News for the Rich, White, and Blue : : How Place and Power Distort American Journalism / / Nikki Usher.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Usher, Nikki,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 14 b&w illustrations

As cash-strapped metropolitan newspapers struggle to maintain their traditional influence and quality reporting, large national and international outlets have pivoted to serving readers who can and will choose to pay for news, skewing coverage toward a wealthy, white, and liberal audience. Amid rampant inequality and distrust, media outlets have become more out of touch with the democracy they purport to serve. How did journalism end up in such a predicament, and what are the prospects for achieving a more equitable future?In News for the Rich, White, and Blue, Nikki Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of field research, she illuminates how journalists decide what becomes news and how news organizations strategize about the future. Usher shows how newsrooms remain places of power, largely white institutions growing more elite as journalists confront a shrinking job market. She details how Google, Facebook, and the digital-advertising ecosystem have wreaked havoc on the economic model for quality journalism, leaving local news to suffer. Usher also highlights how the handful of likely survivors—well-funded media outlets such as the New York Times—increasingly appeal to a global, “placeless” reader.News for the Rich, White, and Blue concludes with a series of provocative recommendations to reimagine journalism to ensure its resiliency and its ability to speak to a diverse set of issues and readers.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Place, Power, and the Future of Journalism -- Chapter One. Myths of Local News and Why Newspapers Matter, Anyway -- Chapter Two. News for (and by) the Rich and White -- Chapter Three. Journalism’s Big Sort: Is the News That’s Left Just News for the Left? -- Chapter Four. The Beltway Versus the Heartland, Embodied: The Case of Washington Correspondents -- Chapter Five. Place and the Limits of Digital Revenue: Goldilocks Newspapers and the Curse of Geography -- Chapter Six. The Counterpoint: The New York Times’ Chase for Global Readers -- Chapter Seven. Blue News Surviving: The Big Sort in News Philanthropy -- Conclusion. Place as the Way Forward -- Appendix A: Methods -- Appendix B: Extended Methods from Chapter 3 -- Appendix C: Extended Methods from Chapter 7 -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index