Exploring Geographic “Reach” in Local Visual News: A Mapping Approach

The importance of local news outlets having a physical presence in and understanding of the geographic places they serve is widely established in academic literature. Yet vast and sparsely populated coverage areas—such as those in regional, rural, or remote Australia—can challenge the feasibility and practicality of this ideal. This study explores the use of mapping methods to visualise and assess geographic patterns of visual news coverage published by two news outlets in communities in two different states, focusing on photographs as spatially anchored indicators of journalistic presence and attention. Specifically, we identify the locations of 701 news photographs published across the two outlets over a constructed year and then plot these on maps using a point-based approach. We then experiment with different ways of mapping these locations and reflect on the challenges of these approaches. In doing so, we highlight the value of using heat maps to more clearly reveal disparities in coverage density across the outlets’ self-defined “news zones”. Our findings demonstrate both the potential and limitations of mapping approaches in identifying under-served areas and in complicating the issue of a news outlet’s “geographic” reach in the digital era.