Slides presented by Regina Lawrence - based on our research - at the 2024 Local Journalism Researchers’ Workshop, March 25-26, 2024 at Duke University. The presentation outlines key points from our research, including: why Community-Centered Journalism matters, the backdrop that it plays out against, and five key challenges for growing this journalistic practice.

1. Lessons from
Community-Centered
Journalism for Local
Journalism Research
Regina Lawrence and Damian Radcliffe
March 2023

2. Why this matters?
The local news crisis is a crisis of the capacity of newsrooms to meet
local information needs, and a crisis of public trust in news.
Solutions need to focus on building newsroom resources but also on
journalistic practices that can build trust.
Community-centered journalism practices promise to build greater
public trust in news – and point toward questions that researchers
need to explore in more depth.

3. Where are we now?
As newsroom
resources (budgets
and reporting jobs)
have been slashed
01
…and as political
polarization and
distrust in media
have increased…
02
…the community-
centered journalism
movement has
quietly grown –
against the odds.
03
We highlighted this
growth in last year’s
report, which
focused on the
principles of CCJ
04

5. CCJ practice is
growing across
the country…
BUT: Tension between
the growth of CCJ and
declining resources +
increasingly fraught
political environment.
The challenge for practitioners presents
research questions for researchers.

6. Given this challenging context, how are
practitioners‘doing’ community-centered
journalism – and will it work?
Damian’s forthcoming Agora report highlights 5 key challenges for CCJ in these troubled times,
and how journalists are meeting them.

7. 5 key challenges
1. Organizational
culture
2. Time for
implementation
3. Demonstrating
ROI & measuring
impact
4. The journalistic
skillset
5. Sustaining and
expanding CCJ
projects

8. 1.
Organizational
culture
How do we triangulate the
business model, the goals and
identity of the newsroom, and
the information needs of the
community?
“The problem is when the intentions
don't align with the incentives”
Lisa Heyamoto, LION Publishers

9. 2. Time for
implementation
“Moving at the speed
of trust” means CCJ
takes longer than
traditional journalism
to produce.

10. 3. Demonstrating ROI
& measuring impact
In a world driven by
pageviews and subscriber
numbers, what does
success look like?

11. 4. The journalistic
skillset
The practices of deep listening,
community-building, and de-
centering journalists aren’t
taught in most J schools, or in
most newsrooms...
Image: Participants in last year’s Reporting for Civic Power pose with
editors and publishers of local community news organizations and
members of the Signal Cleveland staff.

12. 5. Sustaining and expanding CCJ
CCJ projects take commitment,
resources, and a reservoir of
stakeholder trust that may all
be in short supply.
“How do we do this at scale?”
Dr. Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

13. Our forthcoming report will
also highlight some
potential solutions…

14. Thanks for listening
Regina Lawrence
Associate Dean, SOJC Portland, University of Oregon
Research Director, Agora Journalism Center
Editor, Political Communication
Email: rgl@uoregon.edu
X/Twitter: @LawrenceRegina
Damian Radcliffe
Chambers Professor of Journalism, University of Oregon
Fellow, Tow Center for Digital Journalism +
School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University
Email: damianr@uoregon.edu
X/Twitter: @damianradcliffe