This is a note from Central Current Executive Director Maximilian Eyle. Central Current helped organize the Syracuse portion of New York Focus’ statewide listening tour. The event helped inspire a November listening session hosted by Central Current at the Dunbar Center.
You can listen to a conversation between New York Focus’ Audience Engagement Editor Alex Arriaga, Albany-based freelance journalist Kate Harloe, Managing Editor Chris Libonati and Eyle here. You can also listen to the conversation on WCNY and find a link to the report here.
New York Focus, a statewide nonprofit newsroom investigating power in New York, has released new research following a six-month listening tour that evaluated the information needs of New York residents.
Their findings reveal that communities care deeply about civic issues and are eager to engage with local government but face significant information barriers that block their progress. This lack of access blocks their ability to access services, vote, or remain informed on the issues reshaping their communities. As local newsrooms seek to fill these gaps, they remain stymied by a lack of resources.
This data comes from a statewide tour that included listening sessions held in Rochester, Albany, Potsdam, and Syracuse in addition to responses gathered via an online survey. Central Current co-hosted the event in Syracuse, held at the North East Community Center in April, and has since held a second listening session in November at the Dunbar Center – independent of the NY Focus listening tour.
The project was led by New York Focus Audience Engagement Editor Alex Arriaga and Kate Harloe, an Albany-based freelance journalist who partnered with New York Focus.
“Something we aren’t traditionally trained to do in local journalism is go out and ask say, ‘Hey, how are we doing? What do you think about the way we are covering your community?’ So we wanted to do that across the state,” Harloe said.
Overall, New York Focus found that New Yorkers are dissatisfied with the current information landscape, the report said. Gaps in local coverage have created major barriers that prevent residents from understanding how their communities operate, according to the report.
Furthermore, inadequate media resources have led to negative perceptions among residents about their communities. Many New Yorkers are eager to be more active in local political processes and improve their understanding of issues like housing and healthcare in their region. When they unable to do so, it leads to mistrust and confusion about the role of government and how it operates at the regional level.
Journalists are looking to address these issues through experimentation and collaboration. Newsrooms are operating with fewer resources than ever before. This has led to numerous closures and cutbacks, but also has inspired new strategies as news publications seek to fill widening gaps.
In Syracuse, respondents complained that much of the local news reporting did not make them feel connected to the political processes in their community. They cited a disproportionate focus on the mayor’s office and a relative lack of coverage of county politics. Respondents also spoke of major disparities in the representation of the city compared to the suburbs.
“Syracuse city teen involved in crime on one side of the paper. Suburban sports kids do something great on the other side,” one resident said.
When answers could not be found in local reporting, residents turned to government websites where they were frustrated by a lack of transparency and poor functionality.
Residents who did feel informed and connected to their communities and local politics consistently reported that it was due to personal connections – such as their job or a social/familial connection – that they accessed information, as opposed to through local reporting.
“One thing that came up again and again across listening sessions and in our survey is the extent to which the decline of local media and the shutdown of local newsrooms… has created a major hole when it comes to accessing basic civic information,” said Harloe. There were many complaints of people being unable to find the times or locations of public meetings, details about how to participate, and where results of those meetings could be found.
Other consistent responses from respondents included that New York State is opaque to even political insiders, people are suspicious about the way local media covers crime and that non-English speaking communities lack accessible information about key issues.
An information session to discuss the results will be held on Tuesday, December 17th at 1 p.m. Register here.
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