types of stories - breaking news, etc - should be published with no byline? I don’t really know the answer here.

    My point is that it’s worth asking: is a complete dedication to objectivity really the end-all-be-all of journalistic accomplishment? And if it is, will it kill journalism?

  5. On April 30th, 2008, jope wrote:

    [Hopefully I won't be felled mid-comment my antihistamine this time around... =P]

    Objectivity is the indeed the Holy Grail of journalism, though perhaps not in the way you mean. First, I think objectivity is conflated with detachment, when the two are not actually synonymous. Meanwhile, there is a flipside to the pursuit of objectivity that too often gets short shrift: Admission and explanation of subjectivity, where it applies. In practice, objectivity can never truly be attained, at best only approximated. What’s more, that approximation comes via the aggregation and normalization of necessarily subjective inputs.

    Since you mentioned them, I’ll detour onto breaking news. Such stories by nature tend to be quick and more about enumerating the immediately available details than about reasoned analysis thereof. As such, my inclination is that breaking news lies on the opposite end of the spectrum from the type of journalist involvement that builds loyalty.

    In terms of not calling out subjectivity, breaking news is the worst offender. For example, I see stories like: “Pit bull attacks passing woman. Owner says was unusual behavior. Neighbor says dog always growled at him.” Other than dutifully noting hearsay, any estimate of the validity and character of the sources is absent. By limiting to just the immediate physical facts and the explicitly stated content of second-hand opinions — the most clearly objective elements — much relevant context is omitted.

    There are better and worse ways to incorporate subjectivity in reporting. For fear of doing it the wrong way, the traditional journalistic standards say (or are interpreted to say) just avoid subjectivity altogether. But the audience is hungry for personal slants, so they get that wherever they can, even if it is from outlets that have less regard for standards or conflicting viewpoints, where the inclusion of subjectivity is more haphazard, even insidious. The danger of subjectivity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The public would benefit from more modeling by responsible organizations of the right way to incorporate subjectivity.

  6. On May 5th, 2008, Link Lessons: Stop licesning AP content : Eat Sleep Publish wrote:

    [...] says: [Hopefully I won’t be felled mid-comment my... ( more [...]

  7. On May 5th, 2008, Link Lessons: Stop licensing AP content : Eat Sleep Publish wrote:

    [...] says: [Hopefully I won’t be felled mid-comment my... ( more [...]

  8. On June 6th, 2008, Local-local journalism is not a dead-end : Eat Sleep Publish wrote:

    [...] is an exercise in stupidity. I’ve already made my case for hyper-local news coverage here, but Jon makes some good points and I think it’s worth clarifying why he’s [...]

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