Connecting and convening those pioneering local news research
The DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy at Duke University and the Center for Sustainability and Innovation in Local Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will host our next annual workshop on March 24-25, 2025 at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This event, organized with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will bring together researchers across the academic, industry, non-profit, and government sectors whose work addresses contemporary issues confronting local journalism.
The Local News Researchers Workshop has been held five times since 2015 and has grown into an important interdisciplinary gathering of researchers across academia, philanthropy, industry and government, where research on a wide range of dimensions of local journalism is shared.
Advancing solutions
There is a critical need for independent research and analysis across all dimensions of the local news crisis, as perpetual change in technology and user habits threaten the local news ecosystem.
Connecting and convening
There is also a need for increasing sharing and collaboration amongst the researchers as they tackle this problem.
Mentoring
We encourage researchers from early-career and graduate student researchers to tenured academics and high-level professionals to attend and learn from each other.
Travel Stipends
The workshop organizers and funders are particularly interested in showcasing the work of early-career researchers and researchers from traditionally marginalized groups. Toward those ends, a limited number of $1,000 travel stipends will be available to out-of-town attendees representing traditionally marginalized groups or out-of-town attendees from under-resourced organizations. Submitters seeking to be considered for travel support should include a separate statement of no more than 250 words requesting travel support.
Reach out to Jessica Mahone (jamahone@email.unc.edu) or Phil Napoli (philip.napoli@duke.edu) with any questions.
Dive into the 2025 Workshop
Learn more about the 2024 Workshop
Meet the Local News Researcher Community
5 takeaways from the 2025 Local Journalism Researchers Workshop
The 2025 workshop highlighted the importance of inclusive, community-engaged research and the importance of connecting this research with the larger journalism field.
Q&A with news deserts researcher, Brittany Shaughnessy
“We wanted to test if the general public had the same perception of nonprofit news and what those organizations do as people working in the news industry.”
Q&A with news and info researcher, Michael Lipka
“If I had to pull out one lesson, it would be to be very conscious that people are getting local news from all sorts of different sources, not just local news outlets.”