Earlier this year, the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science published a special edition dedicated to media policy and the information needs of communities. This volume, timed to the 10th anniversary of the critical information needs framework, reassesses information needs, the role of local news and other information providers in communities, as well as the policy needed to support the information needs of communities.
Media Policy for an Informed Citizenry: Lawmakers have introduced legislation specifically designed to provide support to local news media in connection to calamitous declines in the commercial modes that traditionally have supported and secured journalism in the U.S. Read CISLM Research Director Jessica Mahone’s ANNALs paper, and explore our government support for local news databases.
The edition of the ANNALs journal featured a dream team of local news researchers, including CISLM’s Research Director Jessica Mahone, who came together to share how media policy is helping journalism. Nikki Usher was the editor of the issue, which contains 17 free articles covering media policy, supply, demand & adaptation.
In “Repairing Journalism’s History of Anti-Black Harm,” Joseph Torres and Collette Watson document journalism’s history of excluding and harming communities of color. Their piece calls for repairing journalism’s relationship with communities of color to be centered in discussions about community information needs and media policy and for people from these communities to be included in discourse about saving local news.
Joseph Torres is the Senior Advisor, Reparative Policy and Programs at Free Press and co-creator of the Media 2070 project. Before his time at Free Press, he was the deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
In their contribution to the volume, Lourdes Cueva Chacón and Jessica Retis explore the use of messaging apps such as WhatsApp by Latinx digital-native news media to meet community information needs in “¿Qué pasa with American News Media? How Digital-Native Latinx News Serves Community Information Needs Using Messaging Apps.” Their study explores how Latinx publications meet audiences where they are and finds that a substantial proportion of content distributed via messaging apps is original to the outlet, is about the local community, and meets a critical information need. Their study concludes with a call for the critical information needs framework to be revised to better reflect the information needs of transnational, transborder, first-generation and non-English speaking communities.
Chacón is a local news media researcher who currently works as an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. She also researches Latin American journalism and how digital tools are changing journalistic practices in the continent — especially within investigative journalism — and the ways these new practices are strengthening democracy in these countries.
CISLM intern Shea spoke with Torres and Chacón about their research. These conversations have been lightly edited for clarity.
Joseph Torres
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?
Joseph Torres: In recent years, I have worked on a project for Free Press, a public interest group, a media tech advocacy group. We have a project called Media 2070, created by Black leadership at Free Press and I’m just honored to be a part of it. It’s a media reparations project.
When we were founded, we released a 100-page essay, a research essay, (with) a lot of original research on the history of anti-Black racism in our media system, starting from colonial newspapers to the present day. It (attempted) to show the structural racism that exists now in media policy, but also: What’s the function of journalism institutions that exist in our society, from colonial days periods to the present, and how anti-Black racism, and racism at large, has always been inherent to the narrative of newspapers? The reason is the function of journalism, in U.S. society historically to the present day, a major function is to uphold racial hierarchies.
The narratives are a political tool used to uphold hierarchies. Who were the owners of these papers, for example? We gave a sum-up: Printers of colonial newspapers were also the publishers. Oftentimes, they were involved in (publishing) slave ads in the paper, ads for the enslavement of folks, including Black and Indigenous people. A lot of the time, it was ads for the selling of enslaved people. During this time, the printer of the paper was also the publisher who acted as the go-between between the buyer of enslaved people and the seller. What does that tell you about American journalism in the early days of, this was who the owners were? Media owners had been involved in violence towards Black folks, and prevented the integration of society and stuff like that.
And these are papers that are still around, too, like The (Raleigh) News & Observer. (In) North Carolina, (white supremacists) overthrew a local, multi-racial government in 1898 and destroyed the Black newspaper. The publisher (of The News and Observer) was (one of the) planners of the violent coup attempt at the local government. (Editor’s note: The publisher encouraged white supremacist and anti-Black narratives through the paper.) It’s not taught a lot in journalism schools or in a lot of places. We’re tempted to reclaim that history as part of that research essay.
The research project that we did, going over the history from colonial times to the present, is to (be) an intervention in different ways, including how we talk about the future of journalism. Often the debate is that we have this save local journalism to save democracy. We believe in local journalism, we believe in democracy. But these institutions that I’m describing, and (that) we described in the 2070 Project — traditional legacy media has always played a role and has always played a role in undermining democracy for Black people and people of color.
And so when we think about the future of journalism, what is it that we’re trying to save? And then Black and brown newspapers, there have been instances throughout the nation’s history, with Black newspapers where the government played a role in undermining the Black press, including arresting publishers, threatening to close down the press, the racism in advertising and (Black and brown publishers) can’t find advertisers with the economic model of commercial print.
