The News Measures Research Project (NMRP), a research initiative led by Shepley Professor Philip Napoli and research associate Asa Royal, is a multi-pronged effort to develop assessment tools for local journalism that can be used in a variety of contexts, including professional practice, academic research, policy making/policy analysis, and grant-making strategy formulation and assessment. These assessment tools cover three primary, inter-connected areas: 1) assessing the nature of journalistic content; 2) assessing the needs, interests, and preferences of local news audiences; and 3) assessing the health and rigor of the local news infrastructures in communities.
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The Journalism Ecosystem model estimates the cost of fully funding local news ecosystems at the school district, township, city, county, congressional district, and state levels. To estimate that number, it combines US Census data with real-world journalism expense figures drawn from an anonymized dataset provided by the Institute for Nonprofit News.
Asa Royal and Phil Napoli will present at the 72nd Annual International Communications Association conference in Paris in May, 2022.
They will present research entitled: Local Journalism without Journalists? Metric Media and the Future of Local News.
Metric Media and its Approach to Community Information Needs
By Asa Royal and Philip Napoli
July, 2021
OCTOBER 3-5, 2019
Reports published by NMRP:
Who’s Producing Local Journalism: Assessing Journalistic Output Across Different Outlet Types
JESSICA MAHONE, QUN WANG, PHILIP NAPOLI, MATTHEW WEBER, & KATIE MCCOLLOUGH
August, 2019
Assessing Local Journalism: News Deserts, Journalism Divides, and the Determinants of the Robustness of Local News
PHILIP M. NAPOLI, MATTHEW WEBER, KATIE MCCOLLOUGH & QUN WANG
AUGUST, 2018
Assessing News Media Infrastructure: A State-Level Analysis
PHILIP M. NAPOLI, IAN DUNHAM, JESSICA MAHONE
APRIL, 2017
This report, authored by Professor Napoli along with Ian Dunham from Rutgers University and Jessica Mahone from the Democracy Fund’s Public Square Program, provides data comparing the news media infrastructure of individual states in a way that facilitates comparisons across states.
To learn more about this research, check out this interview with Professor Napoli, produced by our colleagues at UNC.
Research through the NMRP project is ongoing, with a team of undergraduate, graduate students, and post-graduates from Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and Rutgers collecting data and learning more about the news media ecosystems of communities across the United States.
The NMRP Project has been supported by The Democracy Fund and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.