Local Press in the Digital Age: Case Study

Abstract

AbstractPurpose The research is aimed at studying the peculiarities of local press development in the digital era, analyzing the structure of the Russian local press market and modeling potential development paths of the local press. Design/methodology/approach The research was conducted in five stages. At the first stage, a corpus of texts from the local newspapers was created using the continuous sampling method. At the second stage, the key focuses of the newspapers were identified by the content analysis of the news texts. The third stage involved a benchmarking analysis of the findings and identification of advantages and disadvantages of the local press. Local newspaper’s efficiency criteria and recommendations for transformation of the Russian local mass media in the digital era were developed at the fourth and fifth stages, respectively. The practical value of the study is that it can be used in the development of a new concept of regional media in order to preserve the cultural and national characteristics of the local press. The empiric material is comprised of 68 issues of the local newspapers for the period of 2019–2020 (local newspapers of the Rostov Oblast, Krasnodar Krai, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Lipetsk Oblast and Kemerovo Oblast). Findings The features of the Russian media market are described in the article. The local newspapers from various regions of the Russian Federation are analyzed to identify the critical development challenges in the digital era. The vulnerabilities of the local mass media are identified based on the content analysis of the Tselinskiy Region newspaper, and the recommendations for transformation of the local Russian mass media in the digital era are provided.KeywordsLocal newspaperMedia discourseSocial mediaNeighborhoodsMass media digitalizationLocal press and printed mediaJEL ClassificationR2,Z130