{"id":19785,"date":"2023-04-11T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T08:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=19785"},"modified":"2023-04-13T14:10:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:10:38","slug":"local-news-media-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/04\/local-news-media-institutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Local News Media Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Kane \u201926 | Photos by John Schoolmeesters<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at how mainstream commercial media is failing people and how concerned and inventive people are attempting to fill that gap.” \u2014Michael Griffin\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Media and cultural studies professor Michael Griffin has had to revamp his Local News Media Institutions course several times over the years\u2014and Griffin likes it that way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot only has the role of the newspaper changed,\u201d he says, “but the idea of news itself is no longer the same.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He began teaching a \u201cLocal Media Institutions ancestor\u201d twenty years ago, then called Media Institutions. Initially, it was a course that examined the public\u2019s relationship with news industries and the economics of journalism. Now, it\u2019s morphed into a class on local news and community media. At the start of the class, he asks his students where they get their news.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, they list off various social media platforms or large commercial media companies,\u201d Griffin says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Students in the class during a recent guest visit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But even with heavy internet exposure students, he says, still have large \u201cinternet blindspots.\u201d Mergers and acquisitions have created a media landscape dominated by a few major conglomerates, and students often are not aware of where their news information actually originates, or by what means it travels to them. This is an issue they explore in depth in the course.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at how mainstream commercial media is failing people and how concerned and inventive people are attempting to fill that gap,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Griffin draws on the wealth of local news organizations and community media in the Twin Cities to show how local media can address the failings of corporate media in real time. He invites guest speakers from public and community media outlets to speak to the class about their work and the challenges of non-profit journalism. One recent speaker was Estelle Timar-Wilcox, a Macalester Class of 2022 graduate and journalist with the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network and Minnesota Public Radio. Another was Mukhtar Ibrahim, founder and editor of Sahan Journal.<\/span><\/p>\n

For their final projects, the students engage with a local media organization in the Twin Cities. They are tasked with interviewing staff and audience members of the outlet and presenting their findings to their peers. He says that by having students do their own research on local publications, community radio stations, and neighborhood cultural centers they will have a more nuanced understanding of the contemporary media landscape, especially in the digital space. “The web offers great new opportunities in this regard, but must be viewed in a critical context,” says Griffin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to show them the difference between just using the web and really exploring the web.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Guest speaker Cirien Saadeh<\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A class gives students a more nuanced understanding of the media landscape, drawing on the abundance of local news organizations and community media in the Twin Cities.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":19837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","mediatype-articles","collections-mediastudieshomepage"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":[69],"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19785"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19859,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19785\/revisions\/19859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}