Wearing many hats: How rural U.S. newspaper journalists negotiate professional identity amid digital and economic disruption

Evolving identities and challenges in rural journalism

Rural journalists are in a unique position compared to their counterparts working for large metropolitan newspapers, as they write about the communities they live in and cover issues that impact their families and friends. Therefore, in many cases, their personal and professional identities are intertwined (Smith, 2019: 571; Smith, 2019; Shah et al., 2024), and because of their strong community ties, readers often express “less mistrust, if not full-throated endorsements, toward them,” compared to the national media outlets (Wenzel, 2020: 571). However, despite the vital role they play locally, rural journalism faces a crisis. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers—around 2,500—with most of these papers originating in small or rural areas. And since most communities that lose a paper do not get a replacement (Abernathy, 2022), the gap widens, with wealthier, faster-growing areas gaining access to local news while struggling communities go without. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened these vulnerabilities, destabilizing already fragile business models. Many rural newspapers faced existential crises as revenues declined, forcing layoffs and staff reductions (Finneman et al., 2023). Rural journalists encountered increasingly hostile audiences, shrinking resources, and heavier workloads (Perreault G. et al., 2024b). To survive, many rural newspapers turned to alternative revenue sources such as donations and public subsidies (Finneman et al., 2023). They also relied on collaborative efforts, sharing news and information to manage the increased workload caused by layoffs and reduced resources (Lincoln et al., 2025). Despite these measures, the pandemic exposed the inability of rural newspapers to develop revenue models that readers were willing to support (Finneman et al., 2025).

These changes influenced how rural journalists viewed and performed their professional identities. Often working alone in unstable conditions, facing hostility from polarized audiences, and lacking institutional support (Perreault G. et al., 2024b), they had to navigate norms like objectivity, especially when covering contentious issues such as hate speech, where close community ties create unique pressures (Perreault G. et al., 2024a). Although they idealized journalistic standards and believed in clearly separating public relations from journalism, they often found themselves involved in public relations work due to organizational demands (Perreault M.F. et al., 2024). Face-to-face interaction with sources and colleagues was a core part of their identity as journalists, yet they were forced to rely on digital technology for communication (Moon et al., 2025). While rural journalists aimed to adopt new tools to meet the demands of a changing media landscape, limited resources and expertise hindered these efforts (Boyles and Adonu, 2025).

Overall, these dynamics depict a rural journalism environment marked by instability, adaptation, and ongoing identity negotiation, where professional roles are continually reshaped by social and economic shifts. As Finneman and Thomas (2022: 1977) argue, “journalists persist with their work in full awareness of the predations upon it, recognizing the conflict between journalism’s economic model and democratic spirit.”

Technological and economic disruptions in local journalism

Mobile technology and social media have disrupted the state of local journalism, introducing journalists to opportunities to share their work directly and comment on it with their own opinions, which may impact the traditional journalistic norm/professional value of objectivity (Lee et al., 2017). But the adaptation to new technology is slow going. Rural newspapers tend to move slowly in adopting digital technologies to update distribution and production practices and implement newer approaches to storytelling (Ali et al., 2019).

While embracing digital technology occurs at different paces, for local media, business structures are not always professionally developed, the culture has been print-first, and there are fewer and fewer journalists (Jerónimo et al., 2022). These technologies have influenced the strategic outlook of newspapers, journalists’ self-image and how the audience participates in the creation and dissemination of content (Ali et al., 2019).

Although keeping advertising and marketing pressures from influencing journalistic content reinforces journalistic professionalism, advertising still provides a main source of income for media (Perreault M.F. et al., 2024). News leaders running local newspapers are still struggling to understand the demand of the changing journalism field and the expectations of the readers. For smaller local news outlets, shrinking resources and decimated staffs can contribute to the erosion of a buffer between the work of journalism and day-to-day management of the newspaper as the decline of sales and advertising have created commercial pressures that challenge journalistic autonomy (Ferrer Conill, 2016, 2020; Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). This pressure may be increased for local journalists who share the same neighborhoods and communities with the subjects they cover, which can lead to challenges with sources as well as a recognition that their reporting could economically impact their organization (Jerónimo et al., 2022). Several studies have explored how commercial influences impact news content (e.g. Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). Mari (2014) noted that smaller newspapers are more susceptible to commercial influences due to the financial constraints they face. For example, Finneman et al. (2023) noted that many community newspapers accepted government funding during COVID-19 to survive, breaking away from the industry’s long-standing professional norm of autonomy and independence from outside influences. In the next section we discuss literature on professionalism and journalistic identity.

