ABSTRACT
Local news is often heavily dependent on a network of public relations, newswire services, and social media for content. Scholars (and some journalists) have dismissed the reliance on syndicated press releases and news reports as “churnalism,” the uncritical recycling of material that ordinarily has limited news value and a very short shelf life. Reliability is doubtful when such content either directly serves a commercial interest or comes from the perspective of a particular organisation or cause. In these circumstances, journalism could lose the capacity to offer a rounded and considered perspective of a local community and its place within the wider world. This chapter engages with ideas of slow media where the emphasis is on the local as somewhere people use, produce, and consume media; where stories may be told by people who know each other. The chapter explores the prospect of a form of local and community news media practice that draws on methodologies used in participatory media – digital storytelling, photovoice, and participatory video – arguing that these can be used to establish a slower form of local news media that offers a reflective space for people to enact different values.