If we are going to be in a country where the majority of the population soon is going to be non-white, what is the democratic press? Is it a sign of a healthy democracy if, say, 92% of full-power television stations, are not owned by people of color? Is it a sign of a healthy democracy, that the media ecosystem and the dominant local media (are) not represented or owned by the communities? A multiracial democracy, we probably deserve a multiracial-owned and controlled press, right? We’re trying to find ways to fund the so-called survival of local news, right? What are we trying to build that’s different for a multiracial democracy to be fully realized? And that’s often missing from this debate. It’s like, we’ll fund Black and brown, but it’s a subcategory. And so what’s going to be funded and how it’s going to be supported is going to be inadequate to what actually is needed. That’s what our research is hoping to spur, those kinds of questions.
CISLM: In your own words, why do you think local news research matters?
JT: Local journalism institutions are powerful actors in their community. Look at The Los Angeles Times, for example, when they apologized in 2020. It talked about how for many of its at least 80+ years, I believe they said, they were paper of white supremacy. They supported the industrialists and landowners.
The publisher of the paper in 1977 — which, I was alive in the 1970s, it was not that long ago, right? — was saying that Black and Latino readers in Los Angeles didn’t read The LA Times because it was too complicated. Newspapers often red-lined, even when newspapers were so profitable, they often didn’t deliver their newspapers to Black and brown neighborhoods because they didn’t want Black and brown readers to hurt the demographics for advertisers. (If) we have Black and brown readers, we’re not going to be as attractive to advertisers in the kind of money we’re trying to receive. So (they thought), ‘We’ll red line Black and brown neighborhoods,’ and this is when they’re making almost a profit margin.
What are we supporting? What kind of model do we need to support in this day and age as opposed to supporting what’s familiar? For me, it was never adequate. If you live in Los Angeles, if you live in the state of California, the majority of the population in Los Angeles is not white, the majority of the county is not white and the majority of the state is not white. What kind of journalism is needed in Los Angeles, or in California, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore? So these are the questions on why it’s important to engage in the debate over the future of journalism and the future of local media. What are we trying to create that’s different? What kind of journalism is needed for a multiracial democracy or in places where people of color already make up the majority of the population?
CISLM: What excites you about the future of local news?
JT: There (are) a lot of journalists of color, a lot of BIPOC, Black and brown media outlets — (some are) new media outlets being created online — that are really doing innovative things to serve their community. It has been 200 years since the Spanish language press has been within what has become the United States because (in) Louisiana, you (had) Spanish language journalism happening. Then was Latino-owned Spanish language press, and then you have the Native American press. It’s a long history of journalism, of Black and brown people, indigenous people in this country. What excites me is this new generation of folks who are on online and other platforms, noncommercial journalism platforms, and continuing that legacy of trying to serve the health and well-being of local communities.
There’s an increasing understanding of how you have to get involved in these debates about the fight over the future of journalism. You have to get involved and take part in those efforts to ensure our communities are not left behind, because there’s a great chance that (they) will be, and we’re trying to prevent that. There’s a growing consciousness to make sure that does not happen. So, that gets me excited, in addition to what they’re doing, you know — the kinds of journalism are they producing.
CISLM: What’s your first memory of interacting with local news?
JT: (It was) in a hyperlocal publication in my neighborhood (that) I was in. I was playing baseball in my Little League. Each weekday in the local paper, the Player of the Week got a free ice cream, a Carvel cone, and then the local paper would take a photograph of that and feature it in the local paper. That paper, we would look at it for what’s happening in the community.
CISLM: What helps you get through a long day of work?
JT: My family. I can unplug with my wife and kid. Yesterday, I went to see my kid’s softball game and I was just outside on a nice, sunny day watching her play, which was just joyful.
Lourdes Cueva Chacón
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?
Dr. Lourdes Cueva Chacón: The most recent one published is the one that I did with ANNALS. It’s focused on local news in Spanish, for the Spanish-speaking communities, mostly localized on the border, but also in other places where there are either recent migrants or important Spanish-speaking communities.
What I did in the project with a partner — my co-author Dr. Jessica Retis from the University of Arizona — is that we, in a previous study, were trying to map digital native news organizations that cater to Latinx communities or were run by Latino/Latina journalists. When we did that first study, published in 2021, we realized that several of the digital natives were producing original news for more mobile applications such as WhatsApp. WhatsApp is not a popular messaging app in the US, but it’s very popular in the world, especially in Latin America. Many Spanish speakers in the U.S. use WhatsApp to communicate among themselves but also to communicate with their families in Latin America and other parts of the world.
It was interesting for us that they were producing original content for WhatsApp — this is not new. What was new was that the content was original, or sometimes exclusively (published) via WhatsApp. WhatsApp has been around for some time now and journalists have been trying to use it because around the world many journalists have been using it to try to capture that audience already on WhatsApp. What has been done most often is that people would just publish what they already publish on their regular outlets (such as web stories). But in this case, it was very original content (being created from) these groups and they had a specific structure and the information they were distributing was interesting. So that’s what we did with it: “OK, let’s try and take a look at what these journalists are doing.”
