A Systematic Literature Review on Local News Production (2012–2022)

Local media are a cornerstone of communities, providing helpful information for everyday life, but the news production has undergone massive changes as a result of digital technologies. The transformation of the sector has even threatened the existence of local media. In this study, we present a systematic literature review on local news production, which aims to analyze and understand research conducted over 10 years (2012–2022). The review focused on two databases: Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. Applying the Prisma methodology and relying on five exclusion criteria, a corpus of 69 papers was selected. The analysis shows that the number of articles has grown over the years, especially in journals indexed in Q1. Anglo-Saxon countries, and, to a lesser extent, the Nordic nations are the most studied areas. We also identify thematic patterns, including digital changes in the local media ecosystem, local journalists and their working conditions, business models, audience approach, and social mission and informational gap (“news deserts”), which is the most frequent topic. Our manuscript intend to contribute to current discussions, shedding light on how literature pays attention to the transformation of local news production. The results reveal the lack of information to assess the local media landscape beyond wealthy countries.