Effects of Re-localizing a Local Newspaper: Results from a Natural Experiment

• In Event: I Will Follow: Local News Engagement

Abstract

Can local newspapers do anything to stop the rising polarization and nationalization of American politics? Recent research shows that the very existence of local newspapers protects against the polarizing influence of readily available national political news. In this paper, we exploit a natural experiment inspired by this research: a newspaper decided to drop all national coverage from its editorial page for one month in summer 2019, running no nationally syndicated columns, political cartoons, letters to the editor, or original editorials about national politics. Coverage about national politics was replaced by local content, both political and non-political, during a particularly noteworthy municipal election year: in 2019, the current mayor of Palm Springs did not run for re-election, and it is the first election under the city’s transition to district-based City Council elections from a system using at-large elections. We fielded local surveys before and after this month-long experiment in the newspaper’s community and a nearby comparison community that did not change their focus in July, and pre-registered our expectations and analysis plan with Open Science Framework (OSF) before receiving our data. We use the newspaper natural experiment case study as the basis for an exploration of how content changes when newspapers re-localize their focus, using an original content analysis of the newspaper in the summers of 2018 and 2019; how readers and potential customers engage with that content online, using engagement metrics shared with us by the newspaper; and whether an increase in local news content influences political attitudes and opinions, particularly affective polarization, using our original contemporaneous surveys. By exploiting this rare opportunity to examine a sudden relative increase in local content during a locally important political moment, we contribute to the current debate about the role of declining local newspapers in local politics. This project should be of interest to scholars of political communication and American politics, as well as newspaper staffers and those working in the growing field of local news sustainability.

Authors

• Joshua P. Darr, Louisiana State University

• Matthew P. Hitt, Colorado State University

• Johanna Dunaway, Texas A&M University