ISSUE

Winter 2007

Is Local News the Answer?

“Unique local content” is by now a familiar phrase as print competes with digital media for readers’ attention. With constantly updated international and national news reporting and commentary just a click away, hometown readers need different reasons to go to their local newspaper, in print or online. In this issue of Nieman Reports, we will explore what local news reporting can look like and what a hometown focus can mean for journalists, newspapers, Web sites, and those who consume this news and information.

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Articles

Local News

Readership Institute’s Newspaper Studies

Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute at the Media Management Center and associate dean for curriculum and professional excellence at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.…
Dean Miller
December 15, 2007
Local News

Strategically Reorganizing the Newsroom

‘Two new content departments—News & Information and Enterprise—focus on producing unique local content for print and online.’
Shawn McIntosh
December 15, 2007
Local News

Local Voices—Once Quiet—Are Heard

On the zoned local editorial pages of The Dallas Morning News, people from the community ‘think locally … tell us something we don’t know’ and are ‘persuasive.’
Michael Landauer
December 15, 2007
Local News

Going Local: Knowing Readers Is Essential

‘… hyperlocal news sites like ours are bringing the personality of a community to the news by letting residents have a much more active role in dictating what is news.’
Liz George
December 15, 2007
Local News

Going to China to Report Local Stories

‘… I returned to Charleston convinced that we do a disservice to our readers when we think local reporting only happens when we stay close to home.’
Tony Bartelme
December 15, 2007
Local News

The Decline of Newspapers: The Local Story

‘Judging from our three studies, the future of America’s local newspapers is dim.’
Thomas E. Patterson
December 15, 2007
Local News

Going Hyperlocal at the Chicago Tribune

TribLocal.com is ‘designed to give readers the depth and breadth of news and information that their local newspapers don’t deliver.’
Kyle Leonard
December 15, 2007
Local News

Stories About Me

‘Being local these days is not just being a one-way flow of information.’
Bill Ostendorf
December 15, 2007
Local News

Journalists Navigate New Waters

‘When high-tech’s central institutions blew up, people asked many of the same questions I hear asked by journalists today.’
Lisa Williams
December 15, 2007
Local News

Journalism: Its Intersection With Hyperlocal Web Sites

These sites ‘provide a depth of coverage of microscopic issues and events that thinly stretched traditional newsrooms simply can’t get to.’
Mark Potts
December 15, 2007
Opinion

News From Iraq: From Spinning to Reporting

After working as Central Command’s spokesman for the war in Iraq, Josh Rushing became a reporter for Al Jazeera and writes about his transformative journey.
Edward A. Gargan
December 15, 2007
Local News

Going Far to Explore a Local Story

‘The currency common to these assignments was the thread of local connections stretching from Indiana to overseas and back in news stories we broadcast.’
Kevin Finch
December 15, 2007
Local News

Global Issues Viewed Through Local Eyes

New media—and new ‘newsroom’ arrangements—combine to make local coverage of environmental issues compelling and personal.
Perry Beeman
December 15, 2007
Local News

Changing Reporters’ Beats—With a Focus on Local

‘… we need to demonstrate in our pages and on our Web site that local journalism does not mean insular, shallow content.’
Rene Sanchez
December 15, 2007
Local News

Blending Voice and Reporting

‘… stories conveyed a definite point of view, and the voice we used shared our perspective throughout their telling.’
John Doherty
December 15, 2007
Nieman Notes

Confronting ‘The Health Care World of Want’

A trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo results in a journalist’s determination to find ways to report on the devastation she now knows exists.
Susan Dentzer
December 15, 2007
Nieman Notes

The People and Spirit of McClellan Street

Two brothers photographed life in a working-class neighborhood and found ‘kinship and camaraderie.’
David Turnley
December 15, 2007
Opinion

The Humanity of Journalism

‘As journalists, we make moral and subjective choices all of the time, just like the people we cover.’
Brent Walth
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Hidden Codes and Competitive Trickery

In a coffee-table book, Associated Press correspondents and photographers describe what they and their colleagues did to be first with the news.
Robert H. Phelps
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Why a Critical Eye Is Needed

In exploring why journalism matters, it is not enough to look at what works well; examine, too, why sometimes it fails.
David Randall
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Optimism in a Time of Chaos and Change

