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Webpage created
for December 16, 2020 zoom meeting with University of North Carolina's:
Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Andy Johns
&
Institutional Research Integrity Officer Eric Everett
UNIVERSITY
OF NORTH CAROLINA HUSSMAN SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MEDIA
Susan King,
Dean of Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Center for
Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media
"UNC’s Center for Innovation and
Sustainability in Local Media
supports existing and start-up
news organizations through its
dissemination of applied research
and the development of digital
tools and solutions. The Center, funded by the John
S. and James L. Knight Foundation, supports the
economic and business research of UNC’s Knight
Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics,
as well as faculty and students in the design, testing
and adaptation of digital tools
and strategies for
use in newsrooms." (2020 report, at p. 120)
Susan Leath,
Director
former
executive USA Today (Gannett)
Penelope
Muse Abernathy
-- 3 Columbia University
degrees
"formerly an executive at
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times"
(2020 report, at p. 120)
Knight Foundation
* * *
The Expanding News Desert Project
inventory of NY
newspapers, etc
2020 Report "News Deserts & Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News
Survive?"
"The findings in this report are based on analysis of data collected by
the Hussman School of Journalism and Media
at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over the past five
years. Our study attempts to measure the loss of news
through quantitative and qualitative research. It
seeks to answer this question:
Are residents in a community getting
credible news that helps them make informed decisions about
quality-of-life issues?...
You
can learn more about the state of news in your community by visiting our
website,
usnewsdeserts.com,
which allows you
to drill down to the county level in every state, using our 400 national and
state interactive maps. "
(at p.
10, italics in original)
Methodology (pp. 113-118)
“…our research is concerned with identifying local
newspapers that provide public-service journalism…Does the paper,
for example, cover local government meetings, such as school boards and
county commissioner meetings? Does the paper provide coverage on any
of the eight topics identified by the Federal Communications Commission as
being ‘critical information needs’? This report assesses the
quantity, but not the quality of news generated by local news outlets,
a step that would require in-depth analysis of the content. We
recommend this as an additional research step to anyone seeking to determine
the health of the local news ecosystem in a specific region.
(at p. 114: “Building And Refining the Newspaper
Database”)
“To determine definitively whether a large
daily is fulfilling its civic journalism role of informing a
community on important issues, much more research – including
in-depth analysis of published content – is needed. Having
raised the issue, we leave that to other researchers to determine whether an
individual paper is a ‘ghost.’
(at p. 115: “Defining
‘News Deserts’ and ‘Ghost Newspapers’”).
"As was the case with the 2016 report, because our focus is on local
newspapers, UNC also excluded from the 2018 and 2020 reports data on the
country’s largest national papers – The New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal and USA Today ..." (at p. 115)
RATE YOUR LOCAL NEWS
* * *
FAQ -- Who Funded...
"The
report is published by the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local
Media in the
Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. The
center
is funded by grants from the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation
and the UNC Office
of the Provost."
* * *
click here for:
prior correspondence
with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
* * *
1.
CJA's October 29, 2020 e-mail to Knight Scholar
Abernathy/University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism & Media
-- Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media
--
"Building scholarship on
the 'news desert' problem with EVIDENCE, DISPOSITIVE OF ACTUAL PERFORMANCE
of 'for profit', supposedly credible & legacy press -- & of the new press
that is 'non-profit' and philanthropically or publicly-supported"
furnishing
CJA's October 26, 2020
e-mail to Metric Media --
"GOOD NEWS! Metric Media can easily
PROVE its worth by an EVIDENCE-BASED expose
of the fake, fraudulent,
election-rigging journalism of The New York Times & NY's other
'local
journalism', covered up by Columbia School of Journalism & its Journalism
Review"
2.
CJA's November 5, 2020 e-mail to Knight Scholar Abernathy
--
"AGAIN -- Building
scholarship on the 'news desert' problem with EVIDENCE..."
3.
CJA's November 12, 2020 e-mail to Director Susan Leath --
"Ensuring the accuracy & legitimacy of the
scholarship of the University of North Carolina's
Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media of its Hussman School of Journalism --
upon which other academic institutes & funders rely
4.
CJA's November 19, 2020 e-mail to Director Susan Leath
--
"Again -- Ensuring the accuracy & legitimacy of scholarship..."
5.
OVERSIGHT
University
of North Carolina --
wikipedia
Office of
Ethics & Policy --
Research
Misconduct --
Individuals having reason to believe that
someone has engaged in research misconduct related to University
research has an obligation to report their concerns to their own
department chair (or equivalent unit head) or directly to the Research
Integrity Officer (RIO). The Department Chair (or equivalent) shall
immediately notify the RIO, who will inform the Deciding Official.
Policy on
Research Code of Conduct
Standard on
Research Code of Conduct
Policy on Institutional Conflict of Interest
Policy on Individual Conflicts of Interest and
Commitment
Policy and Procedures on Responding to
Allegations of Research Misconduct
October 29, 2020 "Voting 101: The Ethics of Being
Informed"
September 9, 2020 WEBINAR -- "Deconstructing
the News Desert..."
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism -- Penny Muse Abernathy participating
---------------------
-------------------------------
2016 Report "Rise
of the New Media Barons"
2018 Report "The
Expanding News Desert"
p. 21: In the latter half of the 20th
century, when circulation and newsroom staffing were at their highest levels
ever, major metro and state papers routinely received Pulitzer Prizes, the
most coveted award in journalism, for their aggressive investigative
reporting.
...Additionally,
there is evidence that the journalistic competition between metro papers and
smaller community publications may spur more aggressive coverage of issues
in these outlying communities since local reporters don’t want to be scooped
by the big-city journalists. This is especially true when metro papers
assign reporters to cover routine governmental meetings in outlying areas.
p. 23: The lack of competition among
newspapers in major metro markets
often results in less coverage of
local and state government.
* * *
Methodology -- 2020 report (pp. 113-118)
"Building And Refining the Newspaper Database"
Many states and municipalities have different
thresholds for determining if a newspaper is a “paper of record” and
therefore eligible to carry legal advertisements. Often that threshold is
based on circulation and distribution. We recognize that the income from
legal advertising is very critical to small dailies and weeklies. Therefore,
we can work with the general counsel at individual press associations to
provide qualifying text on state maps that explain the difference in our
methodology (which is focused on news coverage) versus the threshold used by
government officials to determine if a publication is eligible to receive
legal advertising. The counsel for state press associations should
contact us
with requests for qualifying text concerning the status of publications that
meet the threshold for legal advertising."
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