Historicising the afterlife: local newspapers in the United Kingdom and the ‘art of prognosis’.
- Submitting institution
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Coventry University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 30879334
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.4324/9781351239943
- Book title
- The Routledge Companion to Local Media and Journalism
- Publisher
- Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
- ISBN
- 9780815375364
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This essay forms a chapter in The Routledge Companion to Local Media and Journalism (edited by Gulyas and Baines), a collection of 46 chapters and invited contributions from international scholars that consolidates research and theorisations to enhance understanding of the local media from a comparative and global context.
Matthew’s research draws on the typology of the local newspaper developed in The History of the Provincial Press in England to demonstrate and advocate for the utility of an historical approach to challenging those normative conceptions. It brings together theories of history with the analysis of primary sources to reappraise the discourse of crisis, which dominates understandings of the industry. In doing so, it argues for a ‘long view’ of the industry in order to contextualise the current crisis in the local press caused by the twin drivers of the digital revolution and the 2008 recession. Situated in the recent past, this conception of causality ignores the longitudinal impact of enduring structures, including corporate ownership that created the environment in which the ‘crisis’ could unfold. She also challenges the nostalgia that besets understandings of the local newspaper in the present day.
The work advocates a historical approach to the development of the local newspaper, and offers an approach that reframes the claim to social benefit that local newspapers make. Through this historical positioning Matthews enables us to dare to imagine a future for these legacy titles. The work has been further disseminated through the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Conference Continuity and Change. Media, Communications and Politics, Stirling University 2019.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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