Radio Active Magazine

Professor Tim Franklin and Zach Metzger talk with Spencer Graves about how you can help yourself by helping improve local media. Franklin is the leader of the Local News Initiative and the Metro Media Lab in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. Metzger is Director of their State of Local News subproject of the Local News Initiative. Medill Local News Initiative News deserts are growing, and democracy is under siege. The Local News Initiative is working to document how this is happening and highlight organizations that are bucking this trend. Their work includes six distinct projects: 1. What drives people to pay for local journalism 2. Human-centered design for local news products 3. Local news accelerator 4. Understanding media markets 5. Medill news leaders project 2019 6. The State of Local News Project Key results from each of these six projects can be summarized as follows: 1. What drives people to pay for local jou