Information flows from local to national: Evidence from 21 major US cities

Local journalism is in decline in the United States. As one way to assess the state of local journalism, this study examines the information flows between local and national media in the online media ecosystem. Focusing on metropolitan journalism, this paper empirically investigates whether and when a city’s local news coverage can influence national news portrayal of the city. This research draws from intermedia agenda setting (IAS) theory and examines a large news data set related to the most populated 21 US cities. The results suggest that local media are not more likely to transfer the salience of their urban issues to the national media agenda than reversely. In addition, a city’s economic power and the scale of its local journalistic infrastructure, especially the traditional media sector, are significantly correlated with its local media’s power to determine how the city is portrayed in the national media.