English literature

Local newspapers
A local newspaper is a daily or weekly newspaper that is essentially limited to the business of news , sports and event reporting as well as classifieds in a region and usually "impales" local events in satirical columnist form as local glosses or tips. In almost every city there are such local newspapers, which often appear in a relatively small circulation. The supraregional part of a local newspaper, the so-called coat , is usually from a larger regional newspaper or daily newspaper.
Trends
Many formerly independent local newspapers now appear as the headers of a larger regional newspaper and only differ from this and its sister headers in the title (hence “head”) and the respective local section.
Traditionally, local and regional newspapers jointly fill the gap to the supraregional coverage of the major newspapers and other mass media.
Counties and cities that are supplied by only one daily local or regional newspaper are also called single-newspaper districts .
The local newspaper is particularly affected by the decline in the importance of daily newspapers in general; the relevance (average time of use) of the daily newspapers between 1980 and 2010 fell from 38 to 23 minutes (Internet 2010: 83 minutes), and in 2014 the coverage of daily newspapers was 63 percent , for regional subscription newspapers at 51 percent. ^[1]
Results of social science studies
In political and communication science research, there are some studies that dealt primarily with the political function of local newspapers; the fundamental works appeared around 1980.
The task of the local press is according to this research approach: “The press has a special meaning in the often opposition-free zone of the community. Your task would be to create the missing public and the missing critical view of the city hall's activities ”. All studies emphasize that reporting often lags behind the decision-making process. The press is usually only switched on when everything has been decided. ^[2] Apart from that, the local sections made themselves “the mouthpiece of criticism from top to bottom”. Local rulers used the newspapers to assert their interests, the press showed itself to be largely instrumentalized in the local field. A process of mutual fertilization between rule and press does not take place: "A feedback function between the population and those in power is illusory under such conditions". The press often hardly has a democratic function in the sense of a political public because (1.) the one-sided orientation of local politics towards economic development becomesrarely questioned, (2.) reporting is usually limited to events that are already known, so the municipal council and administration are hardly controlled and (3.) criticism mostly relates to citizens and political initiatives, occasionally to parties, but hardly at all on the administration and its highest representatives. ^[3] "It is not that they criticize the democratic authorities that makes the undemocratic character of the local parts, but that they sanction the existing undemocratic conditions by digging into pre-democratic reference systems and thus make themselves the bully of the undemocratic conditions". The support of the dignitaries often has “pre-industrial, absolutist features”. “Rule” appears in local reporting “not as a representative body, as a delegation of power, but as a natural supremacy and subordination”. The “absolutist roles” of the “benefactor” and the “instructor”, on the other hand, are generally spared criticism in the local section. The local press is - said Thomas Ellwein- therefore usually a mouthpiece for the local leadership: “In this they resemble historical forerunners, the court bulletins. Like these, they do not serve for information but for representation ”. Since the city administration and the city often disguise decision-making processes, the uncommented presentation of the results in the press has a "depoliticizing" effect. The local newspapers mainly disseminated news "in the publication of which the organs and persons issuing the news have an interest". Under such conditions there could be no question of “advocacy journalism”. ^[4]
More recent studies deviate only slightly from this rather pessimistic presentation, as summarized, for example, the communication scientist Otfried Jarren : The local reporting

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  is largely dominated by economic and political elites;
  
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  report superficially and hardly consider background and / or overarching contexts;
  
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  personalize events and neglect political structural issues;
  
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  tend to be rather uncritical and conflict-averse;
  
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  do not carry out any information processing or information presentation that encourages participation;
  
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  show only a low willingness to criticize local politics;
  
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  I take over press information from local institutions with strong organizational structures and strong conflicts without their own research (“announcement journalism”). ^[5]
  

A study by the University of Trier on the quality of local journalism's services from 2018 essentially confirms the above points. As part of this survey, 18,000 articles from various local newspapers as well as local editions of national media or tabloids were evaluated, which were then based on several factors, from which conclusions can be drawn about the overall quality of the reportinglet go, categorized and indexed according to individual parameters. Specifically, it shows that local newspapers should "provide more background, readers should participate more and allow themselves more critical reporting". In addition, the perceived quality of a medium increases the larger the local paper is; a “metropolitan newspaper” serving a region with more than 500,000 inhabitants could, according to the study, afford more differentiated journalism than a small town or country newspaper, which is relatively more dependent on its - in absolute terms - smaller readership on the If a situation is too critically depicted, a large part, threatening the existence, could possibly be omitted.