Challenges and Opportunities for Local Journalism in Reinventing Political Coverage

The key argument of Calfano et al.’s monograph is this: Local TV news about politics does not and should not need to use the partisan coverage frames used by network TV outlets. Instead, the authors encourage local TV news to use policy, thematic, and human interest frames. They argue that such coverage is less likely to be ignored or dismissed as biased, especially by Republicans. We comment on the authors’ core argument, strengthen the direction of their findings, highlight a few gaps, and outline new opportunities for reinventing local political coverage in TV news. We note that the authors’ findings do demonstrate an opportunity for local TV news to intervene in the discourse on political issues in an emotionally and democratically more open manner. But for this to happen, additional considerations about the situation and journey ahead for local TV news must be taken into account. Our observations do not undermine any of the findings. They lay out the terrain ahead. We offer insights in three areas: Beats and Expertise, Polarization and Discourse, and Bringing Ethical Rigor to Human Interest Frames. We note that these are opportunities for new work that may help local political journalism find an ethical and sustainable identity apart from the hegemony of network television and the elite national newspapers.