We live in a boosterish era that exhorts us to play local and buy local. But what does it mean to support local media? How should we define local media in the first place? Christopher Ali delves into our ideas about localism and their far-reaching repercussions for the discourse of federal media policy and regulation. His critique focuses on the new interest in localism among regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As he shows, the many different and often contradictory meanings of localism complicate efforts to study local voices. At the same time, market factors and regulators' unwillingness to critically examine local media blunt challenges to the status quo. Ali argues that reconciling the places where we live with the spaces we inhabit will point regulators toward effective policies that strengthens local media. That new approach will again elevate local media to its rightful place as a vital part of the public good.
The New Localism provides a roadmap for change that starts in the communities where most people live and work. In their new book, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges. Power is shifting in the world: downward from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities; horizontally from the public sector to networks of public, private and civic actors; and globally along circuits of capital, trade, and innovation. This new locus of power—this new localism—is emerging by necessity to solve the grand challenges characteristic of modern societies: economic competitiveness, social inclusion and opportunity; a renewed public life; the challenge of diversity; and the imperative of environmental sustainability. Where rising populism on the right and the left exploits the grievances of those left behind in the global economy, new localism has developed as a mechanism to address them head on. New localism is not a replacement for the vital roles federal governments play; it is the ideal complement to an effective federal government, and, currently, an urgently needed remedy for national dysfunction. In The New Localism, Katz and Nowak tell the stories of the cities that are on the vanguard of problem solving. Pittsburgh is catalyzing inclusive growth by inventing and deploying new industries and technologies. Indianapolis is governing its city and metropolis through a network of public, private and civic leaders. Copenhagen is using publicly owned assets like their waterfront to spur large scale redevelopment and finance infrastructure from land sales. Out of these stories emerge new norms of growth, governance, and finance and a path toward a more prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive society. Katz and Nowak imagine a world in which urban institutions finance the future through smart investments in innovation, infrastructure and children and urban intermediaries take solutions created in one city and adapt and tailor them to other cities with speed and precision. As Katz and Nowak show us in The New Localism, “Power now belongs to the problem solvers.”
Questions concerning the quality of media performance and the effectiveness of media policymaking often revolve around the extent to which the media system fulfills the values inherent in diversity and localism principles. This edited volume addresses challenges and issues relating to diversity in local media markets from a media law and policy perspective. Editor Philip M. Napoli provides a conceptual and empirical framework for assessing the success/failure of media markets and media outlets in fulfilling diversity and localism objectives. Featuring well-known contributors from a variety of disciplines, including media, law, political science, and economics, Media Diversity and Localism explores the following topics: *media ownership and media diversity and localism; *conceptual and methodological issues in assessing media diversity and localism; *minorities, media, and diversity; and *contextualizing media diversity and localism: audience behavior and new technologies. This substantive and timely volume speaks to scholars and researchers in the areas of media law and policy, political science, and all others interested in media regulation. It can also be used in a graduate seminar on media policy topics.
This comprehensive edited collection provides key contributions in the field, mapping out fundamental topics and analysing current trends through an international lens. Offering a collection of invited contributions from scholars across the world, the volume is structured in seven parts, each exploring an aspect of local media and journalism. It brings together and consolidates the latest research and theorisations from the field, and provides fresh understandings of local media from a comparative perspective and within a global context. This volume reaches across national, cultural, technological and socio-economic boundaries to bring new understandings to the dominant foci of research in the field and highlights interconnection and thematic links. Addressing the significant changes local media and journalism have undergone in the last decade, the collection explores the history, politics, ethics and contents of local media, as well as delving deeper into the business and practices that affect not only the journalists and media-makers involved, but consumers and communities as well. For students and researchers in the fields of journalism studies, journalism education, cultural studies, and media and communications programmes, this is the comprehensive guide to local media and journalism.
Since the 1990s, more than 100 local business organizations have formed in the United States, and there are growing efforts to build local ownership in the retail, food, energy, transportation, and media industries. In this first social science study of localism, Hess adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines theoretical reflection, empirical research, and policy analysis. His perspective is not that of an uncritical localist advocate; he draws on his new empirical research to assess the extent to which localist policies can address sustainability and justice issues.
Journalism in Crisis addresses the concerns of scholars, activists, and journalists committed to Canadian journalism as a democratic institution and as a set of democratic practices. The authors look within Canada and abroad for solutions for balancing the Canadian media ecology. Public policies have been central to the creation and shaping of Canada’s media system and, rather than wait for new technologies or economic models, the contributors offer concrete recommendations for how public policies can foster journalism that can support democratic life in twenty-first century Canada. Their work, which includes new theoretical perspectives and valuable discussions of journalism practices in public, private, and community media, should be read by professional and citizen journalists, academics, media activists, policy makers and media audiences concerned about the future of democratic journalism in Canada.
