Prof @uofsandiego fellow @openmarkets past @smpagwu @uofillinois. Author of News for the Rich, White, and Blue; SO many typos; they/them 🇺🇸🏳️🌈
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Articles by Nikki Usher
How American journalism amplifies extremism (it’s not the way you think!)
With some luck, unbridled opportunism, and the right mix of underlying political conditions, an extremist politician can draw enough attention to get a few days of nonstop coverage from mainstream news media — and catapult themselves out of obscurity. How does this happen? My new book, Amplifying Extremism: Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, and American Journalism (free for a limited time here), written with Jessica C. Hagman, tries to understand this process.
How American journalism amplifies extremism (it’s not the way you think!)
With some luck, unbridled opportunism, and the right mix of underlying political conditions, an extremist politician can draw enough attention to get a few days of nonstop coverage from mainstream news media — and catapult themselves out of obscurity. How does this happen? My new book, Amplifying Extremism: Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, and American Journalism (free for a limited time here), written with Jessica C. Hagman, tries to understand this process.
Journalists explain legislative procedure
This will be the year journalism finally explains arcane legislative rules to the public — for national, state, and local government. Most people find talk of clotures, filibusters, committee votes, bill reconciliation, the legislative calendar, and beyond absolutely boring. If civic-affairs news is the broccoli of American journalism, then coverage of legislative procedure is the unsalted lima bean.
Post-Newspaper Democracy and the Rise of Communicative Citizenship: The Good Citizen as Good Communicator
The answer to the question “What is journalism for?” often turns into a catalog of aspirations.
Newly published research highlights how typical discussions of news media decline miss the mark
By Nikki Usher (with credit to Phil Napoli, Joshua Darr and Mike Miller) Anyone familiar with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) will not be surprised to hear that the traditional model of journalism has imploded, especially at the local level. But there is some new research that may be helpful as nonprofit news organizations continue to make the case for their relevance and importance in shoring up the market failure.
Media Policy for an Informed Citizenry: Revisiting the Information Needs of Communities for Democracy in Crisis
Local newspapers have long played a critical role in American public life, far beyond their ability just to keep people informed about their communities and the wider world: they provide a cultural glue to knit strangers together through a shared, common narrative about the place in which they live.
Local news rediscovers local history
In 2024, the heart of local news strategy boils down to the question: Do you care about place, or not? To what I believe are the most exciting and promising new local journalism organizations, the answer to that question is, deeply, yes. That calls for a very different, and I’d argue more challenging, way of doing journalism than nationally-focused organizations with interests in “local.” Authentically local journalism outlets already know this.
The future-of-journalism crowd stops ignoring local TV news
Take The Breakfast Club or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or High School Musical, or any other Hollywoodized version of high school. Now map this on as a metaphor for local news ecologies. Local TV journalists are the beautiful, popular people in this hierarchy — with local newspapers and local nonprofits some version of the freaks and geeks in the hallway.
How Loud Does the Watchdog Bark? A Reconsideration of Losing Local Journalism, News Nonprofits, and Political Corruption
Get full access to this article View all access and purchase options for this article. References Ali C., Radcliffe D., Schmidt T. R., Donald R. 2020. “Searching for Sheboygans: On the Future of Small Market Newspapers.” Journalism 21(4):453–71. Angrist J. D., Pischke J.-S. 2014. Mastering’ Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Artello K., Albanese J. S. 2020.
The Rebirth of Local News
Democracy has, as is inevitable for a general policy journal, tended to focus on national domestic policy. But democracy is built and fortified at the local and state levels. Local newspapers and media have been decimated in recent years by falling ad revenue and predatory companies gutting newsrooms for a quick dollar. We wanted to focus on green shoots throughout the country, so we assembled a collection of experts working in and studying local news ecosystems.
A los profesores les están dejando una tarea difícil
AÑADIR A FAVORITOS Please login to bookmark Nombre de usuario o dirección de correo Contraseña Recuérdame La redacción sonaba a típica verborrea de último minuto para intentar describir los conceptos del curso: las oraciones transmitían, en el mejor de los casos, un entendimiento superficial sobre lo que habíamos hecho este semestre y el argumento respondía vagamente a la pregunta. Era el tipo de ensayo que usualmente me hace preguntarme: ¿Alguna vez vino a clase este alumno?
