Vallaajakirjanduse võimalused Nissi Valla Teataja näitel

Abstract

Local newspaper’s possibilities in the example of Nissi Valla Teataja. The motivation to research this subject was to compare a small Estonian community’s experiences covering the local life to the concepts that have managed to succeed in theory and in practise all over the world. The problematic questions starting this researchs were: can a small local newspaper even function similarly to a high quality medium? Or can the Nissi Valla Teataja, the newspaper of Nissi parish, provide it’s readers the content they are expecting? The research questions were formulated in a way that it was possible to analyze the content of Nissi Valla Teataja throughout it’s publishing history as well as the results from the experiment, including the problems that seem inevitable to a small editorial group. In the first part of this research there is a variety of local journalism concepts offered which are all framed with the functionalism media theory summarized by McQuail (2000). In the following chapters the research questions and methodology (the basis of this research) were explained. In the empirical research there was found that there is enough shortages in Nissi Valla Teataja’s content to be worried about stagnation. Additionaly it was found that the newspaper does not have an active, content providing editorial group who could connect the community. These results were also confirmed by the experimential part of the research, where the editors of the newspaper combining as a focus group admitted their lack of connection with the community and not having any editorial meetings whatsoever. In the conclusion, the author came to a finding that despite the current situation with the low quality of editing and the surprising lack of hope towards the future, there is still a good chance to make it with the theoretical concepts in these small Estionian local newspapers. This valuation can be supported with the successful results of our experiment, where the readers were pleased as well as the editors and governmental institutions. This research was little more emotional due to the fact that the author is currently living in Nissi parish and while studying journalism he has always been troubled by the low quality of Nissi Valla Teataja. Hopefully, this research can help to make progress raising the newspaper to a higher level. The author would like to address his sincere gratitude to his mentor, Halliki Harro-Loit, whose incredible knowledge and willingless to help made this research possible. Thank you!