Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media
UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
CISLM’s Penny Abernathy’s news deserts research is heavily cited in this article about McClatchy creating a local news outlet to serve Youngstown, Ohio, just weeks after the city’s daily newspaper, The Vindicator, announced it would be closing. McClatchy’s investment marks…
Learn more about the dramatic loss of newspapers in recent years and the news barons who are transforming the industry. The Expanding News Desert, identifies the U.S. communities most at risk and delves into the implications for the news profession and…
Utilizing a new visual, map-based email newsletter allowed for the Daily Press, a news organization in the Hampton Roads-Tidewater (VA) area, to increase unique clicks by 36% over the control email. The results of a six-week test suggest that…
Knight Chair Penny Muse Abernathy delivered the 18th annual Huck Boyd Lecture in Community Media last week to an audience of journalists, media executives and concerned Kansas citizens. Afterwards, Abernathy appeared on a panel discussing life in a community after the…
Spotlight on Research Is the Digital Content Bubble About to Burst? Questions with Tom Nicholls One of a regular series of articles that highlights research in the academy and in the profession on the emerging threat of news deserts or…
As part of Melody Kramer’s fellowship last fall, she has written a report detailing information gathered from speaking with journalists and newsrooms across North Carolina about how they use data or would like to use data. You can read a…
Spotlight on Research The impact of mythology and technology on how journalists gather information Questions with Zvi Reich and Yigal Godler One of a regular series of articles that highlights research in the academy and in the profession on the…
Now that the dust has settled from last month’s elections, let’s consider how newspaper ownership shapes election coverage. Last year, Knight Chair Penelope Muse Abernathy and her research team looked at five newspapers in eastern North Carolina to measure how…
Penelope Muse Abernathy spoke with Oliver Broudy on his podcast Let’s Be Reasonable about the reasons behind the downsizing of community newspapers, and in this case, the Hampshire Gazette. While journalism has received a boost in popularity and support since…
Melody Kramer (update: now a Reese News Lab Fellow!) wrote for Poynter about News Voices: North Carolina, a new initiative supported by The Democracy Fund with the goal of stronger collaboration and trust between journalists and the communities they cover. She…