Foundations of Community Journalism

Foundations of Community Journalism is the first and only book to focus on how to understand and conduct research in this ever-increasing field. With chapters written by established journalism scholars and teachers, this book provides students and researchers with an understanding of the multiple methods applied to the study of community journalism, such as historical, social-scientific, cultural/critical, and interdisciplinary approaches.

It explains what community journalism is as a research concept and offers a range of different methods and theories that can be applied to community journalism research. Although there are numerous "how-to" community journalism manuals for students and newspaper editors, none focuses on how to conduct research into community journalism. The body of knowledge in Foundations of Community Journalism would take readers months, perhaps years, of independent work to gather, making this book a "must-have" volume and reference tool for anybody who is interested in the relationships between journalism and communities.

John A. Hatcher is a professor of journalism in the Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His research focuses on community journalism and the sociology of news. His current work examines these concepts through a comparative anaylsis of community journalism in Norway, South Africa, an the United States. He holds a Ph.D. and master's degree from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of ublic Communications. He is the former education director at the Center for Community Journalism at SUNY Oswego and worked for years as a community newspaper editor and columnist at the Daily Messenger in upstate New York.