Over the course of the pandemic, my company collaborated with TED to produce two seasons of the podcast Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala. Each of the 20 episodes in the series visits a different city to find transferable ideas that shape that place. Without really intending to, we got into conversations with multiple people in four very different cities around the world about local journalism — and their comments may provide guidance for local news initiatives in the coming year.
During multiple unrelated interviews with local citizens in each — Caracas, Venezuela; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Bangkok, Thailand; and Durham, North Carolina — the topic of local news came up. We asked variations of, “What do you expect from local news?” The answers were almost universal across all the interviews in these four cities — and even more remarkable, since they were all conducted by different journalists and on different topics.
What did they say? In all four cities, citizens wanted local news to tell stories of people, not stories about power. In their view, besides tragedy and crime, all current local news media does is tell the stories of people in power, not about people like them nor stories that directly (or clearly) impact their lives. And when they talked of power, the definition is surprisingly broad. Politicians, government officials, and the wealthy have power, of course, but even interviewing book authors was seen as focusing on those with power. And to the people we spoke to in these four cities, those they see in power aren’t genuinely concerned about the lives of those in their neighborhoods — so why should they care about listening to those in power?
So what did they want instead? Those interviewed described their ideal as something we might call hyperlocal news — news focused on neighborhoods and the actions of residents. They don’t trust government and government officials, largely thinking those institutions aren’t working in the citizens’ best interests. They want news that is immediately useful to them. They want news that they can verify with their own eyes.
They want to hear stories about their neighbors as well as businesses and activities in their area. They want things that lift up and make them proud to be part of their communities. “I just want to hear how they’re gonna help more of the community rather than tear them down,” a woman named Angel told Saleem outside a bus station in Durham “Like, people are opening up gardens…trying to do something productive in the communities. And I wanna hear more positive than bad.”
In Caracas, Venezuela, Helena Field of El Bus TV (a group of journalists who provide local news reports live on city buses), described the approach as getting away from journalism that’s like a “helicopter” and more like a “bus,” with a clear, slow view of a limited geographic area at the ground level.
In Bangkok and San Juan, they spoke about the need for local media to focus on helping: helping connect people, helping address immediate concerns in times of crisis or need, helping to answer questions — helping to tangibly improve life.
Ever since I first stumbled upon this, I see conversations about “news deserts,” the regular polling about trust in media, and opinions about journalism very differently. The answer most media companies embrace to address these issues is to simply produce more, or to focus on addressing implicit bias or political partisanship. That isn’t fully misguided, but I believe that a humble, clear-eyed examination of the 2023 opportunity for local news will show that we’re defining journalism’s service too narrowly and too far from everyday life for the new audiences we hope to serve.
Journalism has the ability to inform, educate, and entertain. Entering into 2023, there’s an opportunity to expand our understanding of what “inform, educate, and entertain” can mean — moving away from power and more into the lives of those underserved by current journalism. As we summarized in the episode about Caracas, local journalism has the power to show people that no matter how daunting things seem, their needs and struggles are real and their local media is actually listening, documenting, and sharing their life’s truth with others.
As journalists and those managing news media organizations continue to build capacity and try to engage with new audiences in the coming year, I believe they will start to see the people vs. power dynamic emerge in conversations with their potential audience, opening them up to new ideas of how to editorially orient their service and unlock the next generation of local journalism.
Eric Nuzum is cofounder of Magnificent Noise and author of The Audio Insurgent.
Over the course of the pandemic, my company collaborated with TED to produce two seasons of the podcast Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala. Each of the 20 episodes in the series visits a different city to find transferable ideas that shape that place. Without really intending to, we got into conversations with multiple people in four very different cities around the world about local journalism — and their comments may provide guidance for local news initiatives in the coming year.
During multiple unrelated interviews with local citizens in each — Caracas, Venezuela; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Bangkok, Thailand; and Durham, North Carolina — the topic of local news came up. We asked variations of, “What do you expect from local news?” The answers were almost universal across all the interviews in these four cities — and even more remarkable, since they were all conducted by different journalists and on different topics.
What did they say? In all four cities, citizens wanted local news to tell stories of people, not stories about power. In their view, besides tragedy and crime, all current local news media does is tell the stories of people in power, not about people like them nor stories that directly (or clearly) impact their lives. And when they talked of power, the definition is surprisingly broad. Politicians, government officials, and the wealthy have power, of course, but even interviewing book authors was seen as focusing on those with power. And to the people we spoke to in these four cities, those they see in power aren’t genuinely concerned about the lives of those in their neighborhoods — so why should they care about listening to those in power?
So what did they want instead? Those interviewed described their ideal as something we might call hyperlocal news — news focused on neighborhoods and the actions of residents. They don’t trust government and government officials, largely thinking those institutions aren’t working in the citizens’ best interests. They want news that is immediately useful to them. They want news that they can verify with their own eyes.
They want to hear stories about their neighbors as well as businesses and activities in their area. They want things that lift up and make them proud to be part of their communities. “I just want to hear how they’re gonna help more of the community rather than tear them down,” a woman named Angel told Saleem outside a bus station in Durham “Like, people are opening up gardens…trying to do something productive in the communities. And I wanna hear more positive than bad.”
In Caracas, Venezuela, Helena Field of El Bus TV (a group of journalists who provide local news reports live on city buses), described the approach as getting away from journalism that’s like a “helicopter” and more like a “bus,” with a clear, slow view of a limited geographic area at the ground level.
In Bangkok and San Juan, they spoke about the need for local media to focus on helping: helping connect people, helping address immediate concerns in times of crisis or need, helping to answer questions — helping to tangibly improve life.
Ever since I first stumbled upon this, I see conversations about “news deserts,” the regular polling about trust in media, and opinions about journalism very differently. The answer most media companies embrace to address these issues is to simply produce more, or to focus on addressing implicit bias or political partisanship. That isn’t fully misguided, but I believe that a humble, clear-eyed examination of the 2023 opportunity for local news will show that we’re defining journalism’s service too narrowly and too far from everyday life for the new audiences we hope to serve.
Journalism has the ability to inform, educate, and entertain. Entering into 2023, there’s an opportunity to expand our understanding of what “inform, educate, and entertain” can mean — moving away from power and more into the lives of those underserved by current journalism. As we summarized in the episode about Caracas, local journalism has the power to show people that no matter how daunting things seem, their needs and struggles are real and their local media is actually listening, documenting, and sharing their life’s truth with others.
As journalists and those managing news media organizations continue to build capacity and try to engage with new audiences in the coming year, I believe they will start to see the people vs. power dynamic emerge in conversations with their potential audience, opening them up to new ideas of how to editorially orient their service and unlock the next generation of local journalism.
Eric Nuzum is cofounder of Magnificent Noise and author of The Audio Insurgent.
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Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
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Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
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Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
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Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
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Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
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Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
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Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
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Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
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Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
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Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
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Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
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Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
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Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
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Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
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Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
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Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
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Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
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Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
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Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
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Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media