Journalistic professionalism

Conceptually, professionalism centers on specialization of labor and control of occupational practice (Meyers and Davidson, 2016; Waisbord, 2013). Professionalism connects a system of shared norms, practices, and values to which members abide (Hanitzsch and Örnebring, 2019). As a profession, journalism has been described as a system of beliefs that belong to the group and are used to guide the practice of journalism. For journalists, those beliefs include providing a public service; adhering to the tenets of neutrality, objectivity, and fairness; employing editorial autonomy, freedom, and independence; and reporting with a sense of immediacy (Deuze, 2005; Elliott, 2009; Schudson, 2001; Weaver, 2004). These beliefs and values define their role, their relationships to political and economic power structures, the audience, and the role of journalism in the media environment (Nygren and Dobek-Ostrowska, 2015). In their review of international academic literature, González and Echeverría (2024) proposed four dimensions to define journalistic professionalism: practices (accuracy, fact-checking, diversity of sources and follow-up on important news), orientation (performing a public service), autonomy (independence), and training. Thus, professionalism in journalism, in turn, can be grounded in role theory offering that journalists occupy a social position with expectations that their behavior will follow certain patterns (Hellmueller and Mellado, 2015; Mellado et al., 2020). Among these roles or practices are daily work, decision-making processes which include autonomy and routines in work (Deuze, 2005; Waisbord, 2013). Autonomy is especially important as it reflects a characteristic defined by the profession, allowing journalists to determine proper and improper behavior (Singer, 2003). This study is guided by the organization-centric model of influence (Ferrucci and Kuhn, 2022), which is informed by the hierarchy of influences model of Shoemaker and Reese (2013).

The hierarchy of influences and the organization-centric model of influence

The hierarchy of influences model was introduced by Shoemaker and Reese (2013) to help scholars develop a roadmap to understand influences on journalism practices in different contexts. Reese (2001); Reese (2019); Reese and Shoemaker (2016) utilized the hierarchy of influences model to describe factors impacting news content: individual communication traits; routine structures or those patterns that influence work practices such as journalistic writing style; organizational influences including newsroom structure and ownership; extra-media (social-institutional) whereby the media act as a whole; and social systems which reflect the macro environment in which the media operate. However, according to this model, the forces that influence journalism practices at different levels may interact with each other (Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). The model has been used to understand influences on journalistic practices in different national and cultural contexts (Ferrucci and Nelson, 2019; Milojević and Krstić, 2018; Reese, 2001). However, Ferrucci and Kuhn (2022) argue that the news industry is not static and different news organizations have different demands and goals, and individual news organizations are not required to follow the rules and norms of an industry or social system. Therefore, news organizations have more agency in shaping journalistic practices. Ferrucci and Kuhn (2022) introduced the organization-centric model, based on the hierarchy of influences model (Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). The organization-centric model keeps all the five levels of influences on journalistic practices from the hierarchy of influences model but removes the hierarchical nature and therefore provides research scholars an opportunity to explore the complexity in which both micro and macro influences might affect journalistic practices simultaneously. Ferrucci and Kuhn (2022) argue that recent changes in the media ecosystem have empowered individual organizations to shape journalistic practices, as organizations “can now make decisions that impact influences from all other levels of influences,” (Ferrucci and Kuhn, 2022: 538). From this reasoning, our study seeks to add to this discussion by using organization-centric model to explore how organizational cultures have influenced the way rural journalists conceptualize professionalism and perceive their role-identities. Specifically, we seek to answer the following questions:

RQ1

How do local journalists define professionalism while adapting to expanded roles in newsrooms driven by the economic challenges facing traditional journalism?

