When we're backed into a corner, we learn how to fly: two ways local journalism can grow, thrive, & evolve to fit the needs of a new kind of local information ecosystem
Date
2022
Authors
Scaccia, Jesse, author
Humphrey, Michael, advisor
Kodrich, Kris, committee member
Carcasson, Martin, committee member
Stecula, Dominik, committee member
Luft, Gregory, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
The local news industry and local information ecosystems face dual threats: collapsing business models that have taken with them traditional pipelines of community dialogue, and an often broken, divisive, still-top-down dialogue when conversation within our communities do happen. This dissertation proposes to address partial solutions for each concern in turn. First, by looking at how journalism teaching hospitals, long a steady source of news in the communities they call home, are formed and what makes them thrive. Then, in the interest of not recreating a broken system, by exploring the intersection of journalism and deliberative democracy, and proposing a method for local deliberative journalists to uncover the issues a community itself would most like to address.