For more than a century, local journalism has been taken almost for granted. But the twenty-first century has brought major challenges. The newspaper industry that has historically provided most local coverage is in decline and it is not yet clear whether digital media will sustain new forms of local journalism. This book provides an international overview of the challenges facing changing forms of local journalism today. It identifies the central role that diminished newspapers still play in local media ecosystems, analyses relations between local journalists and politicians, government officials, community activists and ordinary citizens, and examines the uneven rise of new forms of digital local journalism. Together, the chapters present a multi-faceted portrait of the precarious present and uncertain future of local journalism in the Western world.

Tables and Figures vii
Contributors ix
Preface xi
Introduction: The Uncertain Future of Local Journalism 1
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Part I Local Media Ecosystems
1. The News Crisis Compared: The Impact of the Journalism Crisis on Local News Ecosystems in Toulouse (France) and Seattle (US) 31
Matthew Powers, Sandra Vera Zambrano, and Olivier Baisnée
2. Local Newspapers as Keystone Media: The Increased Importance of Diminished Newspapers for Local Political Information Environments 51
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
3. How News Travels: A Comparative Study of Local Media Ecosystems in Leeds (UK) and Philadelphia (US) 73
C. W. Anderson, Stephen Coleman, and Nancy Thumim
Part II Local Journalism and its Interlocutors
4. The Plurality of Journalistic Identities in Local Controversies 99
Florence Le Cam and David Domingo
5. Rethinking Local Communicative Spaces: Implications of Digital Media and Citizen Journalism for the Role of Local Journalism in Engaging Citizens 117
Julie Firmstone and Stephen Coleman
6. Perceived Relevance of and Trust in Local Media 141
Bengt Engan
Part III New Forms of Local Media
7. Between Journalistic Diversity and Economic Constraints: Local Pure Players in Southern France 165
Nikos Smyrnaios, Emmanuel Marty, and Franck Bousquet
8. Hyperlocal with a Mission? Motivation, Strategy, Engagement 185
Marco van Kerkhoven and Piet Bakker
9. Filling the News Hole? UK Community News and the Crisis in Local Journalism 203
Andy Williams, Dave Harte, and Jerome Turner
Index

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and Associate Professor of Political Communication at Roskilde University in Denmark. His research deals with political communication, changes in the news media, and how people use media to follow public affairs and engage with the world around them. His first book Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns his first book won the 2014 Doris Graber Award for the best book published in political communication in the last ten years. He is also the recipient of the 2014 Tietgen Prize for his work on the changing business of journalism and its implications for democracy.