School of Journalism and Communication
The forum for the future of local news and civic health
Eight years of listening to 2,118 Oregonians, across seven information needs assessments, reveals what people need from local news to take part in civic life. This report introduces the eight civic jobs they described and the Civic Story Rubric behind the Oregon Civic Beat and Newsstand.
The project, conducted by UO students in partnership with local media, civic organizations, and tribal partners, included a co-designed survey with 787 validated responses and two public listening sessions held in Newport and Lincoln City.
This 2025 report builds on our 2022 assessment, providing an updated snapshot of Oregon’s evolving local news landscape—highlighting challenges, emerging solutions, and key initiatives shaping the future of civic information in our state.
At a time when journalists are grappling with eroding trust in media and finding new ways to build connections with the communities they serve, we offer a concrete way of talking about and documenting relational engagement.
This report examines how newsrooms across the country are pursuing deeper audience engagement using the tools and methods provided by the company Hearken. Our goal is to examine how newsrooms are taking up the challenge to involve the public at every stage of the news production process.
Researchers and journalists Lisa Heyamoto and Todd Milbourn hosted a series of community workshops in public libraries around the country to get a ground-level understanding of how trust operates in people’s personal lives, and identify strategies for producing more trustworthy journalism.
This report explores how local newsrooms around the Pacific Northwest are grappling with the new opportunities and imperatives of engaging with audiences. Beyond new technological ways to tell compelling stories, Radcliffe’s report finds journalists learning to listen more deeply to their communities.
Through a community-wide survey, stakeholder interviews, and listening sessions, the project aimed to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities in La Pine’s information ecosystem. The findings revealed that while residents value staying informed—particularly on local events, public safety, and community development—there is no single, centralized source of information.