A new study by Rutgers points to “a specific type of problem in local journalism, one in which lower-income communities are dramatically underserved relative to wealthier communities, and in which lower-income communities receive the bulk of their news from a smaller range of sources.”

Whether the patterns persist on a larger scale require further research, according to the report “Assessing the Health of Local Journalism Ecosystems: A Comparative Analysis of Three New Jersey Communities.”  The study from the Rutgers School of Communication and Information involved the communities of Morristown, New Brunswick and Newark, and received support from the Democracy Fund, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The authors of the report acknowledge that the impact of the decline of traditional journalism on local community news remains difficult to answer. Some studies have noted the rise of community, participatory and citizen news outlets.  Others have pointed to unfilled gaps - news or media deserts - resulting from the demise of traditional media.  Most recently, in June, the Media Deserts Projects, a collaboration of the Scripps College of Communication and Department of Geography at Ohio University, released the first of several geographic information system maps of the United States that showed areas of the country underserved by fresh local news and information.  

The Rutgers research involved a content analysis of a one-week sample of news stories on web and social media provided by journalistic sources identified in Morristown, New Brunswick and Newark.  The results “showed substantial differences in the journalism infrastructure, output and performance across these three communities, particularly when controlling for differences in population size.”

According to the benchmarks of availability of journalistic resources, quantity of journalistic output and performance (the extent to which content was original, about local communication and addressed critical information needs):  Newark came in last, Morristown first and News Brunswick consistently was in the middle.  Newark is the largest, poorest, and most ethnically diverse of the three communities.  Morristown is the smallest, wealthiest and least ethnically diverse. New Brunswick falls in the middle with a demographic profile more similar to Newark’s and a population size more comparable to Morristown than Newark’s.

The study includes detailed graphs and other data.  In the discussion of results, the report noted, “From a quality standpoint, a smaller proportion of the journalistic output in Newark and (to a lesser extent) New Brunswick tended to meet key qualitative criteria, such as originality, focus on local community and addressing critical information needs than was the case in Morristown.  Thus not only was there less journalism in the lower-income communities, but also a smaller proportion of this journalism output in these communities met basic criteria for quality when compared to a wealthier community such as Morristown.”