New research explores how audiences respond to local journalism

How people connect with local news can influence how they understand and respond to issues affecting their communities. New findings from local newsrooms across Michigan, Mississippi and the Gulf South offer practical insights into what can shape those connections.

The Local NExT Lab paired researchers with four W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) grantee news organizations — Mississippi Today, Gulf States Newsroom, Deep South Today and Issue Media Group — serving communities across Michigan, Mississippi and the Gulf South. Together, they tested questions from the newsrooms’ own work about how to better reach, engage and serve their audiences.

Those questions included: Does surrounding investigative journalism with community reporting change how audiences receive it? Does connection to place affect how people respond to solutions-oriented journalism? When does a reporter’s identity matter more than a newsroom’s brand? Can changing the format of a story make an issue feel more relevant?

The impact report found:

• Community reporting can help investigative journalism land differently with audiences. In an experiment with Mississippi Today, surrounding an investigative story with community-focused reporting increased perceptions of the investigative story’s relevance, importance and accuracy.
• Connection to place can shape how audiences receive journalism. An experiment with Issue Media Group found that readers with stronger place-based identity became more receptive to solutions-oriented journalism when it came from a local source.
• Reporters and newsroom brands can play different roles in building audience relationships. At Gulf States Newsroom, reporter faces and names increased engagement with individual content, while outlet branding was more important for getting follows and sustained attention to the newsroom.
• Format can increase the salience of an issue. In a Deep South Today experiment, presenting reporting about an artificial intelligence data center as video rather than a slideshow made the underlying issue feel more important to audiences.

Taken together, the findings suggest that strong journalism is only part of the equation. How reporting is presented, what surrounds it and how audiences connect with the people and places behind it can also influence how that journalism is received.

Turning newsroom questions into evidence

Local newsrooms are navigating significant shifts in audience behavior, technology and the economics of journalism while continually adapting how they reach and serve their communities. But they rarely have the time or research capacity to rigorously test whether those adaptations are working.

That challenge helped shape WKKF’s investment in the Local NExT Lab, launched in 2025 by Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship (IDJC). Rather than starting with predetermined academic questions, the lab pairs journalists with a researcher to rigorously test questions emerging from the newsrooms’ own work and turn the findings into practical learning.

“I was encouraged to see the central role of community in our findings,” said Dr. Joshua Darr, IDJC senior researcher and associate professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, who directs Local NExT Lab. “We learned a lot about local journalism’s role as a place where people can identify solutions to problems, celebrate what makes their area unique, and learn about new and evolving local issues that affect their lives directly.”

The findings are not intended to offer a single formula for successful local journalism. Audiences, communities and newsrooms differ. Instead, the research offers evidence that journalists can consider alongside their own knowledge of their audiences — and ideas that other newsrooms can test and adapt in their own communities.

“Professor Darr conducted thorough research for Mississippi Today, showing that readers have stronger response to our in-depth investigative reporting when we also publish other types of stories, including culture coverage and shorter pieces about local news,” said Emily Wagster Pettus, editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today, a nonprofit newsroom that is marking its 10th anniversary in 2026. “His sharp analysis is helpful to us as we make plans for our newsroom for the next several years.”

“Working with the Local NeXT Lab was a great experience and the findings both confirmed and challenged some of the assumptions we were making about our social media strategy,” said Ryan Vasquez, managing editor of Gulf States Newsroom. “I look forward to continuing to learn from the experiment and from other newsrooms going through the process.”

WKKF will continue its support for the Local NExT Lab as it expands its newsroom partnerships in 2026-27. The American Journalism Project will join the initiative as a partner, supporting participation by four newsrooms in its portfolio.