‘I have faith that new models of journalism are going to fly out of this whirlpool of change and be successful.’
Robert J. Rosenthal
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Disgraced By a Story That Consumed Them

‘I began to understand why some mistrust the news media.…’
Mary C. Curtis
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Collective Power—Photographs From the War in Iraq

In two books by photojournalists, words and images explore various dimensions of the experience of being a witness to war.
Molly Bingham
December 15, 2007
Opinion

‘Photo Vero’—A Modest Proposal

A photographer, worried about digital manipulation of images, suggests a way to protect the veracity of what the camera captures.
Frank Van Riper
December 15, 2007
Local News

VillageSoup: A Community Host Model At Work

‘Finding a sustainable business model for interactive distribution of news and information is essential.’
Richard M. Anderson
December 15, 2007
Local News

Picking Up Where Newspapers Leave Off

A former investigative journalist launched an online local news Web site in Chicago.
Geoff Dougherty
December 15, 2007
Local News

A Front Page Dominated By Local News

Changes in how the Times Union’s newsroom functions drive the paper’s push of breaking local news to the Web, with more analysis on its printed pages.
Rex Smith
December 15, 2007
Local News

Childhood Memories Kindle Hyperlocal Strategies

‘Trust me, this ain’t new. If anything, it’s old school local journalism.’
Rob Curley
December 15, 2007
Local News

Readership Institute’s Newspaper Studies

RELATED ARTICLE“What Readers Mean When They Say They Want Local News”– Dean MillerMary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute at the Media Management Center and associate dean for…
Dean Miller
December 15, 2007
Local News

What Readers Mean When They Say They Want Local News

‘Some journalists run toward these challenges; others react with resistance, fear and anger.’
Mary Nesbitt
December 15, 2007
Local News

Cutting Staff Results in Less Local Coverage

At a time when we’re trying to invent a new medium on the Web and with niche publications, getting rid of content creators—a.k.a. reporters, RELATED STORY“Stories About Me”– Bill Ostendorfphotographers…
Bill Ostendorf
December 15, 2007
Local News

The ‘Local-Local’ Strategy: Sense and Nonsense

‘There is broad logic behind it, but also a host of devilish details that could drag the effort down and once-vital newspapers along with it.’
Rick Edmonds
December 15, 2007
Local News

Matching Ambition With Assignment

A newspaper editor reassesses how to tell stories and who will tell them as pressures to go local intensify.
Carole Tarrant
December 15, 2007
Local News

Forgetting Why Reporters Choose the Work They Do

Will journalists ‘cover local news for life, with no chance of parole?’
Will Bunch
December 15, 2007
Local News

Showing China—With a Local Thread

An Essay in Words and Photographs
Alan Hawes
December 15, 2007
Local News

Investigative Reporting Stays Local

‘The local stories are the toughest. They matter more to readers ….’
Ken Armstrong
December 15, 2007
Local News

Newspapers’ Niche: ‘Dig Deeply Into Local Matters’

...strong, local reporting—and devoting the resources necessary to do it—is so important to daily newspapers.
Brett J. Blackledge
December 15, 2007
Local News

Winter 2007: Introduction

“Unique local content” is by now a familiar phrase as print competes with digital media for readers’ attention. With constantly updated international and national news reporting and commentary just a…
Melissa Ludtke
December 15, 2007
Local News

Local Characters: How to Tell the Stories You Have to Tell

Lane DeGregory offers tips and describes some of the stories she’s written to reporters who work at community newspapers.
Lane DeGregory
December 15, 2007
Local News

Tips About Starting a Hyperlocal Web Site

For those seeking to venture into the hyperlocal sphere—whether affiliated with a news organization or not—we’ve developed tips through observation and study. —J.S.1. Get ready for a high-touch experience: Citizen…
Jan Schaffer
December 15, 2007
Local News

When Community Residents Commit ‘Random Acts of Journalism’

‘In communities with little news coverage, people are using the Web to restore a sense of place.’
Jan Schaffer
December 15, 2007
Opinion

Network News’s Perfect Storm

‘Productivity, a central and venerable tenet of corporate culture, began to occupy the world of news in a way it previously had not.’
Marc Kusnetz
December 15, 2007
From the Curator

Examining Journalistic Change in the Digital Era

A new Nieman Web site will ‘aggregate important information about best practices in preserving and advancing journalism that adheres to its fundamental principles.’
Bob Giles
December 8, 2007