Media Policy for an Informed Citizenry: Revisiting the Information Needs of Communities for Democracy in Crisis

Abstract

This volume of The ANNALS revisits and updates a call made by scholars in the early 2010s for public policy to respond to the market failure of local news. Organized into four parts—policy, supply, demand, and adaptation—this volume is committed to the proposition that people need information about their communities in order to navigate everyday life, and that those information needs are inextricably intertwined with other basic necessities like sustenance, transportation, housing, health, and safety. However, local and regional newspapers face an existential threat to their continued economic survival that undermines their ability to do even basic, routine coverage of civic institutions and communities. This volume demonstrates that professional journalism is one of many ways to support communities’ information needs. We consider how new sources of news and information might fill contemporary information needs and how media policy, broadly understood, could help create a more equitable, tolerant, and just multiracial democracy.