Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to Susanne Whatley, host of “Morning Edition” on LAist 89.3, about a newly published study connecting local reporting to voter support for public works projects. Mullin, also a professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, is co-author of the study on how information content affects public response to news coverage of a local issue. Specifically, Mullin and co-author Andrew Trexler of Duke University focused on preventive spending on infrastructure maintenance and repair and its relationship with the character and depth of news reporting. Through the national survey, the researchers found that readers responded to more informative coverage. “There’s a lot of great research demonstrating the importance of political news for the health of our democracy and the negative impacts that have followed from the closure and consolidation of news outlets,” Mullin said.