Professors Are Grappling With an Excruciating Assignment
‘Jesus!’ CNN’s Jim Sciutto Shocked After Woman Tells Him She’s Experienced Four Active Shooter Situations in Less Than Five Years
Why I Decided to Let My Students Turn in Essays Written by a Machine
The writing sounded like the typical 3 a.m. word-vomit of course concepts—the sentences relaying a superficial understanding at best of what we had done this semester and the argument only vaguely responsive to the prompt. It was the sort of paper that usually makes me wonder: Did this student even come to class? Did I communicate anything of any value to them at all?
Internet está en su crisis de la mediana edad
AÑADIR A FAVORITOS Please login to bookmark Nombre de usuario o dirección de correo Contraseña Recuérdame Las bromas y los memes que dicen que la compra de Twitter por Elon Musk son prueba de una enorme crisis de la mediana edad son, en parte, acertados. Internet, al menos, está teniendo una crisis así. Muchos de quienes crecimos junto con la red ahora estamos llegando a la mediana edad, y tenemos suficiente experiencia con internet para saber lo que hace bien y lo que hace mal.
This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
With using Twitter becoming increasingly like smoking — a habit you can’t quit but know you should — there’s a chance that a better RSS reader will finally, finally take hold and scale. Two years ago, Sara Watson boldly predicted in this space that we might see a return of the RSS reader, or something like it, recognizing that the world of constant email newsletters was simply impossible to maintain. But the appetite wasn’t strong enough yet.
The Internet Is Having Its Midlife Crisis
The jokes and memes about Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase as proof of a massive midlife crisis are at least partly on point. The internet, for one, is having its own midlife crisis. Many of us who have grown up along with the web are now reaching middle age, and we have enough experience with the internet to know what it does well and does poorly.
Opinion: Misleading political TV ads are filling up California’s ‘news deserts’ Original
If you watched even a smidge of the Dodgers-Padres postseason playoff games on television, you almost certainly saw a political ad. This is nothing unusual for the lead-up to an election. In fact, there are fewer propositions on the ballot than usual in California — but that doesn’t make figuring out how to vote any less confusing. This year, for instance, there are two different propositions to expand gambling on the table. Political advertising has already reached record spending levels this year.
Nikki Usher escribe en Letras Libres
Como en cualquier crisis de maduración, internet puede precipitarse en su camino autodestructivo. Pero podemos aprovechar el momento para construir uno mejor, basado en el principio esencial...
The news industry will stop saying overdue UX fixes are too hard
Perhaps you’ve had this experience — no, actually, anyone who’s ever clicked on a social link to a paywalled news site has. You click onto a site that you actually subscribe to, and creak, creak, paywall…password…sigh. You don’t remember your password — or you’re on your phone and it’s not saved properly there. Either way, some other push notification pops up on your screen, and you decide that reading that article or watching that video just isn’t worth all the effort.
Higher ed and public radio are enmeshed. So what happens when the culture wars come?
Oct. 14, 2021, 12:39 p.m. With higher education at the crossroads of the culture war, public media is vulnerable to growing political interference over its operations. For many who are concerned about declines in local news, shoring up the existing journalism infrastructure for public media in communities seems like a no-duh solution. But it is important to approach, eyes-wide-open, any solution for journalism that involves government, public money, or public institutions.
Citizen Journalism
Citizen Journalism Oxford research encyclopedia of communication, 2019 Download PDF Download Full PDF Package A short summary of this paper 37 Full PDFs related to this paper
Who will do the jobs created by the infrastructure bill?
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Segments From this episode Why it’s so hard for biographies about women to stay on Wikipedia From "Marketplace Tech," Francesca Tripodi, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, chats with Kimberly Adams about the gender gap in Wikipedia biographies. News is a business. Is that leaving communities out of the loop? In "News for the Rich, White, and Blue,” Nikki Usher looks at how the news business determines what’s covered and what isn’t.
