The Community Caretaker Role: How Weekly Newspapers Shielded Their Communities While Covering the Mississippi ICE Raids

ABSTRACT

This research puts forward the conceptual journalistic role of “community caretaker.” A qualitative textual analysis, based on coverage of the largest single-state immigration enforcement sweep in United States history, finds weekly newspapers exhibited this community caretaker role by shielding the region's reputation and protecting local officials, local businesses at the heart of the raids and many local residents. The textual analysis compares the coverage of the 2019 Central Mississippi raids in three national/international news organizations and three weekly newspapers in the rural region. The analysis offers a rare scholarly spotlight on weekly newspapers, using the larger news organizations to identify highlights and absences in the weekly coverage. This research critiques the weekly newspapers, which effectively drew a line between who was considered, and not considered, members of their communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism studies
• local journalism
• rural journalism
• weekly newspapers
• diversity
• immigration

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose feedback vastly improved this article. The author also would like to thank Giovanna Dell’Orto, who helped shape this project in its early stages and offered valuable thoughts throughout, and Ryan Thomas, who helped refine the paper's conceptual contribution and strengthen its argument.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).