The news business is dramatically different than it was just five years ago. Rapid-fire acquisitions and mergers, like the proposed purchase of Warner Bros., owners of CNN, by Paramount Skydance, owned by multibillionaire Larry Ellison, could change things even more dramatically at a much faster clip. Another pending deal would give Nexstar control of 265 local TV stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia.
The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute was in Fayetteville recently as part of its Civic Arkansas program to find out more about how news and news consumers are changing. Members of the press gathered with Northwest Arkansas residents to talk about what's working and what's not with regard to getting trustworthy information. KUAF, by the way, is a participating partner with the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute for this program. A member of our Ozarks at Large team, Jack Travis, attended the event and brings us this report.
Conversation filled a packed room at the Fayetteville Public Library on a mid-April evening during the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute's NWA Press and Community Convening. You'll just have to believe me, though, because recordings were not allowed. WRI's Chief Advancement Officer Julia Dossett Morgan says that's because they wanted to create an absolutely safe space for people, journalists or community members alike.
"Trust in news is at an all-time low across the country, and Arkansas is no different. When you can pick and choose where you get your news from an outlet, that's just going to be self-repeating. That's just going to tell you what you want to hear. We're not afforded the opportunity to broaden our perspective or be willing to learn something new, maybe even change our minds, right? And if what people are mostly tuning into on their TVs — which is one of the ways a lot of people get news — is what one could consider a rather partisan viewpoint, it's not serving that Arkansan. It's not serving that American. It's not offering them the full scope of any given issue. And it's a big problem. It's not going to be solved easily, but it is absolutely something worth pursuing making better."
News from national outlets can be overly partisan or biased, making some consumers feel at odds with what they are reading. Dossett Morgan says that people still need journalism to help them feel connected to where they live.
"They want to know when their elections are, what's happening in the community, when the theaters come into town — all those things. And as media has been consolidated over the last decade or two, those trusted local news sources are harder and harder to come by. And so we are in a room today with citizens from Northwest Arkansas to hear from them what they're looking for from their journalism outlets. And we also have journalists in the room contributing their own view of the challenges and the opportunities in working with local people."
She says that the citizens of Arkansas actually requested that the listening sessions and others like it take place near them so they can attend and make their needs, concerns and ideas heard.
"That's really the reason that we're here, and we're pursuing this line of inquiry when it comes to how to improve the civic health of our state. This is one of essentially three major themes that have emerged from listening to people from Arkansas across the state.”
The other two include a desire for more civic gathering spaces, such as public libraries or schools, and for more civic education offerings.
“Both at the K-12 level but also in higher education — and even for us adults who might need a little brush-up on how our local, state and federal government works. So right here today, we're here working on the press aspect, the press pillar of Civic Arkansas. And we're really in a listening phase here. We don't have a ton of solutions yet, but we're hoping to get the right people in the room to help us both identify the problems and the barriers, but also the opportunities for improvement, to enhance connectedness, to give both people and journalists what they want, which is good jobs, ability to report the news. And the people want the news and they want to feel connected to their community. And so there's absolutely an opportunity here to make that better for everybody, not just in this region, but across the state."
The challenges were actively being discussed behind closed doors, but Dossett Morgan had an idea of what was happening in there.
"I can't tell you how many rooms I've been in when someone's like, 'I wish we had a community calendar,' and the local newspaper or the local radio is like, 'We publish a community calendar.' And so where that disconnect is, is something that I guess we're still uncovering. Local journalism outlets — I am imagining there's not giant budgets to promote the fact that you even exist. And as staff has been cut and dwindles, it's just like, who's paying attention to promoting that radio station, to that newspaper, taking care of the subscribers. I just imagine the squeeze is happening on all sides."
She says that after listening and brainstorming are complete, WRI staff hopes to use a collaborative problem-solving method called the Rockefeller Ethic to identify action areas for stakeholders.
"That's actually one of the places that we bring strength and uniqueness to the idea of working on problems in a community. Because our background, the Rockefeller Ethic says that if you have diversity of opinion and you lead people through respectful dialogue and engage them in collaborative problem solving together — when all three are mixed together, and you cannot take out one of the points, they're all really important — we can make transformational change together. And that might be in a system. It might be in a community. Sometimes it's in a company or a nonprofit. But we've seen our process work repeatedly in different scenarios on different important issues. And I, as a person who loves the news, am very excited to see us apply it to this really important tenant of our citizenry."
You can visit RockefellerInstitute.org for more information about the organization, and stay tuned to their Facebook page for updates on their next Civic Arkansas event.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
