Die Leistungen des Lokaljournalismus

Abstract

Lokale Medienberichte haben für die Nutzer nach wie vor eine vergleichsweise hohe Bedeutung, jedoch wurden in den letzten Jahren kaum mehr Studien zum Lokaljournalismus in seinen zwei relevantesten Formen – Print und Online – vorgelegt. Das erstaunt, da sich die Forschung in den 1960er und 1970er-Jahren mit enormem Aufwand der lokalen Berichterstattung zuzuwenden begann. Dabei wurden stets zahlreiche Defizite festgestellt. Der hier vorgestellte Beitrag erarbeitet aus drei theoretischen Perspektiven (funktional, normativ-politisch und räumlich-geographisch) Leistungskriterien des Lokaljournalismus und präsentiert Ergebnisse einer umfangreichen Untersuchung von 103 lokalen Zeitungsausgaben und ihren korrespondierenden Online-Auftritten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Lokaljournalismus sich zwar gegenüber den früher ermittelten Defiziten verbessert hat, etwa im Bereich der Themenvielfalt und Unabhängigkeit. Er ist aber immer noch dadurch charakterisiert, dass wenig Hintergründe vorkommen, die Vielfalt an Darstellungsformen gering ausfällt und eher unkritisch über das lokale Geschehen berichtet wird. Im Bereich Partizipation schöpfen Print- und Onlineausgaben die Möglichkeiten ebenfalls nicht aus. Detaillierte Analysen zeigen darüber hinaus Unterschiede zwischen Typen von Lokalausgaben.Alternate abstract:Local news are still of rather high relevance for the audience, but in the last years few studies on local journalism in its two most important forms—print and online—were carried out in Germany. Considering that many empirical studies on local journalism were published in the 1960 s and 1970 s this is quite astonishing. At that time many deficits in quality were found: Local newspapers did not provide enough background information, they published articles with low news value and studies revealed a strong influence of public relations. Further studies pointed out that local journalism was rather uncritical, especially in reporting on local elites. In addition, the reporting was characterized by a limited diversity—regarding topics, viewpoints and journalism formats. Above all, recent studies on online journalism suggest that the percentage of exclusive content on newspaper websites is low. This study tries to fill in the gap in research on local journalism. In a first step, quality criteria for local journalism are derived from three theoretical perspectives. In (1) a functional and system-oriented perspective, journalism as a societal sub-system has a vital function for society. It was developed in the historic process by journalism itself. Journalism compensates consequences of functional differentiation in society. Journalism gathers and selects current, socially relevant and factual topics in various parts of society, edits them and returns them to society as media content. In doing so, it provides a self-observation of society with a broad social resonance. In this perspective, important criteria are, e. g., diversity and relevance; journalism should also be entertaining and easy to understand. In (2) a normative-political perspective, criteria like, e. g., impartiality and the respect for personal rights are located which are specified, e. g., in media laws, codes of conduct and court decisions. Journalism is expected to support the democratic process and to offer information that enable citizens to make rational decisions. It should actively generate a common public sphere where relevant issues are freely debated by political actors and society. In (3) a spatial perspective, the local environment is regarded as the place to identify with (emotionally), as the place of everyday life (functionally), as the place of interaction and communication (socially), and as the place of participation (politically). So, local journalism should, e. g., support political participation and connect the local and national level (quality criteria participation and glocality) and offer service news (quality criterion applicability). 103 local newspaper editions and their corresponding w bsites were chosen by a complex two-step random sampling for the following empirical analysis. The editions were weighted by newspaper circulation and collected for one week (June 15th to 20th, 2015). 18 student assistants analyzed the newspapers and websites in a content analysis, e. g., in terms of topics, sources, controversial debates, graphic design and service information. Data were aggregated on a weekly level for every newspaper and standardized with a theoretical or—if not possible—with an empirical maximum. The quality dimensions are mean values of the measured indicators. Data of the print analysis show that some deficits of local journalism seem to remain: Newspapers seldom provide a critical stance and neglect background information; the texts are characterized by a low news value, and they are written and designed rather boringly. In addition, local journalism offers a limited diversity of journalism formats and a small proportion of participative elements—even on the local websites. They usually offer standard options like contact addresses of the desk, comment functions or a connection with a local Facebook profile. Many of the analyzed online articles were also published in the print edition the same or the next day—however, almost 20% were original online content. Despite the number of deficits, improvements in local journalism were found: Newspapers provide a wide variety of topics, they are rather credible, and they achieve good results in independence and neutrality. Comparisons between types of newspapers (published in a major city, in a town or in rural areas or classified as tabloids) illustrate that local journalism in major cities obtains rather good values, e. g., in terms of diversity of topics, independence, or online orientation. In rural areas newspapers often reach lower values; however, they are in the best position in terms of service orientation. In tabloids local journalism is characterized, e. g., by a lack of participation and background information; tabloids reach—compared to other newspapers—a lower level in neutrality; however, they are much better than the others in entertainment and graphic design. All in all, the study shows that local journalism became better in some dimensions. However, major problems still prevail, e. g., the tendency to show a harmonious world in a rather uncritical way or low news value. The article discusses methodological implications (e. g., the question if some maximum points should be modified) and proposes aspects for future research.