Flood News from Italy to Europe. Narrating Local Crises in the Global Journalism Ecosystem.

For some time now, the field of journalism has been multifaceted, thanks to the digitalisation of its content and its distribution on digital platforms, which have profoundly changed not only the nature of reporting, but also the journalistic profession itself, production routines, the way news is processed and thematised, and the relationship with sources and audiences. Processes that have affected both national and community media, for example in terms of their agendas and news values.

Indeed, local journalism is also evolving in response to the many challenges posed by the ecological changes that have taken place in the digital media sector, as well as more recent health and environmental emergencies.

In this respect, it is precisely in the production of emergency information that the main efforts of the local media have been concentrated, a publishing sector that is even more in crisis after the pandemic event.

Despite the fact that local newsrooms, like all information agencies, now operate with reduced margins and are forced to deal with changing news consumption habits, it is in these situations that the centrality of territorial journalism is revealed.

Based on this scenario, the study presented here analyses the behaviour of the local, national and international media during the floods that hit Emilia Romagna (Italy) in May 2023.

There are three main research questions: How does the media agenda change during the emergency? How does editorial work reorganise in local and national newsrooms? How do local newspapers relate to digital space, national and international community and media institutions?

To answer these questions, a qualitative methodology was used: the semi-structured interview. Specifically, twenty-five interviews were conducted between July and November 2023, including in the sample journalists (professional and non-professional) with different roles in Italian, local-national, digital and physical newsrooms.