By Nancy Marshall Genzer, Kristin Schwab Verified, Nikki Usher, Marielle Segarra Verified, Kimberly Adams Verified
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Marketplace
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News is a business. Is that leaving communities out of the loop?
While the pandemic has been difficult for the news industry, traditional papers have seen revenue and staffing declines over the last decade. According to the Pew Research Center, newspaper ad revenue in 2020 was estimated at $8.8 billion, a 29% decrease from 2019 — and an 82% decrease from 2000, when it was $48 billion. Analyzing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew calculated that newsroom staffing was 30,820 in 2020, a 56% decrease from 2004.
“White audiences who will pay” is still metro newspapers’ survival strategy
In late June, NJ.com journalist Tennyson Donyea’s Twitter thread and essay about his experiences trying to pitch and cover Black culture went viral. “Black journalists can’t breathe and it’s become my mental health hell,” he wrote. One of the most serious limitations preventing Donyea from chronicling Black life and culture in New Jersey? His editor telling him to remember he was writing for white audiences.
News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism
(Author) FORMAT Buy new or used from an indie through our partner Biblio: Price Condition Seller Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world Description As cash-strapped metropolitan newspapers struggle to maintain their traditional influence and quality reporting, large national and international outlets have pivoted to serving readers who can and will choose to pay for news, skewing coverage toward a wealthy, white, and liberal audience.
News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism
Description As cash-strapped metropolitan newspapers struggle to maintain their traditional influence and quality reporting, large national and international outlets have pivoted to serving readers who can and will choose to pay for news, skewing coverage toward a wealthy, white, and liberal audience. Amid rampant inequality and distrust, media outlets have become more out of touch with the democracy they purport to serve.
Can the News Media Create an Unfragmented Public Sphere?
MY VISION No.54, May 2021 Can the News Media Create an Unfragmented Public Sphere? ツイート The expansion of the media has had a considerable influence on democracy in Japan. However, in the past 20 years, newspaper circulation has declined significantly, and Internet news has become a new source of information. What is the best direction for news media in the future?
News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism
We're thrilled that in recent years, and this year in particular, we had a difficult time narrowing our list of recommended LGBTQ+ kids’ and teen titles...
(PROOF) The New York Times' Australian expansion and its internal contradictions
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News cartography and epistemic authority in the era of big data: Journalists as map-makers, map-users, and map-subjects
Abernathy, PM (2016) The Rise of a New Media Baron and the Emerging Threat of News Deserts. Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Available at http://mj.unc.edu/news/rise-new-media-baron-and-emerging-threat-news-deserts Google Scholar Adams, PC (2018) Migration maps with the news: guidelines for ethical visualization of mobile populations. Journalism Studies 19(4): 527–547.
The NYT in Trump's America: A Failure for Liberals, A Champion for Liberalism
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Objects of journalism, revised: Rethinking materiality in journalism studies through emotion, culture and 'unexpected objects'
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Objects of journalism, revised: Rethinking materiality in journalism studies through emotion, culture and ‘unexpected objects’
Ahmed, S (2010) Happy objects. In: Gregg, M, Seigworth, GJ, Ahmed, S (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NJ: Duke University Press, pp.29–51. Google Scholar | Crossref Ananny, M, Crawford, K (2015) A liminal press: Situating news app designers within a field of networked news production. Digital Journalism 3(2): 192–208. Google Scholar Anderson, B (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on The Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books.
Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
All signs point to big tech beginning to get its comeuppance in the U.S. in 2021, perhaps with news publishers benefiting from the smackdown. The U.S. seems more ready than ever before to bring the gauntlet down on Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Facebook’s impending lawsuit brought by the FTC and 48 state attorneys general is a win, and should be celebrated as such — regardless of what happens, especially given all the dark money and technical campaign support Facebook lavishes on lawmakers.
