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Making Local News

Why do crimes and accidents earn more news coverage than development and policy issues affecting thousands of people? Filled with revealing interviews with both journalists and city officials, Making Local News is the first comprehensive look at how the economic motives of media owners, professional motives of journalists, and the strategies of media-wise politicians shape the news we see and hear, thereby influencing urban policy.

"Making Local News by Phyllis Kaniss . . . is significant. . . . If we can continue to get smarter about that which journalism leaves out or distorts in its coverage of politics, we may eventually get smarter about politics itself."—Mitchell Stephens, The Philadelphia Inquirer View

"A convincing analysis of the factors and forces which color how and why local issues do, or do not, become newsworthy." —Michael H. Ebner, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This work serves as a reminder of the importance of a medium that is often overlooked until economic realities threaten its very existence." —Choice

"Kaniss is truly a pioneer in the study of local news."—Susan Herbst, Contemporary Sociology

270 pages | 6 line drawings, 12 tables, 10 maps | 6 x 9 | © 1991

Media Studies

Sociology: Urban and Rural Sociology

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1: The Historical Development
2: Commercial Pressures on Local News
3: Professional Values in the Local Journalist
4: Local Television News
5: Alternative Voices in the Local Media
6: Local Government Officials as News Sources
7: Philadelphia’s New Convention Center: A Case Study
Conclusion and a Look to the Future
Notes
Index

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