Page 176 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Sabine Lang

Historically, this growth of the local press can be traced back to indus-
trialization and urbanization, yet so far this “link between newspapers
and the growth and development of cities” (Kaniss 1991, 13) has not
been established systematically and across cultures. Conversely, the rapid
trend toward suburbanization after the 1950s in Western urban centers
and the “urban plight” of big cities exposed how much the local press
depended on a readership that identified with their urban public space.
Newspaper companies reacted by refocusing their agenda toward more
regional and less purely local news. Yet the more regionalized the local
press of bigger cities became, the less attractive it seemed to its core urban
constituencies.
Today, the daily print press navigates between the demands of eco-
nomic concentration in the industry and the spatial as well as social
differentiation of its clientele. Increasingly diverse, partly regionally ori-
ented and partly sublocal print media arrange themselves under what
James A. Rosse calls an “umbrella competition pattern” (Kaniss 1991, 43;
also Graber 1997). Under this umbrella competition pattern, different
print-press models operate and circulate on four levels. On the top level
we find the large metropolitan dailies that integrate international, na-
tional, and regional with local reporting, but have a stronger stake in the
former. Underneath this level operate so-called satellite dailies that cover
some regional pieces, but focus more on the local news in their suburban
community. On the next level down are strictly suburban papers, serving
localities beyond the reach of satellite dailies. The fourth level consists
of free media. Even though some form of this umbrella competition
pattern seems to emerge in all urban public spaces, we know too little
about its arrangements and effects – in particular about how it plays out
in specific national cultures, how it affects the quality of the news, the
working conditions of journalists, and the consumption patterns of local
readers.
In general, the local press has developed the dubious reputation of
being provincial, parochial, fixated on easy entertainment, and under
toomuch influence from the local power elites. Schoenbach assesses
for Germany that until the 1970s, 90 percent of all news in the lo-
cal papers was presented as mere local or community-related problems

future research. In India, for example, we know that after the end of British rule there
already existed a lively print culture of over 4,000 newspapers in seventeen languages
and dialects (see Kishan Thussu 1998, 274). But it might well be that in societies with
low rates of literacy, not the print media but the new electronic media take over this
traditional catalyst function.

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