RQ2

How do organizations (or should we say organizational culture) influence rural newspaper journalists’ professional role identity?

Data collection

To address the research questions, we conducted interviews with 17 local journalists in the United States. We identified Alabama as a critical case (Creswell, 2013) given that Alabama is a rural state, and, following a US trend, the circulation of these newspapers dropped by 34% between 2004 and 2019 (Abernathy, 2020); hence Alabama is particularly vulnerable to changes in the digital landscape. The majority of our participants worked for newspapers in small, rural areas of Alabama; some of our participants did not technically live in “small towns” but in areas that are “to some extent marginalized and peripheral” (Örnebring et al., 2020a: 448).

Sixteen of the 17 participants worked for local newspapers. The remaining participant had moved from a newspaper to a television station in the interval between our initial contact and the interview itself. We chose to retain this individual in the study because his entire prior career had been in newspapers and the move was very recent. Most of our participants were female (n = 9). Participants ranged in age from 22 to 61, averaging 36 years. Before each interview, we described the study to participants and secured their informed consent. Most of the participants were interviewed via phone or Zoom (n = 16). One participant opted to be interviewed via email.

The interviews followed a semi-structured guide built around open-ended questions. These questions spanned topics such as journalistic professionalism, shifts that participants had recently observed in their newsrooms, the support their organizations provided them, and the difficulties journalists confront as the industry moves into a digital landscape. The average duration for the interviews conducted via phone and Zoom was 33 minutes with a range of 13 to 67 minutes. This study was part of a larger project that used in-depth qualitative interviews to explore journalists’ perspectives and experiences regarding recent changes in the news industry and the challenges they faced. We recruited participants through several channels. The first author emailed journalists using a list he had compiled from existing databases and the staff directories of newspapers affiliated with the Alabama Press Association and circulated the call for participation through social media posts. The fourth author, a former Alabama journalist, additionally reached out to journalists within his own professional network. We also used the Association’s platform to invite its member journalists to participate in the study. This study was approved by the Jacksonville State University Institutional Review Board (no. 07292022).

Data analysis

After anonymizing the interview files and assigning each a pseudonym, we imported them into the qualitative data analysis software program NVIVO (1.7.1; QSR International). The audio files were transcribed using the transcription services of the software and reviewed for accuracy. The data were analyzed inductively using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014), consistent with the analytical procedures used in prior journalism research (Shah and Malinowski, 2025). From a constructivist grounded theory perspective, analysis is shaped through the shared construction of meaning between researchers and participants (Charmaz, 2014; Shah et al., 2019).

A multi-stage, iterative process guided the analysis of the interviews. First, the first author developed initial codes and wrote memos. The process involved in-depth, line-by-line reading of the transcripts. The initial codes were discussed with other authors who also had access to transcripts of the interviews. During this phase, our aim was to remain open to theoretical directions that might emerge from the data (Charmaz, 2006). We subsequently moved to focused coding, concentrating on the recurring and analytically meaningful themes that had taken shape in the first round. This step allowed us to refine the conceptual direction of the study. As the analysis advanced, we read participants’ accounts and experiences against one another, both within and across the interviews, and this ongoing process of constant comparison (Hallberg, 2006) ultimately yielded our analytical categories.

Analysis

Journalists were committed to serving their communities and keeping them informed despite facing challenges such as job insecurity, lack of resources, inability of their organizations to deal with the technological and economic disruptions in the journalism industry, and the fluid nature of their responsibilities in their organizations. The participants had an idealized perception of journalistic professional norms and values. They wanted to provide accurate, truthful, objective, and in-depth stories to their communities. However, they also understood that they needed to renegotiate some of the journalistic principles to survive. For example, our participants realized that the distance between the editorial and marketing departments had shrunk, but they believed it was necessary for the survival of their organizations and to keep their communities informed.

