Local Journalism ─ The Decline of Newspapers and the Rise of Digital Media

For more than a century, local journalism has been taken almost for granted. But the twenty-first century has brought major challenges. The newspaper industry that has historically provided most local coverage is in decline and it is not yet clear whether digital media will sustain new forms of local journalism. This book provides an international overview of the challenges facing changing forms of local journalism today. It identifies the central role that diminished newspapers still play in local media ecosystems, analyses relations between local journalists and politicians, government officials, community activists and ordinary citizens, and examines the uneven rise of new forms of digital local journalism. Together, the chapters present a multi-faceted portrait of the precarious present and uncertain future of local journalism in the Western world.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and Associate Professor of Political Communication at Roskilde University in Denmark. His research deals with political communication, changes in the news media, and how people use media to follow public affairs and engage with the world around them. His first book Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns his first book won the 2014 Doris Graber Award for the best book published in political communication in the last ten years. He is also the recipient of the 2014 Tietgen Prize for his work on the changing business of journalism and its implications for democracy.