It is often said that if newspapers disappear, citizens will get less local, state and political news. For two weeks, my Citizens and Media course at UNC-CH conducted a content analysis of six North Carolina newspapers and we found that of over 5,200 stories, only 22 percent was political news.
Further, only about 6 percent was local political news, 5 percent state political news and about 11 percent national political news. In comparison, 27 percent was sports.
I find it interesting that the number of national political news stories was nearly equal to state and local political news combined. For years people have expressed more interest in national politics than state and local, and it seems this is being mirrored by the media -- even these six local newspapers.
But what does the lack of political news say about newspapers? Are they printing more sports and entertainment stories because that is what people want to read, or is there another underlying cause? Are people getting political news from other sources or are they simply not interested?
In North Carolina, several communities have blogs solely devoted to local news, like Chapel Hill Watch. So perhaps citizens would get more political news if they rely on new rather than traditional media.
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I applaud the folks doing Chapel Hill Watch. It's a terrific local site doing great work. However, it's headed by a professional journalist with 30 years experience, who was sadly laid off from his day job. It does not really represent a groundswell of local folks willing to blog politics for free. Another terrific local political blog is one by Brad Warthen, another laid-off journalist in Columbia, S.C. It's one of the best blogs I read daily. But I seriously doubt he can keep it up while not getting paid.
ReplyDeleteGood question raised by Tom Priddy: how can these local blogs pay themselves to stay in business?
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