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FUTURE STUDIES
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Focusing on the Media
An important component of the success of the local growth coalitions is the ideological construction of community (boosterism). Public education certainly plays a role in this construction, but so do the local mass media. In fact, unlike public education, the local mass media are also local businesses (or increasingly a subsidiary of a national media company that may or may not be owned by a non-media corporation).
Regardless of its ownership structure, however, by the virtue of being a business the local media should naturally align itself with the local growth machine. For instance, a member of the local family that owns the last local daily newspaper in the community is also a land developer. The mass media, as private companies, occupy two roles in the community: they are growth oriented businesses and vehicles for civic coordination.
Understanding these roles of the local print and broadcast mass media as well as how they relate to the local community elites has profound implications for how citizens come to understand their community. Structurally, the local mass media should appear as players in the local growth coalition. Anecdotally, the local media are diverse in their participation in the local growth coalition. Interestingly, the owners of the local newspaper appear completely absent from these elite networks.
Exploring systematically the relationship local elites have with the local media can be useful for understanding the cultural industry’s role in growth coalitions.