Local Journalism: How the War in Ukraine Imposed Itself on the Production Routine of the Local Press

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The text offers insightful findings on how two regional daily newspapers cover an international event such as the war in Ukraine. The multiple-case study applied is relevant since the war may have impacted not only the international and national agenda, but also the regional and local one. As proximity is the main value of regional press, it is interesting to analyze the report of this conflict in the local field. However, the article would benefit from a clearer structure. In this sense, the introduction is too long and a bit messy at some point. It would be better to name the theoretical framework as such and divide it into subsections.

2. The manuscript uses two questions (seen at the beginning of page 5) that should be identified as research questions. Probably the best place to put them is at the end of the introduction. Moreover, it is needed to respond to these questions at the conclusions, based on the results of the study.

3. One of the main problems for this article is the lack of proper conclusions and discussion. The section “3. The regional angle. Differences and parallelisms” combines both new findings with mentions to prior scholarship in order to situate the contributions. The authors must create a section to summarize their findings and discuss them, acknowledging the limitations of the study and exploring future lines of research. In addition to that, the method is currently placed at the end, but the most usual position is between the theoretical framework and the results. In terms of methods, the tables provided are useful to understand the news genres and sources of information developed. Nevertheless, further detail on the codification process (manual, number of coders, etc.) would be appropriate to better assess the data presented.

4. Regarding the sample, it is small (n=195), but maybe interesting as a case-study. In this sense, it is necessary to know why the central region of Portugal seems relevant and which reasons lead to select Diário As Beiras and Diário de Viseu.

5. This paper allows that one can clearly learn about the use of municipalities and local power as sources, even for an international conflict. The predominance of institutional sources is well-documented; hence, the study is aligned with previous literature. “Seated journalism” and glocalization are key concepts for this research, but I miss some references about reporting international affairs at the local level. Specifically, Hess and Waller (2017) states that “the local journalist must not only specialize in niche place-based news, but also have a clear understanding of how their locality and its people fit in the context of a globalized world”. This has to do with the finding that there was a regional lens applied to the conflict. Here is the full reference:

-Hess, K.; & Waller, L. (2017). Local journalism in a digital world. Palgrave Macmillan.

6. As assumed by the authors, the integration of the war in the “National/International” space is not striking, but it seems significant the great presence of the issue in each newspaper. In my opinion, the most outstanding finding is the regional lens applied to the conflict, essentially from the coverage of solidarity actions in the regions of the newspapers. This overlaps with the aforementioned proximity journals that report the national and international events from a regional approach.

7. The list of references is appropriate and up-to-date, mixing classic and recent books and articles.

8. In short, this article means a relevant contribution that addresses timely issues by expanding the evidence on local information and the war in Ukraine. The theme had more prominence in the Diário As Beiras, but the subject took priority in the production routine of both newsrooms. As previously noted, a better structure is needed to move from the introduction to the discussion, as well as more information on the codification process and the reasons that grounded the study.

Author Response

1. The structure has been reviewed, namely the introduction and conclusion. The article has a new structure: introduction; material and methods; results; differences and parallelisms between the newspapers; discussion of the results; conclusion.
2. The research questions are now clearly identified at the end of the introduction and the conclusions respond to these questions.
3. The discussion of the findings is now under a new structure. From our point of view, it is very important to maintain the differences and parallelisms between the newspapers since the study compares both newspapers. We created a new chapter to discuss the results and another one to explain the conclusions.
4. The justification of the central region as a case-study has been inserted in the introduction: “These two newspapers are a reference in the center region of Portugal, because they still publish daily print editions, and both are over 20 years old. Diário As Beiras was founded in 1994 and Diário de Viseu was founded in 1997. Despite the great transformation of the sector, with several newspapers becoming exclusively online, without economic support or few human resources, these media outlets still fight this “wave” and try to maintain their connections with local communities”
5. New references about reporting international affairs have been added. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the Hess & Waller book: it’s not an open book and if we wanted to buy it and read it, we would need much more than five days. Still, we made an effort to read more about this subject, namely the work of Van Leuven & Berglez (2015).
6. We agree with the importance of the coverage concerning regional solidarity actions and we have underlined these finding in the conclusions.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a timely and important contribution to the study of news localisation. There were one or two issues, however. The locations of the two outlets under investigation - Diário As Beiras and Diário de Viseu - is not mentioned early enough. I had to google them to find out in which country they were based.

There is obviously a language barrier, and this manuscript needs some editing for readability (lines 21 - 25; 191 - 197; 209, for eg).

The Lit Review does not connect to the study. It appears as more a list of works that have looked at news localisation and regional media, with little or no mention of how these works relate to the study being conducted.

The Lit Review should contextualise the particular study being undertaken, and define its terms and arguments. This Lit Review does none of these things, because each work under analysis seems to stand on its own.

Author Response

1. Concerning the locations, we now mention the region and country earlier in the article (abstract and introduction.
2. The language has been revised and improved.
3. The Lit Review has been updated with references about reporting international affairs, namely Van Leuven & Berglez (2015), and we made an effort to relate the works with the study.
4. The structure of the article has also been reviewed, to provide more coherence to the paper. The terms and arguments of the study are now clearer and more structured.