Participatory Government by Journalism: Class Periodicals and the Local State, 1880–1914

This article explores intersections between the local press, class periodicals, and local government by examining local government periodicals. This specialist genre balanced the trade press's generic "news you can use" with participatory forms of the New Journalism. By publishing advice columns, local government reports, multi-part series on local government law, and locally sourced fiction and poetry, local government periodicals offered a print sphere in which citizens and local officers could debate and shape governmental practices. I argue that through such participatory reader networks local government periodicals strove to transform Britain's hodgepodge of governing institutions into a politically representative, nationally standardized network of local authorities.