19 pages., Online via UI e-subscription., Authors examined impacts of efforts by Report for America (RFA) to strengthen the capacity of local news and increase trust from the perspective of two communities: a neighborhood on Chicago's West Side and a rural county in eastern Kentucky. Findings illustrated "the influence of place and power dynamics on how residents navigate trustworthiness factors." They also revealed lack of feedback loops to provide coverage for communities.
21 pgs, The purpose of this paper is to compare the reporting of vital agricultural news between the mainstream print media and the farming press in Ireland. To achieve this, this study examined coverage of a recent and significant agricultural news event by mainstream Irish newspapers and the Irish farming press. Taking the 2018–2019 Irish beef sector crisis as the case study for examination, researchers conducted a comparative content analysis of the most widely circulated mainstream national newspapers’ (n = 5) and farming newspapers’ (n = 2) coverage of the story over a 14-month period. We analyzed the timing, frequency, and placing of some 294 articles published to communicate issues regarding the beef crisis at three specific stages—before the national farmer protests, during the farmer protests, and after the farmer protests. We found mainstream newspapers to be significantly slower to start reporting on the Irish beef sector crisis of 2018–2019 compared to the country’s farming newspapers—although national print media coverage of the event increased as the crisis escalated. This early underreporting of the event by mainstream newspapers is compelling considering the importance of the agri-food sector, and beef farming in particular, to Ireland’s economy. Building on existing international, but very limited Irish, research on agricultural journalism, we concluded that farming newspapers are more in touch with the critical issues affecting Irish farmers while mainstream newspapers appeared slower to cover a vital agricultural issue of public importance.
30 pages, via online journal, Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.
14 pages, Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the U.S. and other countries around the world saw a dramatic increase in the number of people starting pandemic gardens. In this article, the authors use rhetorical framing analysis to explore how news coverage of this gardening boom presented the illusion of control framed around the themes of economics, food sovereignty, physical and mental health, and community and connection. It concludes with a discussion of how these four themes offer an overly-optimistic view of gardening that deemphasizes sustainability, focuses on processes over harvests, and ignores food chain inequities.
