WASHINGTON — March 5, 2015  – Nearly nine-in-ten residents  follow local news closely — and about half do so very closely, according to a detailed examination of local news ecologies in three different metro areas in the U.S. The study was conducted by Pew Research Center in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The report takes an in-depth look at the news environments in Denver, Colorado (a highly-educated, urban area of more than two million adults), Macon, Georgia (a metro area of 175,000 adults with a substantial share of black residents and an unemployment rate above the national average), and Sioux City, Iowa (a city that spans three states and has a predominantly white population of just 125,000 adults).

The analysis finds race and ethnicity to be one of the greatest divides in news habits. Hispanics in Denver and blacks in Macon closely follow local and neighborhood news at higher rates than their white counterparts. The key data:

·       In Denver, 60% of Hispanics, compared with 43% of whites, closely follow news about the local area; in Macon that is true of 70% of blacks, compared with 43% of whites.

·       Each of these groups is also at least twice as likely as whites in their respective city to feel they can have a big impact on the city (42% of Hispanics in Denver, compared with 21% of whites; in Macon, 36% of blacks vs. 14% of whites).

·       The two cities differ greatly in the news options catering to these minority groups. Researchers identified nine outlets in Denver aimed at Hispanics and/or Spanish speakers but just one in Macon that appeared to cater directly to the black community.

The case studies also find that digital technology has impacted news habits in all three cities, but at different levels. The data:

• More than half of residents in each city access at least one local news provider digitally: 68% of Denver residents, 66% of residents in Macon and 56% in Sioux City.
• Residents of Denver are most likely to say the internet is very important in keeping up with local news (45%, compared with 38% in Macon and 33% in Sioux City), and are the most likely to use at least one digital device for news (79% vs. about two-thirds in Macon and Sioux City).
• Macon residents trail behind Denver in broadband access, device ownership and news options (just six of 24 news providers in Macon offer daily digital news content), but are more likely than others to access a specific news provider through a social networking site.
• Sioux City residents flock in the greatest numbers to the daily newspaper but are the least likely of the three to access it digitally: 37% of residents who get news from the daily paper do so (at least in part) digitally, compared with 43% of newspaper readers in Macon and 47% in Denver.   

The data reveal that having a greater number of news providers offers a second tier of coverage, especially around more issue-based and enterprising news, and to a certain degree lessens the reliance on large legacy outlets. But it does not necessarily correlate with higher interest in local news, engagement in city activities or higher satisfaction with news providers. Denver houses more than 140 news providers – including 25 digital-only sources – compared with a total of 31 in Sioux City and 24 in Macon (news providers are defined as entities which include original news in their offerings on at least a monthly basis). But Macon residents closely follow local and neighborhood news, as well as most individual news topics, at the highest rates. And it is Sioux City residents who are most likely to say their local news media do an excellent job in meeting the needs of their community.    

“Local news plays an important role in each of these cities,” says Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research. “But these case studies indicate how local factors — including digital infrastructure, economics, race and ethnicity, civic engagement and education — contribute to the mix of providers and shape the way residents interact with those providers.”

The study is an exhaustive look at small, medium and large news environments. These cities are not meant to be extrapolated to the United States as a whole, but rather serve as a set of case studies on the ebb and flow of daily local news that speak to the diversity of modern American cities.

“While local news continues to be a regular and influential part of people’s lives, the ways in which they consume that news has changed dramatically,” said Jon Sotsky, Knight Foundation director for strategy and assessment. “This study provides important insights on how people interact with, share and connect to news in three diverse American cities— helping journalists and media organizations identify new ways to engage audiences and build stronger local news ecosystems.”

Below are some of the key findings from the new study, that includes an audit of 198 news providers in the three cities; surveys of 1,043 residents in Denver, 1,387 in Macon and 1,191 in Sioux City; an analysis of 6,416 news stories in the three cities; site visits and 18 interviews; and an exploratory analysis of Facebook and Twitter posts about local news and events in each city.

Among the other major findings:

• Local TV is the single most visible presence in the news space, though a majority of stories produced are short anchor reads that require little reporting. Denver alone offers nine different local TV stations, including two Spanish-language outlets. Combined, they produce more than 25 hours of news each weekday – and in each city more people turn to local TV than to any other source. The study of five days of content in each city finds that routine traffic, weather and sports segments accounted for about a third of the airtime. In the remaining programming, anchor “voice-overs”— the short items an anchor tends to read from a teleprompter — accounted for 71% of story segments in Sioux City, 62% in Macon and 55% in Denver. The reliance on anchor reads plays out in the length of stories, though the averages here did vary by city. Nearly half, 45% of non-sports, weather and traffic stories on Denver stations were 30 seconds or shorter, compared with 29% in Sioux City and 17% in Macon. Fewer than two-in-ten stories in each city were more than two minutes long.
• The role of the main daily newspaper varies from city to city, but the emphasis in each is on more civically-oriented and press-initiated coverage than is found in local TV. In the five-day study, 30% of Denver Post stories focused on government, politics, economics or education (excluding traffic, weather and sports stories), as opposed to 11% devoted to those topics on local TV. In Sioux City, the daily paper devoted 30% of its stories to these topics, versus 14% on local TV. In Macon, the differences between the two were smaller, 26% in The Telegraph and 21% among the local TV stations. But in all three areas, the level of press-initiated reporting is at least twice that of the local TV stations as whole: 17% compared with 6% in Macon, 14% to 7% in Sioux City and 12% to 4% in Denver.
• Citizens are a part of the news process, but mainly as quoted sources or as disseminators of news in social media. In all three cities, citizens are the most commonly-cited sources in news stories studied over a five-day period (excluding traffic, weather and sports segments): 20% of the Denver stories, 13% of Sioux City stories and 18% of Macon stories contain at least one citizen source. But no more than 1% of stories studied in any city have citizen bylines. In social media, a separate analysis of two weeks of content from the Facebook pages of local news providers reveals that users comment on only a minority of posts (32% in Macon, 31% in Sioux City and 43% in Denver).
• Civically-engaged residents are more connected with their local news and are drawn to a more diverse set of news sources. In each city, more civically-engaged residents follow local news topics at higher rates than the less civically engaged. In Macon, these types of residents follow 11 of the 12 topics asked about at higher rates (compared with eight in Sioux City and seven in Denver). And the daily newspaper and conversations with other local residents are more common sources of news for the very engaged. For example, in Macon, 52% of the very engaged often get news from The Telegraph, compared with 33% of the somewhat engaged and 26% of the unengaged.
• In all three cities, some local entities outside of journalism are using the Web in part to serve as news providers. In Macon, the county government streams official proceedings online, and the Facebook page of U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican, ranks among the most-liked and most-commented on over a two-week period. In Sioux City, a local congresswoman had more comments on her Facebook page than any of the news organizations studied. In Denver, six of the 10 websites featuring access to datasets were those operated by local municipalities.

These findings are for immediate release and available at http://www.journalism.org/2015/03/05/local-news-in-a-digital-age/

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Dana Page at 202.419.4372 or [email protected].

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan “fact tank” that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take policy positions. The center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This report was made possible by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which received support for the project from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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