Are We Close Enough? Digital Challenges to Local Journalists

ABSTRACT

Digital environments play a central role in the news making process. Seeking new ways to interact with people previously seen as audience is a big challenge for media and journalists today, especially in local contexts, where journalists are more embedded in the community, physically and digitally, namely through social media and from mobile devices. This study intends to identify how local journalists are using digital tools in their routines, especially when it comes to be close and engaged with communities. To do so, a survey was applied to a sample of journalists (n = 107) from 42 newsrooms from the central region of Portugal, which gathers the most significant presence of local media. Findings point to full integration of the Internet into local journalists’ routines as well as social media and mobile. Digital technologies are used essentially for news gathering and to get in touch with sources. Employing social media to engage with the community is true only for a few. The same happens when it comes to recognize or even incorporate content produced by citizens. Local journalists are not always so available to be close to the public as they usually claim.

KEYWORDS:

• Local journalists
• social media
• engagement
• local journalism‌
• local media
• audience‌

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 The authors theorized about reciprocal forms of journalism in two more ways: indirect exchanges that are more generalized, one-to-many, intended for community benefit, and encouraging of future benefit sharing (e.g., “pay it forward” forms of goodwill); and sustained exchanges that have an enduring dimension, building relationships over time and laying the groundwork for future interactions (Lewis, Holton, and Coddington 2014).

2 This territory consists of eight sub-regions: Coimbra Region, Aveiro Region, Beiras and Serra da Estrela, Viseu Dão-Lafões, Medio Tejo, Beira Baixa, Leiria and Oeste. In total, it has a population of 2,327,580 (22% of the inhabitants in Portugal) and occupies an area of 28,405 km² (31% of the Portuguese territory). Data from the 2011 Census (https://censos.ine.pt/).

3 Data send to author on January 6th, 2020.

4 In Portugal only press card holders are considered journalists. The issuing of these cards is a responsibility of CCPJ (professional journalist card commission). Because of how they manage its database, it was not possible to have an exact number, although it is very close to reality. On June 24th, 2020 Portugal had an overall of 4.961 journalists.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was developed within the framework of Re/media. Lab – Laboratory and Incubator of Regional Media, a research project cofinanced by the Portugal 2020 Program [grant number CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER031277]; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.