Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Time
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Division
Browse By Session Type
Search Tips
Personal Schedule
Sign In
The established narrative around newspapers and their relationship with “digital” is
predominantly gloomy. We’ve learned how newspapers missed the mark regarding
digital distribution and how traditional working practices often led to slow adoption of
digital tools. There’s much merit in this yet it is not the entire story. In both of these
conversations – doom and gloom, and resurgence and resilience – we are missing
insights into the smallest newspapers. This paper contributes to this conversation through
an investigation into the digital life of small market newspapers. We conducted a multimethod
study drawing on in-depth interviews with experts and practitioners, and a
nationwide survey of journalists and editors at small market newspapers. Our findings
point to considerable variety of experience. It is crucial not to discount these
experiments, or fall victim to the assumption of digital backwardness and analog
quaintness we often equate with small towns and smaller publications.
Christopher Ali, U of Virginia
Damian Radcliffe, U of Oregon
Thomas R. Schmidt, U of Oregon
Rosalind M Donald, Columbia U