Latest Stories - Marketplace
Latest Stories News is a business. Is that leaving communities out of the loop? In "News for the Rich, White, and Blue,” Nikki Usher looks at how the news business determines what’s covered and what isn’t. Scott Olson via Getty Images ListenLISTEN Download Download READ MORE READ MORE HTML EMBED: EMBED EMBED
The reasonability of misinformation
Republican media is peddling lies with reason and professionalism — and GOP partisans are never coming back to mainstream news Nikki Usher, PhD For those who do not regularly watch Fox or stream OAN YouTube videos Infowars, and for those who do not regularly peruse Brietbart or RedState, it is so easy to think that right wing media is created entirely by GOP partisans wearing tinfoil hats.
Twitter Makes It Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias
Adams, Catharine. 2017. “‘They Go for Gender First’: The Nature and Effect of Sexist Abuse of Female Technology Journalists.” Journalism Practice. Published electronically August 9. doi:10.1080/17512786.2017.1350115. Google Scholar | Crossref Allsop, Jon, Ho, Karen K. 2017. Global Media Confronts Its Own Weinsteins. Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/media-weinstein-sexual-harassment-global.php. Google Scholar Armstrong, Cory L. 2004.
(PDF) The Appropriation/Amplification Model of Citizen Journalism
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How Facebook and Google Buy Off the Press
The tech giants compromise media independence with their corporate donations. This story is part of a package exploring how to rescue and revitalize journalism.Read the rest of the pieces here. And, if you enjoy what you’re reading, please consider making a donation—we’re a nonprofit media organization and rely on the support of our readers. You may have heard that Big Tech has damaged journalism.
November/December 2020
Introduction: Can Journalism Be Saved? It will take government action to rescue a struggling but vital industry. The Coming Era of “Civic News” Empowering every American with a refundable tax credit for a subscription, membership, or donation to a local media outlet will revitalize the free press. Starving the News To save the free press, bust the tech monopolies’ control over advertising.
Beggars and Choosers — Center for Journalism & Liberty
How Google and Facebook compromise media independence with their corporate donations.
Beggars and Choosers — Open Markets Institute
How Google and Facebook compromise media independence with their corporate donations.
Watch Out For The Medium Money Gap!
Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash I was recently elated when an essay I posted on Medium got 4,600 views. It reached more readers than anything I’d posted on the site so far! I couldn’t wait for my earnings to be reported. So how much money did Medium end up paying me for my most popular post ever? Two dollars. The problem? Only a tiny percentage of my 4.6K readers were paying members of the Partnership program.
Book Review: Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America by Michael Stamm
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Stop Opportunistic News Consolidation During COVID-19: Protect Local News
Local newspapers are the bedrock for original newsgathering in communities, but roughly 36,000 news workers have endured lost jobs, cut salaries or furloughs because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated the decline of local advertising revenue already disrupted by Google and Facebook.
The NYT in Trump’s America: A Failure for Liberals, A Champion for Liberalism
KEYWORDS: public diplomacy, free press, journalism Additional information Author information Nikki Usher Nikki Usher is an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Journalism department, with affiliations in Communication and Political Science. She is the author of Making News at The New York Times (2014) and Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code (2016 Usher, N. (2016). Interactive journalism: Hackers, data, and code .
Sharing Knowledge and “Microbubbles”: Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism
Though a critique of “Eastern Liberal Media” generally dates to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s (Hemmer, 2016), the accusations in the United States against the “elite media” and “coastal elitism” have reached a fever pitch in the Trump era. Journalists widely predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election.
The NYT in Trump’s America: A Failure for Liberals, A Champion for Liberalism
Nikki Usher is an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Journalism department, with affiliations in Communication and Political Science. She is the author of(2014) and).
College isn’t a myth, it’s an experience
Demanding more from remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic is reasonable, but not for the reasons you’re thinking This was written largely as a response to Masha Gessen’s New Yorker piece and fueled by insomnia and frustration. The sooner professors admit that they are only a small portion of what it means to go to a four year college or university in the US, the better the case for higher education’s survival as an institution.
(PDF) RECOVERY FROM DISASTER - Hurricane Katrina article on Times Picayune going from objectivity to advocacy
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