Mapping Cultural Journalism: Trends, Quirks, and Writing Styles in Local and Regional Print and Online Romanian Media

This work serves as a theoretical and practical guide for journalists interested in cultural journalism’ssophisticated genres. With culture pages in daily newspapers and online platforms dwindling,often replaced by basic PR news from publishers or authors, mastering these complex texts candiversify media content. Such diversity not only informs but also educates readers, expandingtheir cultural horizons. The decline of cultural articles in Romanian local and regional journalismis due to journalists’ unfamiliarity with these texts and a reluctance to engage with complex, lessfinancially rewarding subjects. The financial crisis in Romanian media reduced newsroom staff,making cultural journalism the first to suffer from space limitations and fewer writers. Consequently,the focus shifted to general local and political news. This study explores the challenges facedby Romanian local and regional press in producing intricate cultural journalism, often authoredby individuals with non-literary backgrounds – such as engineers and teachers who write as ahobby. It examines the structure and genres of these texts, providing guidance for their creation.Focusing on local publications in Arad, the study highlights issues like limited funding, small editorialteams, and a preference for simpler news over in-depth cultural coverage. This paper explores thetreatment of cultural journalism genres in the local and regional press in Romania, a trend observableacross several European countries. These insights provide valuable guidance for aspiring journalistsinterested in pursuing cultural journalism. The research primarily employed content analysis, focusingon three selected local and regional publications: Jurnal arădean (the sole print publication inArad), Special Arad, and Critic Arad, all of which are available online. To ensure comprehensivefindings, over 3,000 cultural articles published between September 2017 and July 2024 wereexamined. Each article was analyzed to identify key journalistic characteristics and to assess thepresence of cultural journalism elements through discursive analysis. A comparative approachwas applied to determine how these genres are represented in both print and digital formats.The findings revealed a preference for shorter cultural texts, such as brief news pieces, articleswith quotes, reports, interviews, portraits, book and theatre reviews, with more in-depth contentbeing less frequently featured. We believe that examining the local and regional press in Arad, aprominent city in western Romania, sheds light on the overall condition of the Romanian local press.