Understanding What Audiences Want From Local News

One of the most common recommendations local news organizations hear today, as they search for a viable business model, is to build stronger connections with their communities. This call for more responsiveness to audience needs and interests is a reaction to the upheaval in the news business, but it’s also part of a long tradition: As American University’s Jan Schaffer has written, contemporary efforts to better engage with audiences recall the civic journalism movement that flowered briefly in the 1990s.