In many communities across the United States, substantive local news is a rare commodity. For areas long stigmatized and associated with high levels of violence, crime, and poverty, negative reporting may be the only local news available. Drawing from communication infrastructure theory and literature on local news audiences and civic journalism, this study explores how a local solutions journalism project is received by members of an underrepresented and stigmatized community. Solutions journalism stories focus on responses to social problems, usually exploring problem-solving efforts that have the potential to be scaled. This case examines how participants in six focus groups with 48 African-American and Latino South Los Angeles residents responded to solutions-oriented stories produced by a local media project. Study findings illustrate how residents navigate and critically interpret local media coverage, and how their response to ‘solutions journalism’ is largely positive but tempered by concerns regarding structural inequalities.
Chapter One introduces an example of how communication infrastructure theory can be used to diagnose the communication health of communities and to design an intervention in response. It also explores the role of place in influencing relationships between actors in local storytelling networks—in this case focusing on majority Black and Latinx communities in South Los Angeles that have historically been stigmatized by negative news representations. The chapter outlines a research-based intervention that sought to strengthen weak connections between local news outlets and community organizations by bringing representatives together to produce a series of solutions journalism stories about South LA. These stories were then discussed with South LA residents in a series of focus groups. While residents responded favorably to the solutions-orientation of stories, they wanted to see local media take steps to address power imbalances and to involve communities more in the process of making journalism.
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