When I’m asked about the future of news, I always say I’m optimistic, at least on net. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be holes, and the holes I worry about most are at the local level. The pre-Internet journalism model was highly localized because distribution was highly localized; the web changes that dramatically.

That’s the context for this interesting new paper from Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, and James Snyder, Jr., looking at corruption in Mexico and how it gets reported — and how that that reporting impacts elections (emphasis mine):

We estimate the effect of local media outlets on political accountability in Mexico, focusing on malfeasance by municipal mayors…In particular, we compare neighboring precincts on the boundaries of media stations’ coverage areas to isolate the effects of an additional media station.

We find that voters punish the party of malfeasant mayors, but only in electoral precincts covered by local media stations (which emit from within the precinct’s municipality). An additional local radio or television station reduces the vote share of an incumbent political party revealed to be corrupt by 1 percentage point, and reduces the vote share of an incumbent political party revealed to have diverted funds to projects not benefiting the poor by around 2 percentage points.

We also show that these electoral sanctions persist: at the next election, the vote share of the current incumbent’s party continues to be reduced by a similar magnitude…However, we find no effect of media stations based in other municipalities.