Local newspaper

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A local newspaper is a daily or weekly newspaper that is essentially limited to the business of news , sports and event reporting as well as classifieds in a region and usually "impales" local events in satirical columnist form as local glosses or tips. In almost every city there are such local newspapers, which often appear in a relatively small circulation. The supraregional part of a local newspaper, the so-called coat , is usually obtained from a larger regional newspaper or daily newspaper.

Trends

Many formerly independent local newspapers now appear as the headers of a larger regional newspaper and only differ from this and its sister headers in the title (hence “head”) and the respective local section.

Traditionally, local and regional newspapers jointly fill the gap to the supraregional reports of the major newspapers and other mass media.

Counties and cities that are supplied by just one daily local or regional newspaper are also called single-newspaper districts .

The local newspaper is particularly affected by the decline in the importance of daily newspapers in general; the relevance (average time of use) of the daily newspapers between 1980 and 2010 fell from 38 to 23 minutes (Internet 2010: 83 minutes), and in 2014 the coverage of daily newspapers was 63 percent , for regional subscription newspapers at 51 percent.

Results of social science studies

In political and communication science research, there are some studies that dealt primarily with the political function of local newspapers; the fundamental works appeared around 1980.

According to this research approach, the task of the local press is: “The press has a special meaning in the often opposition-free zone of the community. Your task would be to create the missing public and the missing critical view of the town hall's activities ”. All of the studies emphasize that reporting often lags behind the decision-making process. The press is usually only switched on when everything has been decided.

Apart from that, the local sections made themselves “the mouthpiece of criticism from top to bottom”. Local rulers used the newspapers to assert their interests, the press showed itself to be largely instrumentalized in the local field. A process of mutual fertilization between rule and press does not take place: "A feedback function between the population and the rulers is illusory under such conditions". The press often hardly has a democratic function in the sense of a political public, because (1.) the one-sided orientation of local politics towards economic development is rarely questioned, (2.) reporting is usually limited to events that are already known local council and administration would hardly be controlled and (3.) criticism mostly refers to citizens and political initiatives, occasionally to parties, but hardly to the administration and its highest representatives.

"It is not that they criticize the democratic authorities that makes the undemocratic character of the local sections, but that they sanction the existing undemocratic conditions by digging into pre-democratic reference systems and thus make themselves the bully of the undemocratic conditions". The support of the dignitaries often has “pre-industrial, absolutist features”. “Rule” appears in local reporting “not as a representative body, as a delegation of power, but as a natural supremacy and subordination”. The “absolutist roles” of “benefactor” and “instructing”, on the other hand, are generally spared criticism in the local section. According to Thomas Ellwein  , the local press is therefore usually a mouthpiece for the local leadership: “In this respect, they resemble historical forerunners, the court bulletins. Like these, they do not serve for information, but for representation ”. Since the city administration and the city often disguise decision-making processes, the uncommented presentation of the results in the press has a “depoliticizing” effect. The local newspapers mainly disseminated news "in the publication of which the organs and persons issuing the news have an interest". Under such conditions there could be no question of “advocacy journalism”.

More recent studies deviate only slightly from this rather pessimistic representation, as summarized, for example, the communication scientist Otfried Jarren : The local reporting

  • is largely dominated by economic and political elites;
  • report superficially and hardly consider backgrounds and / or overarching contexts;
  • personalize events and neglect political structural issues;
  • tend to be rather uncritical and conflict-averse;
  • do not carry out any information processing or information presentation that stimulates participation;
  • show only a low willingness to criticize local politics;
  • I take over press information from local institutions with strong organizational structures and strong conflicts without their own research (“announcement journalism”).

A study by the University of Trier on the quality of local journalism services from 2018 essentially confirms the above points. As part of this survey, 18,000 articles from various local newspapers as well as local editions of national media or tabloids were evaluated, which were then categorized and indexed according to individual parameters based on several factors from which conclusions can be drawn about the overall quality of the reporting . Specifically, it shows that local newspapers should "provide more background, readers should participate more and allow themselves more critical reporting". In addition, the larger the local paper, the greater the perceived quality of a medium; a “metropolitan newspaper” serving a region with more than 500,000 inhabitants could, according to the study, afford more differentiated journalism than a small town or country newspaper, which is relatively more dependent on its - measured in absolute terms - smaller readership on the If a situation is too critically depicted, a large part that threatens the existence of the situation could possibly be omitted. The fear of losing the sympathy of advertisers or local politicians also plays a decisive role in the strategy of holding back on controversial topics. Often, due to the manageable size of the editorial team , there are simply too few resources available to be able to adequately devote oneself to a topic.

literature

  • Josef-Paul Benzinger: Local press and power in the community . Nuremberg Research Association V., ISBN 3-921453-16-X , Nuremberg 1980.
  • Thomas Ellwein, Ralf Zoll: Wertheim. Politics and power structure in a small German town. Juventa-Verlag, ISBN 3-7799-0089-0 , Munich 1982.
  • Otfried Jarren : Local media and communal politics . In: Hellmut Wollmann, Roland Roth (Hrsg.): Kommunalpolitik. Political action in the community . Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 1998. ISBN 3-89331-335-4 . Pp. 274-290.
  • Sonja Kretzschmar, Wiebke Möhring, Lutz Timmermann: Local journalism . Wiesbaden 2009.
  • Klaus Meier: Local media landscape and communal democracy. Between court reporting and critical public . (PDF) Lecture from November 18, 2014, Petra Kelly Foundation Nuremberg.
  • Horst Pöttker , Anke Vehmeier (ed.): The misunderstood department. Problems and Perspectives of Local Journalism . Wiesbaden 2013.
  • Annika Sehl: Local journalism . In: mass media . Information on political education 309, 4/2010. Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 2010.
  • Association of German Local Newspapers (Ed.): The Local Newspaper of the Future - (Brochure) November 2005.
  • Martin Welker, Daniel Ernst: Local. Basic knowledge for media practice . Cologne 2012.
  • Dieter Wolz: The press and the local powers . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-7700-4032-5 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Local newspaper  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Meier: Local media landscape and communal democracy. Between court reporting and critical public . (PDF) Lecture from November 18, 2014, Petra Kelly Foundation Nuremberg, p. 6 f.
  2. ^ Josef-Paul Benzinger: Local press and power in the community . Nuremberg 1980, p. 338, 633. Dieter Wolz: The press and the local powers . Düsseldorf 1979, p. 227. Thomas Ellwein , Ralf Zoll: Wertheim. Politics and power structure in a small German town . Munich 1982, p. 113.
  3. ^ Josef-Paul Benzinger: Local press and power in the community . Nuremberg 1980, p. 613 f .; Dieter Wolz: The press and the local powers . Düsseldorf 1979, pp. 347 f., 351. Thomas Ellwein , Ralf Zoll: Wertheim. Politics and power structure in a small German town . Munich 1982, p. 124.
  4. ^ Josef-Paul Benzinger: Local press and power in the community . Nuremberg 1980, p. 637. Dieter Wolz: The press and the local powers . Düsseldorf 1979, p. 351. Thomas Ellwein , Ralf Zoll: Wertheim. Politics and power structure in a small German town . Munich 1982, p. 118.
  5. ^ Otfried Jarren: Local media and communal politics . In: Hellmut Wollmann, Roland Roth (Hrsg.): Kommunalpolitik. Political action in the community . Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-89331-335-4 , p. 283.
  6. ↑ Quality of local newspapers: just don't criticize. In: The time . September 23, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018 .