Nikki Usher, ‘News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism’(New York: Columbia University Press, 2021)
Nikki Usher has written a remarkable book about the death – and possible rebirth – of the local newspaper. This is not just another swansong for a mythical past when local hacks pounded the streets of towns and cities in search of the truth. In fact, Usher believes that local newspapers too often failed to fulfil their mission, in her words, to “build a sense of collective memory, social cohesion, and civic imagination”.
Usher’s focus is on the United States, but her findings will resonate in many other countries. She charts a complex history, where 20th-century newspapers both enhanced democracy and perpetuated injustice, and even the most lauded titles were implicitly and explicitly racist. The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, whilst the Boston Globe advocated against integrated housing in the 1970s.
