Brittany Shaughnessy is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on the rise of alternative media and the impact it has on democratic institutions.
As part of our series on local news researchers, CISLM Student Employee Kathryn DeHart interviewed Amanda Siew via Zoom. This interview was published March 27, 2025 and has been edited for length and clarity.
Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media: What’s a recent research project you’ve done that has helped us understand the challenges facing local news?
Brittany Shaughnessy: With the Consortium on Media Trust and Technology, and in a write up for Poynter, we did a study about how nonprofit news organizations step in to fill local news deserts when local news outlets leave a community. 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. We thought that that definition and how journalists see nonprofit news would be lost upon the public.
We wanted to see if we took the same article but changed the label as being reported by a nonprofit instead of a for profit organization, if people would perceive a difference in the credibility of that article and if people were likely to use that source again. We found it didn’t make a difference. We argued that was because the messaging from journalists to the public on what the nonprofit news difference is, especially at the local and regional level, isn’t clear. The message is not getting out to people. That’s what inspired the next research project, which we are presenting at the Local News Researchers Workshop. We wanted to see how people’s relationship with nonprofit news changed if we told them there was more or less local news coming to their area.
CISLM: What should non-academics — local journalists or civically engaged community members — learn from that research?
BS: All journalists need to be aware of what language they’re using in the pieces that they write. My dissertation looked at over 1,000 articles from mainstream media like ABC, CBS and PBS, and then four right wing alternative media outlets and four left wing alternative media outlets. I wanted to see if alternative media outlets really used more emotion than the mainstream, because that’s what scholars have argued since the 70s, but there hasn’t been a lot of actual research around it. I found that the mainstream used more emotion than the alternative platforms, which brings me back to my previous point that journalists need to be cognizant of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Yes, these alternative outlets are getting a bad reputation, but you don’t want the same to happen to local journalism because local journalism changes lives.
CISLM: What’s a recent research project in local news that you admire?
BS: Penny Abernathy, who was most recently at Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative, does a lot on mapping local news deserts, and her work is actually cited in a whole bunch of my research. She predicted back in 2022 that by the end of 2025, we would lose a third of our local newspapers in the United States, which to me, is astounding. I really admire the level of detail that goes into all of her work, because it’s super, super impressive. We’re trying to extend it a little bit, but we’re finding out just how difficult that is to do.
CISLM: Why does local news research matter?
BS: For the same reason that research on local government matters. With the increased nationalization of issues, Fox News is the most consumed channel in cable, and a lot of people also watch MSNBC and CNN with the nationalization of issues. I think the major issue that is creating is that people think that those are the only issues that affect them where, in reality, local news coverage is telling you what is actually happening in your area.
I live in Albuquerque, the Albuquerque local news is telling me what’s actually going on. CNN is not going to tell me what happened here. There was a shooting in College Apartments at the University of New Mexico. The local news, not the national news, is going to tell me that.
Which then ties back to why local government matters and why people should be voting on local elections — those are the laws that really affect your day to day but not a lot of people realize it. I think local news is just as important. It keeps the community strong. It keeps the community connected. And without that, I think you’re led to believe that there is no community in your community because no one cares to cover it, and you just have to default to the issues facing the nation for what’s facing you the most.
CISLM: What excites you about the future of local news?
BS: The opportunity. Local news is facing a crossroads. (The) local news (field) has the opportunity to use the research that’s going on on the academic side, but also on the applied side, to really reconfigure their structure, whether that’s funding or management structure. Right now, you have major players and major conglomerates that are controlling local news. What the nonprofits are trying to do is decentralize that funding and not rely on any corporate funding, rely on contributions to do deeper work that matters to the community. What I think is very exciting for the future is that nonprofit news is going to see a rise, and is that it’s just really exciting to me because it’s really passionate reporters doing stuff independently, without having to answer to a parent media company.
CISLM: What helps you get through a long day of work?
BS: Reading books for fun. It sounds super lame, but I go to the gym before work so that I’m energized for work, and then by the time work is over, I’m just so dead. Fun books have really saved me throughout my PhD program.