ABSTRACT
New technologies and audience data are transforming local, legacy newsrooms that are built on tradition but adjusting practice to keep pace with a rapidly changing media landscape, deep revenue cuts, and shifting means of content consumption. Through ethnographic research, this chapter explores how digital production and the burgeoning use of metrics and analytics are changing the fabric of what makes local, local, along with challenging definitions of journalism and the traditional values associated with news. It compares and contrasts practice in two newsrooms: Canada’s The Hamilton Spectator, run under the umbrella of Metroland Media, and the Bournemouth Daily Echo in England, operated within the Newsquest group. Can the use of analytics give fresh insight into the audience and help save local newspapers from their seemingly steady decline? Or is a lack of time and training to use analytics effectively contributing to an erosion of journalistic values? The chapter aims to further understanding of the effects of digital production, how a growing reliance on metrics and analytics is impacting editorial decision-making, and how effective use of audience data might help local newsrooms survive.
