Local news and COVID-19 in North Carolina (page 9)

Recommendations: Where do we go from here?

The findings in this study suggest several strategies to preserve and improve the ability of local news to serve their communities during crises such as future pandemics.

Measure what topics are covered, and how.

Local news organizations should track their output of articles to monitor how much they’re publishing, which topics are covered and how that coverage is framed (Note: This study did not include contacting the news sources to ascertain whether they make any attempts to do this sort of tracking. In the author’s experience as a local journalist working with several North Carolina news sources, this is not a common practice.).

Developing such metrics would give news sources the ability to see and track how often — or not — they’re covering various aspects of the news, allowing them to identify and correct imbalances or gaps in their coverage. For example, a local news organization might notice that they have published a relatively small number of stories about education and a large number of stories updating case and death numbers, and decide to reallocate their resources to better cover schools. Or the recognition that very few stories are framed as explanatory might prompt a news organization to gather reader questions and seek to answer them, deepening audience engagement and understanding.

Tracking their own coverage would also enable news organizations to plan proactively and ensure they cover an appropriate range of topics, rather than reactively chasing the latest tweet or assigning stories based on a given reporter’s availability.

While tracking article topics and frames might sound like a daunting task, it need not be more complicated than creating a spreadsheet and requiring editors to mark which categories each story they publish fits into. No news organization in this study published so many local COVID-19 articles in a week that such a system appears impractical.

News organizations could also share this information with their viewers and readers. This transparency would build greater trust with audiences and give news organizations a valuable community engagement tool. And news organizations should survey their audiences to learn more about their information needs and preferences. Collecting data about what their audiences want to see covered and then comparing that data with information about what topics the news organization is actually covering would give news managers greater insight into and understanding of the news they’re producing and whether they’re meeting audience members’ stated needs.

And news organizations should strive to incorporate a broader range of topics and ways of storytelling into their coverage of crises such as pandemics. The relative paucity of human interest stories stands out as a missed opportunity. With so many lives affected so dramatically by COVID-19, news organizations should use more stories from and about real people to illustrate the true impact of such a crisis.

The production of local articles should better match the severity of a crisis.

One of the most striking findings in this study was that many of the news organizations produced less coverage over time even though the pandemic actually worsened. This might be due to reporter fatigue, a sense that the audience is tired of the crisis, or the tendency to become numb to extreme events that persist over time. Regardless of the cause, newsrooms must approach crises by planning for levels of coverage that they can sustain over time. Rather than simply “flooding the zone” and assigning every available reporter to write every possible story at the outset of a crisis, local newsrooms must consciously allocate limited resources to match the severity of a crisis over the long-term.

Consider the relative output of WSOC-TV and the Charlotte Observer: Although the Charlotte Observer produced more than twice as many local articles as WSOC-TV early in the crisis, WSOC-TV’s more stable production of articles meant that by the fourth week, WSOC-TV in fact produced almost twice as many local articles as the Charlotte Observer. Deciding to allocate resources for sustainable, long-term coverage of a crisis might necessitate tough choices, such as declining to chase a possible story or allowing minor stories to be relegated to a running list of updates on social media.

Use automation for routine, data-focused articles and updates.

To the greatest extent possible, news organizations should also attempt to automate the aggregation and display of routinely updated statistics. The advantages of this approach can be seen when comparing a regularly updated pandemic tracker such as the New York Times’ COVID-tracking tool to the local news sources studied here — all of which wrote multiple articles about the number of cases and deaths. While a reported article is able to offer greater context than a tracker with a set of numbers, one must question whether such an approach optimally serves audiences.

A single, daily story updating numbers of cases doesn’t allow audience members to observe trends over time, and — as the WSOC-TV framing examples showed — also risks boomeranging from hopeful to pessimistic every other day, depending on the movement of capricious metrics. Such articles also require staff time and resources to report, edit and post. A simpler approach that involves an automatically updated “dashboard” or similar tracker could be supplemented by periodic articles that drill down on major trends, when events warrant.

While this might sound technically daunting (the New York Times, after all, has far more resources than local newsrooms), local news sources have already begun experimenting with artificial intelligence. The Charlotte Observer’s parent company has deployed story-writing bots, and the “CharlotteObserverBot” regularly writes articles about real estate transactions. Such pieces include the disclaimer:

This article was generated by the CharlotteObserverBot, software that analyzes data, and applies it to articles based on templates created by humans in the newsroom. No human journalist was harmed in this experiment. You can report errors or bugs to mcclatchybot@mcclatchy.com.

Structured, publicly available, regularly updated data such as pandemic cases and deaths would be an ideal subject on which to deploy this technology in the future. In addition to conserving staff resources for higher-value, in-depth articles, this approach would also avoid the difficulty presented by framing articles about ever-changing metrics day after day, for years.

Invite and respond to the local audience.

Only two of the news sources in this sample were observed making a deliberate effort to invite, collect and answer reader inquiries. News sources should pursue this as a strategy both to engage audiences and generate story ideas. Soliciting and answering reader inquiries potentially builds a connection with audiences, while also demonstrating the news organization cares about its community and plays a useful role in that community’s life.

Preserve local newspapers, even through unorthodox methods.

Although much ink (and many pixels) have been spilled detailing the decline of legacy newspapers, the simple fact remains that, in many communities, newspapers are still the largest and most prolific news organizations. All three newspapers in this study produced more local articles than the local TV station in their market — in some weeks, more than twice as many. This finding highlights the fact that legacy newspapers remain at the center of the local news universe in many communities. Local newspapers are too important to write them off and wait for the next thing to come along and replace them. And yet these newspapers are acutely imperiled.

This raises the question of how best to support local newspapers, many of which are owned by large hedge funds or struggling for-profit companies. New approaches should be promoted, such as supporting the acquisition of more regional newspapers by wealthy local owners or nonprofits and encouraging greater philanthropic support for newspapers. Even more radical — and uncomfortable — propositions such as public subsidies for important local newspapers should be entertained, given the scale of the crisis.

Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon, Jr. has proposed creating a $10 billion network of local news outlets funded by a mix of NPR-style government and nonprofit fundraising, with the goal of supporting a major newsroom in all 435 Congressional districts. Such ambitious approaches are needed, especially if we hope to create local news ecosystems equipped for the next pandemic.

Devote resources to protecting news outlets in the smallest communities, those in real danger of becoming news deserts.

And while many of the biggest nonprofit investments in newspapers have centered on major cities, the Southern Pines Pilot’s status as the only significant source of truly local news in its community demonstrates the necessity of supporting community news sources in small towns. These are the true “news deserts” identified by Penny Abernathy, the places in which local news is not just diminished, but is in danger of disappearing altogether.

The Southern Pines Pilot reporters’ high productivity illustrates both their hard work and an irreplaceable service to their community. It also illustrates the fragility of the local news ecosystem in small towns like Southern Pines — a single departure or layoff could be devastating. Foundations, nonprofits and other entities examining ways to preserve local news should not lose sight of the small towns that face true news deprivation.

Of course, resources are not unlimited; if there were enough foundation and nonprofit dollars to pay for all the local news reporters we need in small towns and big cities, this discussion wouldn’t be necessary. But there aren’t enough, which means we must set priorities. Preserving and rebuilding local newspapers in communities large and small should be at the top of the list.

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