Wyoming’s news ecosystem is changing. Sure, we still have a newspaper in every county. But some of those are run by people about to retire, many of our legacy papers are getting consolidated by corporations and we no longer have a statewide paper that prints daily.
That’s why the newly formed Wyoming Local News Fund conducted a survey of how Wyomingites feel about their news. Founder and director Melissa Cassutt has worked as a journalist and editor at publications across the West and is also the rural media manager for the Solutions Journalism Network. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards sat down with her.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Melissa Cassutt: We're very excited about the survey. It was the first survey that's ever been done on the media ecosystem in Wyoming. Big takeaways, at least as I think about them: Wyoming doesn't have news deserts the way that other states have, which is really good news. We still have a lot of local media, but I say that with some caveats.
We have some areas that are drying – heavily drying – and we know that. Journalists know that, newsrooms know that and residents know that. They've seen their media change a lot. They've seen their papers shrink. They've seen much less local news available to them. So we're at a point in our history where we have an opportunity to do something about that before we become a state that has real media deserts, meaning that we have full counties that don't have any local news for our residents.
Melodie Edwards: When you started to look at what the respondents were saying, what did you see in terms of the way in which they prefer to get their news?
MC: It's so interesting. So many people talked about really preferring their news digitally. We think so much about digital news as sort of a young person's game. Like, the youths want their news online, or they want it on the TikTok, or they want it on Snapchat or on these social media platforms. In our interviews and in our focus groups, we heard so much – and it came up in our survey as well – people across all demographics are really preferring to get their news online in some capacity, and helping our news providers move into that space more is something that really stood out to me.
ME: What did you find in the survey in terms of the trust that Wyomingites have in the news that they are receiving?
MC: There's some really interesting feedback I'd love to share. One of the questions was along the lines of, ‘Do you think your local journalists are in touch with the community?’ An overwhelming percentage of people responded, ‘Yes, I think local journalists are in touch with the community.’ Like, 75 percent said that, and that's across all demographics, which I think is an indication of trust.
Generally speaking, communities trust local news outlets more than they trust national ones. We know trust is higher in local places for local news than it is for national news. And that is generally reflected in this study as well.
ME: This kind of gets at the issue that the survey raises about the idea of confirmation bias and a perception that certain media organizations are biased, or are liberal or are conservative.
MC: Our survey and our study was not intended to look at any sort of political biases in any news organization across the state. But we couldn't pull that out entirely of this study because we are a polarized state, and it came up in our interviews and it came up in our focus groups. People talked about their perceptions of different media outlets, so there are sections of the study that do talk about that.
ME: The survey did look specifically at Cowboy State Daily, which I thought was interesting, and mainly because a lot of respondents brought that one up and because it is growing so quickly.
MC: Our thought with pulling out Cowboy State Daily specifically is because it has grown so much, it's caught the eye of so many people. They had some criticisms, for sure – we shared some of the criticisms. And Cowboy State Daily is filling a gap that our state has had. Our residents have noticed the Casper Star-Tribune used to have a very big presence in our state. That newsroom has shrunk so significantly, they can't do the coverage that they used to be able to do for this state. We didn't have daily coverage of our state statewide and Cowboy State Daily is doing daily coverage – digital daily coverage – in a way that nobody else is doing.
That's not to say that they have replaced our local papers. We need all the media that we have. But they're doing something that no other outlet is doing. I think that has caught the eye of our residents in a very significant way.
ME: In the survey of the respondents, what were they wanting to see about how these news organizations are doing their business? What is it that they would like to find out more about?
MC: What we learned is there is a lot of confusion about how news organizations are set up. There's so many different models of how to set up a news business. What we heard from readers, listeners, viewers, is they don't understand where the money goes, how the money is collected, the difference between the business side of a news organization, the editorial side, where those two connect, who makes the decisions.
There's a real opportunity for the news industry to start to pull back that curtain a little bit and let the reader, viewer, listener in on, ‘This is how we're set up, this is who makes editorial decisions, this is how our business works.’
It seems like there is this connection between transparency and trust in how the business model is set up. What we can say is, it's different for every organization. I think where there's this really great opportunity for news organizations to start to build this trust and conversation with their community, is to let them in a little bit and show a little bit about how it works for them.
ME: One of the questions is, are people willing to pay for the news? What did you see in terms of people's responses to that?
MC: No, they don't want to. Some do. You know, it's hard to say. Generally, what we know from this survey and from national surveys is people have less and less of an interest in paying for news.
The thing residents can do now is support the local news they have now. We have great resources in Wyoming. Now we're on the cusp in a lot of areas. We are drying, and we've been drying. We can see in a lot of areas. We are one step away from losing some really vital resources. The best thing that you can do is support those resources while we have them. Subscribe to your local papers, listen to your radio stations, support your radio stations, watch your TV stations. Support what we have now as we're looking to bolster the system.