Professionalism: Truth, fairness, and objectivity

With regard to RQ1, “How do local journalists define professionalism while adapting to expanded roles in newsrooms driven by the economic challenges facing traditional journalism,” our participants conceptualized professionalism as being fair to all parties involved in a news story, objectivity, independence from outside influences, reporting truth, having professional training in journalism, following the ethical guidelines laid out by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and other professional organizations, and performing one’s duty professionally. For instance, Emily, who has worked for one year as a journalist for a local newspaper, defined journalistic professionalism as, “… abandoning one's own personal agenda, conscience, or political affiliations, and opinions. To write the truth and only the truth, and to represent everyone, every media outlet, every business entity accurately.”

Emily emphasized objectivity and fairness. She said:

It means holding yourself to a higher standard when it comes to your job and coverage of events/incidents. It entails being able to take a step back personally, set your opinions aside, and report on something objectively and without any bias. It is reporting only the facts and letting readers form their own opinions or come to their own conclusions.

Our participants also believed that journalistic professionalism entailed following the ethical guidelines of different professional organizations such as accuracy, protection of sources, and conducting oneself professionally while on job. The participants believed that ethical, honest, and accurate coverage of events can help journalists gain the trust of a community. For example, Linda, a journalist with 8 years of experience, highlighted the importance of standing by the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). For instance, she noted that whenever she interviews sources or reports on events, she follows all the SPJ guidelines.

Richard, a journalist with 38 years of experience, additionally highlighted the importance of ethics. He believed that making ethical decisions during the current politically divisive environment could help journalists gain trust with communities and counter fake news, which is prevalent on social media. For example, Richard said, “We have to have all of our statements backed up by facts, by quotes, by documents, and things like that.”

Mooni, another reporter with 8 years of journalism experience, concurred:

If we're talking about, you know, behaving professionally. A journalist would or should be as accurate and honest with the information that they have. They should be a trustworthy source of information. They should be able to fact check things that are given to them before presenting them to the public. So, we must stay away from misinformation and protect our sources. That's how I kind of see professionalism and industry.

Gaby, our only participant who reported for a minority newspaper with 15 years of experience as a journalist, believed that in addition to doing ethical and accurate reporting, it was also the professional responsibility of the local newspapers to serve their communities.

I believe that our job is to give information and really empower our community with resources … but also not to just sensationalize or trying to aim for more readers or followers.

Many of these journalists believed in idealized values of journalistic professionalism and wanted to provide objective and accurate and in-depth information about events and stories in their communities; however, they noted that socio-economic challenges posed by changes in the industry brought by emerging digital technology, the pandemic, and political divisiveness in the country were making it increasingly difficult to serve their communities in that way.

Organizational culture and professionalism identities in rural journalism

With regard to RQ2, “How do organizations (or should we say organizational culture) influence rural newspaper journalists’ professional role identity,” our participants described organizational level issues that have impacted their professional role identities. Two distinct but interconnected categories emerged as a response to this question: (1) Rural news organizations: Navigating revenue loss and innovation shortfalls; (2) Editorial-business convergence in rural news organizations.

Rural news organizations: Navigating revenue loss and innovation shortfalls

Our respondents noted that their organizations have not been able to keep up with the changes in the media industry, which has resulted in a financial crisis for the local newspapers. Whereas some newspapers closed, others had to lay off staff, which resulted in increased workload for the remaining journalists. Whereas all our participants agreed that their organizations need to improve their marketing strategies and increase their online presence, the younger participants of our study noted that the owners of the newspapers have not been able to keep up with the pace of the industry and that senior journalists in the newsroom who are unable to adopt the new technology did not help the situation. Adyson, who has worked for a local newspaper for 2 years, noted:

But we are in newspapers, and we have not quite kind of jumped to that gap of trying to only have a larger online presence where most of people today get their news from, which is online. And I believe that we could have someone that was on our staff that knew more about that or knew or if it was more tech savvy and in gaining page views and clicks and understanding all of the things.

She said that most of the people that she worked with are 60 or above:

They do a lot of things old-school, and they don't necessarily think of journalism as something that they need to learn or like a lot of the things that is brought to them, that are new ideas that kind of push away because they have that older school mentality.

