Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

“Readers in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism — and that demand is waiting to be unlocked.”

Readers in the United States are bombarded with international news stories, of varying quality. Too often, they’re reported by parachute journalists with minimal familiarity or cultural context about the places to which they are deployed for just a few days. Stories can also be entirely based on secondhand research, products of “laptop journalism” from afar. As a result, U.S.-based audiences are fed a steady drip of stereotypical reporting that can perpetuate rote narratives of conflict, poverty, and disaster about communities around the world.

At Global Press, we invest in producing high-quality international coverage, employing local reporters across nearly forty news bureaus, from Mongolia to Zimbabwe. And now we can prove that readers of international news in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism. In the new year, we’ll publish the results of our yearlong U.S. audience research study, conducted with our partners Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, an independent public opinion research firm, and Wonder: Strategies for Good, experts in analyzing public opinion research. But the results are so important that I’m going to share a sneak preview here before 2022 is out.

Our study demonstrates that there is a deep reservoir of untapped demand from readers in the United States, across a wide range of demographics, for international journalism that is local, precise, and representative. But U.S.-based readers aren’t typically aware that such journalism could exist. After just a small dose of exposure to media literacy materials, the preferences of the study’s participants shift dramatically.

For example, of the more than 1,200 adults that we surveyed, twice as many initially reported that they preferred to read global coverage written by reporters based in the United States rather than by local reporters who are from the communities they cover. But the result flips after participants are presented with media literacy materials describing the benefits of local reporting and limitations of parachute journalism. At that point, three times as many respondents express a preference for stories written by local reporters. This striking result is robust across reader demographics, spanning age, gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, and geography.

Not only do readers prefer local reporters, but they also strongly prefer when international reporting uses dignified and precise vocabulary to describe global events. Study participants overwhelmingly preferred more thorough descriptions to explain complex subjects without resorting to sloppy shorthand phrases such as “developing world” or “ethnic tensions.” At best, such phrases are imprecise, and at worst, they are used as sanitized synonyms for poverty or to emphasize the differences between readers in the United States and subjects of international stories. In addition, our study’s participants strongly preferred to read stories that avoid hewing to negative stereotypes about other nations. For example, most expressed a desire to read stories that focus on solutions to local challenges rather than underscore problems.

Beyond the quantitative survey across 1,200-plus respondents, we also conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with a curated set of diverse participants. The qualitative feedback enriched the quantitative findings. For example, one participant shared that “reducing humans to labels such as immigrants, third-world people, refugees, and victims strips part of their humanity away from them in order to make them more palatable for readers. Forcing readers to stop and empathize with others’ situations, I think, would lead to more action and less complacency.” Moreover, the qualitative feedback revealed that many readers are from diaspora communities and are eager to read high-quality coverage about their ancestral communities, but aren’t satisfied with the choices on offer. Such audiences are underserved today and present important opportunities to boost readership and engagement.

The clear implication of our findings is that readers in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism — and that demand is waiting to be unlocked. This presents a remarkable opportunity in 2023 for the media industry and media funders. It is critical to educate U.S.-based audiences about what is possible, such as through media literacy campaigns. And to deliver quality international journalism, media organizations can partner with outlets already operating in communities around the world and invest in an industry culture of valuing local contributions, precise and dignified language, and new narratives that move past stereotypes.

We’ll publish our full results in the coming weeks and delve deeply into the data. But there’s no time to waste. Readers in the United States demand better international journalism now. And it’s time for the industry to deliver.

Laxmi Parthasarathy is chief operating officer of Global Press.

Readers in the United States are bombarded with international news stories, of varying quality. Too often, they’re reported by parachute journalists with minimal familiarity or cultural context about the places to which they are deployed for just a few days. Stories can also be entirely based on secondhand research, products of “laptop journalism” from afar. As a result, U.S.-based audiences are fed a steady drip of stereotypical reporting that can perpetuate rote narratives of conflict, poverty, and disaster about communities around the world.

At Global Press, we invest in producing high-quality international coverage, employing local reporters across nearly forty news bureaus, from Mongolia to Zimbabwe. And now we can prove that readers of international news in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism. In the new year, we’ll publish the results of our yearlong U.S. audience research study, conducted with our partners Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, an independent public opinion research firm, and Wonder: Strategies for Good, experts in analyzing public opinion research. But the results are so important that I’m going to share a sneak preview here before 2022 is out.