We focused on what is called information needs. We interviewed the journalists, but we also did the content analysis. We looked into the main needs they were trying to fill. The journalists told us they chose WhatsApp because the audiences they wanted to reach were already on WhatsApp, so there was this idea of meeting them where they already were. They were familiar with how information is distributed on WhatsApp but also how fake news is distributed on WhatsApp, right? They wanted to counter that in the same space. Overall, those were the biggest motives.
But also looking at that, how we’re going through a crisis in journalism and lots of outlets are being closed, not only happening for general news in the US but also for the Spanish language outlets. So, they were trying to fulfill these needs, these information holes. The pandemic was a big booster for these types of organizations because that’s when people needed them the most. These organizations are, for instance, El Tímpano, in Oakland, California, where there’s a large, Spanish-speaking community, but also a Mayan-speaking community. There’s Conecta Arizona that’s local news for people in Phoenix, but also it’s transnational because there are also people from Sonora on the other side of the border that also received their news. There’s in Enlace Latino in North Carolina, there’s Documented in New York and there are others (Que Pasa in North Carolina, Tu Vos in Nevada).
You can see that this is happening where there is a large population of Spanish speakers, such as in Arizona and Sonora or California, but it’s also happening where the Latino population is growing, such as in North Carolina and New Hampshire and Nevada. And so what they did was help with basic information needs such as health. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was countering fake news about the pandemic, providing information about the progress of the treatment. And then when vaccination campaigns started, they also provided information about that. In terms of New York, for instance, what they did was give them information about how to adjust right in New York, like where to get to shelters, where to get different services, and so on. They are helping these immigrants or low-income families to get access to different services that they need for their daily lives, and that is helping them improve their quality of life.
CISLM: What do you think a non-academic would take away from your research?
LCC: Most people regarding the Spanish language news, most people are familiar with Univision and Telemundo – they do great service to the community. They’ve been around for many years. But in many ways, they behave as mainstream media, like they focus on national news. The local TV stations, similar to TV stations in English, also cover local news and they also do a great job because they help us (as) ambassadors (and) translators. But at the same time, because of the nature of TV news, they cannot necessarily cover every type of service. They cannot go in there with certain issues and they are doing a great job trying to reach out to people through social media, but there’s still, you know, groups of people that either don’t watch TV anymore because that’s what’s happening with the new generations, or they don’t necessarily have time to watcha full newscast. They have a different way of approaching news.
It’s not as important in daily life, because they’re struggling with basic needs. So with these digital-native news organizations that were researching that distribute information via mobile applications are reaching out to people on their phones on a consistent basis. People have the option to unsubscribe, of course. But at the same time, they also have the option to ask questions directly to the journalist, which is something that you cannot really do — you might be able to do that on social media but most news organizations don’t have the capacity to answer.
While this is more news organizations that I researched, are actually interested in asking these communities, what are their needs, so they can provide that information. So there is a more two-way communication that is happening in these spaces.
CISLM: Why does local news research matter?
LCC: It matters, because of many, many reasons. But again, I’ve focused on these Spanish-speaking communities. And so, local news is very important, because they can tell these communities information in their languages. It’s not that Spanish language speakers in the U.S. don’t know English, they do know English, to different degrees, of course, but they do know English. But it’s not the same as telling them the news and their main language, and in the way that they are going to better understand or they are going to translate for them the importance of the issues that they have to pay attention to. By doing that, they are incorporating or integrating these communities to the larger communities in the US. So they are making them informed and they are making them available (to) participate in important decisions for their larger communities.
I think it’s basically the same, you know, objectives as any local news but with the addition that you’re trying to integrate to the larger community and make them participate.
CISLM: What excites you about the future of local news?
LCC: What excites me is that journalists are showing that they’re not surrendering — they argue, they keep in the fight and they are coming up with different creative ideas to continue their work. So, if the tenets of journalism are to seek the truth and serve the communities where they are, they are finding creative ways to continue with that task. And they are up to the challenges of the times, and that excites me. That makes me hopeful.
CISLM: What’s your first memory of interacting with local news?
LCC: My first memory of interacting in the US —because I came to the U.S. 20 years ago and I wasn’t a journalist then. I would listen to WUNC in the mornings. I would listen to the general NPR news, of course, but also at WUNC and I had a subscription to local news for, you know, the area that I lived in Raleigh, but I went to UNC; I commuted to Chapel Hill. I had a subscription to the News & Observer. I, actually as a graduate student in the summers, delivered papers. I substituted for the drivers, and sometimes, I delivered papers.
CISLM: What helps you get through a long day of work?
LCC: There are lots of things. This is the end of the semester when we’re having this interview, and I’m very happy to see many of my students who are going off to graduate. I have students doing great internships and sharing this excitement about news, so that helps me a lot. It’s also the end of this semester, I’m going to have more time for my family. My family helps me get through and my research projects, having another research project, that’s great — my next one is about bilingual news. We’re going to interview journalists who make the decision of producing news bilingually and so what is it that moves them and how do they do it? What are the business models that they’re following? So all of that keeps me through a long day of work.