Chris, another young reporter with a journalistic experience of seven years, also agreed with Adyson. He too believed that local newspapers have failed to keep up with the changes in the industry, which has resulted in declining revenues and lack of subscriptions.

The inability of the news organizations to modernize their newspapers resulted in the decline of readership and revenues. Because of the declining revenues, the management of the local newspapers decided to lay off staff and take other cost-saving measures, which further decreased the ability of their reporters to perform their jobs professionally and effectively.

Emily noted that the newspapers have failed to engage the younger audience by just sticking with the printed version of the paper or with limited online presence. She said:

There are definitely things in the digital age that news outlets are going to have to change, and I look forward to seeing what those changes are once my kids come of age.

Striking a balance between online presence and keeping the news fresh for the weekly print publication was a difficult task and required more resources, which these news organizations did not have. Overall, according to our participants, the inability of these organizations to increase their online presence and focus on digital advertising had created a financial crisis that not only resulted in the decline of quality in the news they produced but also affected their ability to perform their jobs professionally.

Despite showing a strong commitment to professionalism and ethical coverage of their communities, our respondents were overworked and burned out. They noted that due to budgetary restrictions they were required to work more than usual as their news organizations were understaffed. Workload management negatively impacted their journalistic routines. Several of our respondents were editing more than one news outlet, covering more than one news beat, or were responsible for reporting as well as editing their newspapers. They also noted that their friends and colleagues in other local organizations were facing similar challenges. Mooni noted that one of her colleagues used to be editor of three different newspapers at the same time. She explained:

So, when you work in that way, when you're editing three different papers, I think the focus is going to be on what is the quickest turnaround rather than what is the most important stories for each of those three areas.

Ivana faced a similar situation. She said: “I’m the editor and only reporter at a county-wide newspaper in a rural area, so I feel like I have a lot on my plate pretty much all the time.” Peyton, another local journalist with two years of journalism experience, had a similar experience: “We have a news and a sports section. They are mine and my boss’ responsibilities, respectively. Occasionally, I miss things, or I let things fall through the cracks, and I don't attend every event.”

Richard concurred with the experiences of Ivana and Peyton. He noted that these days news organizations are trying to do more with less resources. He said, “we’re stretched, for example, [newspaper] used to be a big newspaper, just like [newspaper], many employees, a big footprint. And now [newspaper] only has one reporter, only one, only one employee.” He added:

I think the challenge is just trying to keep up, just trying to be objective and just trying to keep up with the amount of stories you have to tell as quickly as possible. We used to be here at the newspaper. There was a crime reporter just for crime. There was an education reporter just for education. And there were the reporters that had different niche, you know, like, you know, a society or, you know, features and things like that. So now a reporter, if you work here, you have to wear many different hats. You know, you have to do a little bit of crime. You have to do a little bit of feature; you have to do a little bit of everything.

Gaby, a journalist associated with a small-town newspaper, believed that the responsibilities of journalists have increased at local newspapers. According to her, news organizations were looking for individuals who could perform multiple duties simultaneously such as reporting, editing, and photography. Whereas the responsibilities of and expectations from the local journalists increased as they faced more scrutiny from their communities, they received little support from their organizations. The participants noted that due to these challenges many journalists were leaving the field or changing their organizations. Adyson noted:

Well, for instance, I think we’ve had a lot of people leave my organization, a lot of them kind of like, have just been jumping ship. Like I said, because journalism and newspapers are a dying breed, so they’ve done a lot of layoffs.

Despite striving for universal journalistic professional ideals and values, many of our participants noted that they were unable to achieve those due to the lack of professional support from their organizations. Their routines were negatively impacted by the lack of financial support and high demand of work. For example, Richard summed up the current situation of the local journalists and local newspapers this way:

When a town loses a newspaper, which many have, a lot of them have closed, and I would say that for all practical purposes, [newspaper name for confidentiality] is pretty much closed with only one reporter. I think in this day, it is very challenging. And many newspapers used to have lots of lots of reporters and photographers, and now they're just skeleton staff.

