Glocal Journalism: Three Definitions

1. Journalism that illuminates the invisible strands of mutual influence connecting every town and city to the rest of the world. Glocal journalism exposes the local effects of global causes, the local reactions to global actions, the local opportunities of global trends, the local threats of global dangers, and the love of local and global neighbors.

2. Journalism that uses freedom of the press in the U.S. to help people elsewhere in the world who don't have it. Journalists in the U.S. can often write better stories about the politics and society of foreign countries, simply because they don't fear a knock on the door at night. At the same time, thanks to the Internet, these stories can be extremely useful in those countries because they will be read and exchanged and widely distributed.

3. Journalism that defines the largest relevant and useful context for every local story. In a globalized world that context is usually global whether the story is the weather, a flu outbreak, fishing in the Mississippi, or the insanely low price of sneakers at Wal-Mart.