Reporting Revitalization: Local Newspaper Portrayals of Economic Change in a Small Rustbelt City

This research explores how news media narrate urban economic development. Drawing on growth machine theory, I analyze 51 local newspaper stories (2010–2021) within the context of official city council meeting minutes and plans (2008–2017). I find that the newspaper promoted an ideal image of the city's business climate by emphasizing the economic “success” of certain local businesses. The newspaper defined this notion of local economic success through five frames: branding, collaboration, clientele, location, and adaptability. In doing so, the newspaper operated as a cultural intermediary by narrating the city's shifting economic conditions in a way that publicly justified and advanced the elite growth consensus. These findings demonstrate how news media may narrate contestable projects of economic change beyond coverage explicitly about gentrification. Consequently, this research aims to illuminate a wider range of ideological work that news media perform to imagine and ascribe meaning to changing urban spaces.