Viewpoint: James D. Ivory, Ph.D

It’s not a coincidence that when the United States’ founders hammered out the Bill of Rights to safeguard individual freedoms afforded by the new U.S. Constitution, they guaranteed freedom of the press in the very First Amendment on the list. Media have played a key part in our nation’s function and culture since the colonial period. The press has served as a complement and counterpart to our democracy throughout our nation’s existence, providing the public with vital information and affording a platform for innovation and social reform. The press has also long been uniquely intertwined with commerce in the United States. While earlier media were a somewhat costly luxury inaccessible to the working and middle classes, the mid-19th century saw the penny press era of American newspapers make news and opinion conveniently accessible to the broader public. Technological advancement in the form of steampowered newspaper presses partially engendered these more affordable newspapers, but another primary force behind cheaper public access to journalism was newspapers’ move to reliance on advertising as a primary revenue source rather than subscriptions. And so it has been ever since. Journalists harnessed the advent of broadcast media—first radio, then television—and the policy and business models around those technologies in the United States have tended to favor advertising as their primary financial engine rather than other revenue options such as pure subscription services or government taxes and licensing. As digital media brought our news to the Internet, first on our desktop computers and now ever more often on our ubiquitous mobile devices, American journalism has continued to branch out into each new media platform and likewise continued to rely on advertising revenue as its lifeblood. This longstanding tendency for the news media to embrace both new technology and commercial sponsors had been beneficial not only for media providers and advertisers. When the relationship works as it ought to, consumers are informed and entertained—with the cost of all that content subsidized by businesses that offer useful goods and services to those same consumers. No, we haven’t always gotten it right. Commercial pressures, real and imagined, can threaten the independence of our news media and present conflicts of interest, and it’s a sad truth that nervous advertisers have discouraged provocative voices in news and entertainment media. That said, commercial pressure from public outcry has also been a factor in positive changes in our media landscape, such as more diverse representation in the faces we see on television to increased accountability in the news media for once-ignored predatory behavior by powerful men. Historically, perhaps the greatest success of this symbiosis between news media, advertisers and the public has been the case of local news. From city newspapers to specialty magazines, local media and small businesses

[ by james d. ivory ]

LESLIE KING

have invested in the communities they occupy to keep their neighbors informed and engaged. In turn, community members patronize and support both local media sources and the businesses that support them. But that harmonious relationship has seen tougher times of late. Of the hundreds of billions of dollars currently spent on advertising worldwide, the lion’s share goes to massive online platforms that sort and deliver media content produced by others, most notably Google and Facebook. Challenged by declining audiences, local media have more and more often been sold to national and international corporations. (Consider the case of Norfolk’s The Virginian-Pilot, which was sold to Chicago Tribune parent company Tribune Publishing in 2018, which was in turn, absorbed by Manhattan hedge fund Alden Global Capital this year.) Deregulation in recent decades has exacerbated this trend by allowing unprecedented conglomeration of media ownership within local markets. Our nation grew up hand in hand with local media voices, and many of us grew up getting our little league sports scores from the same newspapers and radio stations that covered town council meetings and told us about school cancellations due to inclement weather. Search engines and international media corporations have their purpose but lack the community engagement that locally owned and produced media provide. At a time when we have more media to consume than at any point in human history, and all of it literally in the palms of our hands in the form of our mobile devices, sustainable support for our local media is imperative. Some might say the proliferation of digital media has caused the challenges local media face, with web browsing gobbling up time once spent poring over newspapers and magazines. But digital media can be the solution as well. It is easy to lament the trend of news sources shuttering their print editions in favor of digital versions, but digital distribution is a key to the survival of that healthy relationship that local news media have long enjoyed with advertisers and consumers. There is nothing talismanic about pages of newsprint or television monitors; journalists have always moved to adopt the newest communication technologies, and the value of news media to their communities is in the content they provide rather than their

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formats. Similarly, advertisers have more opportunity than ever to make efficient connections with consumers via local digital media, with more refined metrics of audience reach and interest available for digital advertising than any previous delivery method. A relevant message in a trusted local publication is a much more efficient way for a small business owner to sincerely reach out to community members than an ad in a global search engine. Consumers, meanwhile, can stand to benefit from the economy of scale that comes with digital distribution. When it costs almost nothing more to share 10,000 copies of a digital magazine than it does to share 10, community members can enjoy the information and entertainment contained in a digital edition at reduced cost or none at all. We sorely need strong local media, from coverage of school board meetings to reviews of restaurants. And if we continue to see responsible partnerships between local journalists and local small businesses online, we can have a verdant media landscape in our communities. But we all need to buy in together and we need to ensure that we don’t leave the digital landscape to the international corporations. The Internet can be local too, and it can belong to our communities as much as to Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue. Our smartphones are in our pockets and purses, and our community news and businesses can be right there too.

James D. Ivory, Ph.D., is a professor and director of research and outreach in the School of Communication at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, VA. He holds a Doctorate of communication, a Master of Arts in communication and a Bachelor of Science in journalism. His research and teaching interests deal primarily with social dimensions of media technologies.