Washington State University
10/02/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/02/2024 07:03
Murrow College to map Washington’s local news landscape
Amid a nationwide decline in local journalism, Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow College of Communication is leading a new research initiative to assess the health of Washington's local news industry.
Funded as part of a Washington State Legislature effort to support local news, the project will map the state's local news landscape by creating a comprehensive database of local news outlets. Work is underway to catalogue hundreds of outlets and assess their capacity to produce high-quality news coverage of their communities by surveying news organizations across the state.
The study will help identify which Washington communities lack access to local news, providing critical information to inform future efforts by policymakers, news organizations, and foundations to reinvigorate the industry.
"Local news is central to a healthy democracy," said Research Director Jennifer Henrichsen, an assistant professor in the Murrow College and member of the national Local News Impact Consortium. "This database will serve as a foundation for evaluating whether local news sources are fulfilling the critical information needs of Washington residents, allowing them to engage with their communities and fully participate in civic and political life."
Critical information needs are the types of information necessary for navigating everyday life, including health, civic life, politics, education, transportation, environment, economy, and emergencies, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). When local news outlets shrink and close, communities' critical information needs go unmet and civic and political participation decline.
Washington has lost 20% of its local newspapers in the past two decades, and the state's rural areas in particular tend to lack access to traditional news sources, reports from the League of Women Voters of Washington and the Murrow Rural Information Initiative have found.
Building on these studies, the Murrow College's project will be the first to create a comprehensive snapshot of the state's local news landscape. An interactive database of newspapers, digital outlets, and radio and TV stations will be made publicly available in a report for the state legislature's 2025 session.
"Input from Washington news organizations has been invaluable to this research. We encourage organizations that have received a survey to participate in the study so that this database accurately reflects where more investment in the industry is needed," said Henrichsen.
The research project is part of a $2.4 million state investment in the Murrow News Fellowship, a program that aims to increase news coverage of civic affairs in Washington communities by pairing early-career journalists with local newsrooms. To date, the program has placed 16 fellows with news organizations across Washington.
"This program represents an innovative approach to addressing the local news crisis facing Washington communities," said Benjamin Shors, program director and chair of the Department of Media and Journalism Production. "By identifying gaps in the current local news landscape and placing journalism fellows in the communities where they are needed most, we aim to improve the lives of Washingtonians and strengthen our democracy."
The state funding reflects growing interest among policymakers and scholars in supporting local journalism, illustrated by efforts like the Medill Local News Initiative tracking news deserts across the U.S. and the Knight Foundation's Press Forward program to sustainably grow news organizations and strengthen communities nationwide. In the Pacific Northwest, the project will complement a recent effort to map Oregon's local news landscape.
The researchers presented preliminary findings from the study at the 2024 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Local News Impact Consortium workshops in North Carolina and Minnesota.