Team Leader Kim Jeongjae of Nowon-gu Featured in Academic Journal for Local Newspaper Research, Gaining Attention

Veteran PR Officer Kim Jeong-jae, with over 7 years at Nowon District Office and a PhD candidate at University of Seoul Graduate School of Urban Administration, presents thesis on 'Local Newspaper Satisfaction and Watchdog Function'... Key functions: administrative PR, political reporting, group activity coverage... Watchdog function weak but linked to local government integrity, revealed through survey

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] A local government official has attracted attention by publishing a research paper on the role and function of local (weekly) newspapers in an academic journal.

Kim Jeong-jae, head of the Life Respect Team at Nowon-gu Public Health Center (photo), published a paper titled "A Study on Local Newspaper Satisfaction and Surveillance Function" in the academic journal "Humanities and Social Sciences 21" at the end of last October.

Local newspapers refer to weekly publications issued once a week by each autonomous district. A survey of 240 Seoul metropolitan government officials found that the main functions of local newspapers were administrative publicity, reporting on legislative activities, representing local organizations, and resident education. On the other hand, functions such as policy criticism of local governments, proposing policy alternatives, and consensus building were found to be low.

The study also selected four autonomous districts with different levels of integrity to investigate whether the surveillance function of local newspapers is related to the integrity of local governments.

The results showed that Seocho-gu and Nowon-gu, which have high integrity, also had high satisfaction with the surveillance function of local newspapers, while Dobong-gu, with low integrity, had low satisfaction with the surveillance function.

However, Dongjak-gu, which had low integrity, showed a high surveillance function of local newspapers, indicating that the probability of proportionality between the surveillance function of local newspapers and local government integrity was relatively high at three out of four districts.

In a situation where the function to check and control the growing authority of local governments remains stagnant, the local councils, which are supposed to be watchdogs, are unable to perform their roles due to the party nomination system and majority party dominance, and civic groups are weakened in their surveillance function as they have become accustomed to budget projects.

This paper is significant in that it studied the surveillance function and role of local newspapers as an alternative to this situation.

Team leader Kim Jeong-jae said, "Although local newspapers are heavily biased toward district administration publicity due to receiving support from local governments amid difficult management environments, it was found that the surveillance function itself is not paralyzed," adding, "The fact that local newspapers publish many opinions of legislative members and have been active in the area for a long time influences the integrity of local government officials, so support for local newspapers and residents' interest are required."

Team leader Kim completed doctoral coursework in Urban Administration at the University of Seoul and has accumulated experience and knowledge of local media while working in media and public relations at Nowon-gu Office for over seven years.

He also attracted attention with an article titled "The Story of a 48-Year-Old Exchange Student in Ho Chi Minh" contributed to Nowon Newspaper during his study abroad at Ho Chi Minh City National University in Vietnam in 2018.

Despite repeated rejections of his paper for publication, Team leader Kim reportedly continued to revise the paper to maintain trust with the public officials who participated in the survey.

Kim added, "Not all local newspapers or local reporters are good, so careful attention from the media department is necessary. It is important to distinguish the wheat from the chaff among the rapidly emerging local newspapers and to maintain distance from similar newspapers such as environmental or legal ones to protect highly trusted local newspapers within limited budgets."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.