oa Meer lokaal nieuwsaanbod, meer van hetzelfde nieuws

More local news media, more of the same news

The aim of this study was to map the Dutch local media landscape. What defines this landscape? Are there regional differences? Is any change noticeable in the relationship between offline and online news media?Results show that residents of Dutch municipalities have access to an average of 29 news media. However, only 40 percent of those media carry original news. Especially online local news is often copied or linked to; only 8 out of 19 online news media contain original news. Aggregators are dominant within the field of online news channels.While traditional local news media (newspapers, radio, television) encountered declines in the past few years, the number of hyperlocal online media increased. However, our research shows that this drop of traditional news media is compensated by online initiatives. In fact, in municipalities with many traditional news media, there also more hyperlocals.