COLLEGE PARK — As access to information and media habits have changed over time, so have the needs of news consumers. The best way to identify how the local news needs of American citizens have evolved is to ask them.
The Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism did just that, conducting a human-centered design study, “The News People Need,” by listening to people in Maryland about what "jobs" they need news organizations to do in today’s media landscape.
“The journalism industry needs a wake-up call. Fact-based reporting and news delivery is lagging far behind social media and other platforms that draw eyes but also spread misinformation,” said Merrill College Professor of the Practice Tom Rosenstiel, who co-led the study. “Our in-depth interviews with Marylanders allowed us to gain real insight into the needs of news consumers with the goal of helping the news industry shift from a journalism of attention to a journalism of value.”
To conduct the study, LNN created a team of faculty, students, four local news organization partners and a human-centered design expert.
Human-centered design research prioritizes deep listening and empathy, seeking to understand the world from the perspective of the people being served. Unlike traditional market research, it is not designed to be statistically representative. Instead, it pursues a deep understanding of a small number of distinct individual perspectives.
Over several months, the team recruited and conducted deep-dive, open-ended interviews with a wide range of 17 Maryland residents from across the state. The team selected interview subjects of different ages, ethnicities, professions and news behaviors.
The findings from that study explain how news organizations can begin to create journalism that is more actionable, useful and indispensable. In an era when more revenue must come from consumers of news rather than advertisers, making the product indispensable is critical to the industry’s survival.
The interviews revealed people need six “jobs to be done” by the Maryland news industry:
- Give people agency over what’s happening
- Example: "My number one is — what infrastructure changes, what building changes, what signs of growth are there in the community? Is that data center really going to be built? It was such a beautiful piece of property." —Leah, 44-year-old seafood business owner and part-time waterman, Lusby
- Give people the long view to understand Maryland today
- Example: "There's so many people that do live in our community that have no clue what they're even living in, whether it's good or bad." —Stephen, 45, lifelong Curtis Bay resident
- Help people see the invisible systems shaping their lives
- Example: "Like when you bring mud into your home on your shoes — you don't know it's there, but eventually you've got a house full of mud. It's getting people to see that you track things in with you. It doesn't make it better, just makes it harder." —Howard, 68-year-old pastor, Annapolis
- Give people the street-level view
- Example: "I had to call my local office to find out if my candidate had won. They said, ‘Oh yeah, we did.’ Because there was no way to find out. Which is ludicrous." —Sandy, 79-year-old retiree, Fort Washington
- Help people navigate right now
- Example: "Ring is easier for me. I like it because it's simple. With the ICE raids, they're like, 'I did see them on this street, or by the school.' You can see the hour that they put it in — if it was one minute, 30 minutes or one hour. So you can see if it's fresh information." —Elena, 43-year-old Berwyn resident who provides translation services for Spanish-speaking members of the community
- Help people engage with what’s great about Maryland
- Example: "When people think of Baltimore, they think of ‘The Wire,’ or just crime. Getting to show people the heart of Baltimore — the new businesses downtown, the ice skating rink at the harbor, the mom-and-pop shops that only locals know about — that's maybe only happened, like, twice." —Whitney, 36-year-old Baltimore native, Baltimore City
The study includes an analysis of the Maryland landscape, explanations of content that could accomplish each job and editorial ideas, product ideas and topics to consider regarding each job.
The study was led by Merrill College faculty members Sean Mussenden, Tom Rosenstiel, Krishnan Vasudevan and Jerry Zremski. Tran Ha, co-founder and principal of Tiny Collective, served as a consultant on the project.
The work was funded by Merrill College’s Local News Network, the Employing Artificial Intelligence to Improve Journalism Grant Program — which funds AI research at the college — and the Lucy Dalglish Media and Democracy Endowed Faculty Support Fund in Journalism. LNN is funded by the Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund. The AI program is funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land, Communications Manager
joshland@umd.edu