Central Queensland University’s Jacqui Ewart has teamed up with the University of Utah to study newspapers' treatment of the public. This unique joint project looks at the extent to which ordinary people's voices are represented in both regional and metropolitan media.

“What we are really doing here is looking at the myth that regional newspapers are closer to their readers than metropolitan newspapers,” explained Dr Ewart.

This myth, has underpinned much commentary and research on regional newspapers, but there hasn't been any investigation of it to date, according the Dr Ewart.

Similarly, the Faculty of Informatics and Communications and COIN aere developing public journalism projects so community groups can involve themselves in journalism.

“We are working with the community and develop areas where community groups and members can have their say about a range of issues and they will also be able to act as 'reporters', posting news stories to a website,” said Dr Ewart.

All of this work builds five years of CQU research on profiling readers of newspapers and identifying journalists' ideas of their readership.

Ewart has also started to look closely at how regional newspapers currently use websites to connect with members of the public in less populated or isolated areas.

“I will continue to look at how the news media can use online environments to connect with publics, especially regional news media which, given circulation declines of the past decade or so, need to improve their interaction with and connection to their various publics,” she added.