Our study demonstrates that there is a deep reservoir of untapped demand from readers in the United States, across a wide range of demographics, for international journalism that is local, precise, and representative. But U.S.-based readers aren’t typically aware that such journalism could exist. After just a small dose of exposure to media literacy materials, the preferences of the study’s participants shift dramatically.

For example, of the more than 1,200 adults that we surveyed, twice as many initially reported that they preferred to read global coverage written by reporters based in the United States rather than by local reporters who are from the communities they cover. But the result flips after participants are presented with media literacy materials describing the benefits of local reporting and limitations of parachute journalism. At that point, three times as many respondents express a preference for stories written by local reporters. This striking result is robust across reader demographics, spanning age, gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, and geography.

Not only do readers prefer local reporters, but they also strongly prefer when international reporting uses dignified and precise vocabulary to describe global events. Study participants overwhelmingly preferred more thorough descriptions to explain complex subjects without resorting to sloppy shorthand phrases such as “developing world” or “ethnic tensions.” At best, such phrases are imprecise, and at worst, they are used as sanitized synonyms for poverty or to emphasize the differences between readers in the United States and subjects of international stories. In addition, our study’s participants strongly preferred to read stories that avoid hewing to negative stereotypes about other nations. For example, most expressed a desire to read stories that focus on solutions to local challenges rather than underscore problems.

Beyond the quantitative survey across 1,200-plus respondents, we also conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with a curated set of diverse participants. The qualitative feedback enriched the quantitative findings. For example, one participant shared that “reducing humans to labels such as immigrants, third-world people, refugees, and victims strips part of their humanity away from them in order to make them more palatable for readers. Forcing readers to stop and empathize with others’ situations, I think, would lead to more action and less complacency.” Moreover, the qualitative feedback revealed that many readers are from diaspora communities and are eager to read high-quality coverage about their ancestral communities, but aren’t satisfied with the choices on offer. Such audiences are underserved today and present important opportunities to boost readership and engagement.

The clear implication of our findings is that readers in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism — and that demand is waiting to be unlocked. This presents a remarkable opportunity in 2023 for the media industry and media funders. It is critical to educate U.S.-based audiences about what is possible, such as through media literacy campaigns. And to deliver quality international journalism, media organizations can partner with outlets already operating in communities around the world and invest in an industry culture of valuing local contributions, precise and dignified language, and new narratives that move past stereotypes.

We’ll publish our full results in the coming weeks and delve deeply into the data. But there’s no time to waste. Readers in the United States demand better international journalism now. And it’s time for the industry to deliver.

Laxmi Parthasarathy is chief operating officer of Global Press.

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

Kavya Sukumar   Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

Martina Efeyini   Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Janelle Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

Alan Henry   A reckoning with why trust in news is so low

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer

Juleyka Lantigua   Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Mission-driven metrics become our North Star

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Andrew Donohue   We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Hillary Frey   Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires

Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski   News organizations step up their support for caregivers

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Johannes Klingebiel   The innovation team, R.I.P.

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

Nikki Usher   This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

Christina Shih   Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

An Xiao Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Ryan Kellett   Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Sarah Stonbely   Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels

Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson   Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs

Errin Haines   Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

Bill Adair   The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Jennifer Brandel   AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. 

Andrew Losowsky   Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Jim Friedlich   Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage

Mauricio Cabrera   It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

Ryan Gantz   “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

Kaitlin C. Miller   Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Sam Gregory   Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made

Don Day   The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

Daniel Trielli   Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

S. Mitra Kalita   “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Michael W. Wagner   The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Sam Guzik   AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles   DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson   News product goes from trend to standard

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Anika Anand   Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures

Cindy Royal   Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven   Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Dominic-Madori Davis   Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting

Shanté Cosme   The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni   The future of journalism is not you

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Christoph Mergerson   The rot at the core of the news business

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Jenna Weiss-Berman   The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)

Jarrad Henderson   Video editing will help people understand the media they consume

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Jacob L. Nelson   Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

Burt Herman   The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Paul Cheung   More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Eric Holthaus   As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Nicholas Jackson   There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Stefanie Murray   The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Laura E. Davis   The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Doris Truong   Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

Mariana Moura Santos   A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world