Traditional Journalism in a Digital World: The Subculture of Community News Reporting

Traditional Journalism in a Digital World offers a distinct view of independent community media by treating it as a subculture, outside of mainstream local media. Independent operators exist on the margins of mainstream media, and by recognizing them as a subculture, their struggles are revealed.

The book features the personal accounts of a sample of UK independent publishers and follows them across a ten-year period. It records their highs and lows, including how they responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the fundamental problems operators faced was that policy makers viewed legacy mainstream local and independent internet era publishers as the same, whereas existing policy favors legacy providers with their elevated status and superior lobbying power.

This study reveals the absence of a level playing field. Independents' coping strategies are revealed as they slowly organized themselves into a sector. The focus is on UK operations, but the same approach can be applied to local media globally. This book presents a unique use of classical subcultural theory and will appeal to both journalism scholars and social scientists alike.