Overall, our participants believed that local journalism was facing an existential crisis. Many journalists were burned out and leaving the profession and many newspapers were closing or scaling down, resulting in news deserts in the communities they served.

Editorial-business convergence in rural news organizations

Our participants noted that due to the financial crisis faced by local newspapers, their papers are finding it difficult to separate newsrooms from advertising and marketing departments. However, they did not believe that the decreasing distance between the advertising and editorial departments posed a threat to their professionalism and journalistic autonomy. They believed that it was important for the editorial and marketing teams to work in sync for their organizations to survive. Participants were not only working as editors or reporters for their newspapers but were also owners of the papers or directly responsible for their sales and marketing. The nature of the relationship between editorial and marketing teams varied. Whereas some participants were directly responsible for both reporting and advertising, others were not directly involved in the marketing of their current or former newspapers but noted that their organizations’ marketing teams influenced news content to some extent.

Richard noted that his organization assigns him coverage of influential individuals and businesses to keep them happy to increase advertising. Mooni, another participant who works as an editor, explained that she has also observed the shift in the shrinking distance between advertising and newsrooms. However, she explained that in her experience it’s a more complex phenomenon. She contended:

But there's definitely been a shift because we want to make advertisers happy. But we also still want to do our jobs. So, there are often times where our marketing department and our newsroom butt heads on content because our advertisers want, you know, certain stories or they don't want certain stories, next to their ads in the paper. And so, there's definitely temptation for there to be some sort of influence there.

Our respondents agreed that due to shrinking revenues and a decline in staff, the influence of marketing over editorial departments has increased recently, impacting journalists’ roles and news coverage. However, our participants said they tried to keep news content separate from advertising, even though they acknowledged it was practically difficult. The influence of marketing over editorial content was specifically evident in weekly newspapers compared to daily newspapers. For example, three of our participants were the only editorial staff in their news organizations (weekly newspapers) and were also responsible for marketing content.

Practical implications

Our study makes significant contributions to the understanding of the local newspaper industry in the emerging digital media landscape. Based on the findings of our study, we offer a few applied applications. First, journalism schools should introduce courses equipping students with knowledge of new revenue generation models and providing them a comprehensive skill set that meets the needs of the rural media ecosystems. We know that successful models of journalism school engagement with rural communities exist (e.g. University of Kentucky and Washington State University), but we also know that there are critical opportunities in rural areas. As Watts and Reilly (2024) note, there are nearly 600 rural colleges in or near a local news desert. This implies that there is a “college solution” to many challenges in rural areas, including vulnerabilities in news funding. Second, local media owners, journalists, press associations (e.g. Alabama Press Association) and journalism schools should collaborate on strategies for enhancing the infrastructure for rural journalism—we know such collaborations have been fruitful in reporting processes (Lincoln et al., 2025). But rural news organizations have numerous needs (e.g. organizational, financial) which also require collaboration.

All studies have limitations and this study is no different. We know rural news organizations are particularly vulnerable to changes in technology (see Moon et al., 2025), which led us to select Alabama as a critical case for analysis. Yet even as a critical case “permit logical generalization and maximum application of information to other cases” (Creswell, 2007, p. 127), this sampling choice then necessarily eschews other common qualitative approaches, such as maximum variation. As such, Alabama’s case may not be able to fully reflect “diverse variations” and “common patterns” (p. 127), that are reflected in other rural news environments in the United States or any other country for that matter.

Conclusion

Taken together, our findings suggest that journalists in the rural US are adapting to their declining fortunes by donning numerous hats in their newsrooms. Some of the roles anticipated by journalists in our sample, such as marketing, have traditionally been seen as in conflict with those of journalists. Moreover, this study highlights the desperate straits a critical case in the US faces. Cases such as these necessitate robust interventions to help promote vulnerable rural areas in the US information ecosystem. The stakes extend beyond journalism itself as research shows that newspaper closures reduce electoral competition and civic engagement (Darr et al., 2018), and that local newspapers, when adequately resourced, can help reduce political polarization in divided communities (Darr et al., 2021).