Assistant Professor @UTGovernment. Representation, media, state/local politics, parties. Former politics reporter. Proud @idsnews alum. 🌈
Austin, TX
Joined March 2009
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The country’s greatest college newspaper reporting on the country’s greatest college football team. Now that’s some Hoosier excellence.
#iufb reached college football immortality Monday night, as the Hoosiers earned their first national championship with their victory over Miami.
Indiana finished the 2025 season a perfect 16-0 as the national champions.
idsnews.com/article/2026/01/…
To be in Bloomington right now…
Indiana Daily Student photographers are capturing the anticipation across Bloomington ahead of Indiana football's national championship game Monday night. See their photos:
idsnews.com/article/2026/01/…
Michael Auslen retweeted
Our next edition will hit the stands Nov. 20.
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: IDS to continue printing after IU reverses course. idsnews.com/article/2025/10/…
Michael Auslen retweeted
IU previously directed the Indiana Daily Student to stop printing news coverage in our paper. Upon pushback, IU fully cut print, including our special editions. The IDS was not involved in the decision. Letter from the editors to come.
Subnational public opinion is important to many things we care about: learning what policies people want! assessing representation! But it's hard with historical data because of survey sampling challenges. My new paper at @SPPQJournal shows how we can update MRP to do just that.
#OpenAccess from @SPPQJournal -
Improving Subnational Opinion Estimation from Cluster-Sampled Polls - cup.org/3Z1AXS2
- @MichaelAuslen
#FirstView
Great to see this paper out! In it we document the rise of the culture wars as a dominant divide in American politics. In particular, we find that it was the *state* parties that first polarized on abortion, well before national parties acted on the issue.
New First View! The Culture War and Partisan Polarization: State Political Parties, 1960–2018 | Studies in American Political Development bit.ly/4edpGDd @GeraldGamm Justin Phillips, Matthew Carr, and @michaelauslen
In a working paper, I find that when state legislators are more likely to be covered by the press, they are more responsive to their constituents' preferences. michaelauslen.com/statenews
BUT, surprisingly, the public is *not* more informed or engaged in districts where legislators are more likely to be covered. Instead, the presence of journalists as watchdog monitors in the state capitol likely changes politicians' incentives to represent constituents well.
So this news from Gannett may be good news for democratic representation in these states, though perhaps less so if they are simply replacing reporters laid off months or years ago with fellows on short-term contracts (which I have no information about) xitter.cf/MichaelAuslen/status/1…
Interesting move by Gannett (which has over several years dramatically reduced the number of reporters in its newsrooms) to hire reporters to cover state politics--though seemingly in capitals where they do not on the paper.
Lucy was such an icon of a journalist who left a huge mark on Tallahassee—and also a wonderful person. What a loss. tampabay.com/news/florida-po…
When I say I study political effects of declining local news media, I’m obviously not talking about Barbie News (which is thriving)
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No local reporters on the ground to cover the city? Sounds like a recipe for poor accountability in local government.
A Gannett paper with 0 reporters:
"The lack of local reporting has drawn complaints from the mayor, a county supervisor and everyday citizens who say the public life of their community has been diminished by the lack of a dependable source of local news."
latimes.com/california/story…
Michael Auslen retweeted
Immensely proud and grateful to have been a small part of this team, and hopeful that this moment will be a reminder of a few things…
The staff of The Washington Post won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize public service medal for its coverage of the causes, costs and aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, showing how the forces behind the siege are shaking the underpinnings of democracy.
wapo.st/3yrMSf6
ALT The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service goes to The Washington Post for coverage of the Jan. 6 Attack
I’m so incredibly proud of two of my very favorite people, @mjcontrera and @kemettler, who won a Pulitzer Prize today with their colleagues for coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Proud to have been a part of this comprehensive @washingtonpost coverage of a defining, disturbing moment in history.
More proud to have witnessed that day as a staffer of @postlocal — a team of journalists who care deeply about local news, service journalism and each other.
Hard to think of a better reason for my long-awaited return to Tallahassee than my first State Politics and Policy Conference. Thanks to all the very welcoming folks at @APSA_SPP for a great weekend.
