Content analysis reveals local journalism adapts varying standards for ethics and community engagement, suggesting improvements in operational practices.
Disruption in local news has spurred development of varying journalism forms, including news collaborations and digital start-ups, and has increased the salience of social actors who are not news producers. With these changes have come new and different sets of standards on ethics, diversity, community engagement and news operations. Framed by an institutional “supply side” perspective, this study examines the adoption and adaptation of standards by local news collaborations and digital startups. A content analysis of the websites and standards of 119 local news collaborations and digital news start-ups indicate both non-profit news producers and news producers that emphasize “watchdog” accountability had more standards and more extensive standards. Additionally, news producers frequently distance standards from daily production and only infrequently require compliance. Results suggest local news management should be intentional in adopting standards and integrate them meaningfully into daily operations while keeping an eye on relevance to the local area.
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Lowrey et al. (2025) studied this question.
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