Newspaper 2004 Abstracts
Newspaper Division
Problem or Promise? Coverage of Gambling in the New York Times 1964-1992 • Timothy Boudreau, Central Michigan University • This content analysis of 356 stories about gambling looked at whether and how coverage of the activity shifted while gambling was becoming less deviant and gaining social acceptance. This study, covering nearly three decades, found that the theme of coverage shifted from an emphasis on crime to one of economics. But no consistent shift in the tone of coverage was found, nor was gambling portrayed as more beneficial for the individual or for the community.
Variations on a Theme: The Professional Role Conceptions of Print and Online Newspaper Journalists • William P. Cassidy, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater • A national survey (N=655) examining the professional role conceptions of print and online newspaper journalists revealed the print group perceived the Interpretive/Investigative role conception as significantly more important than the online group. No significant differences were found between the groups in their perceptions of the Adversarial and Populist Mobilizer role conceptions. Results were mixed for the Disseminator role conception with the online group rating getting information to the public as significantly more important than the print group.
Will they read it if it’s free? College Students and Complimentary Daily Newspapers • Steve Collins, University of Central Florida • Two newspapers in a southwestern metropolitan area began supplying students at an area university with complimentary copies of their publications midway through the Fall 2002 semester. This study involved a survey the following semester that was designed to measure the early success of the program and its effect on readership of other print products. Although fewer than half of students had read a copy of either paper in the previous week, the program had clearly reached an important segment of the student population. Ten percent of students reported reading at least six issues of the papers in the previous week. What’s more, 62 percent of students reading the free papers said they intended to subscribe to a newspaper after graduation.
Risky Business: Youth and Internet Crime in the News • Lynne Edwards and Emily Callaghan, Ursinis University • Informed by Gamson and Modigliani’s (1989) theory of framing, the authors analyzed 160 articles in five major newspapers (1990 – 2002) to explore coverage of youths and Internet crime. Through the over-reliance on official sources and the under-utilization of youth sources, the news frames: 1) boys as Internet villains, 2) girls as Internet victims, 3) police as the only heroes who can save them, and 4) our civil liberties as the ultimate sacrifice.
College Newspaper Sports Agendas • Lee Farquhar, Kristin Rethman, Heather Calhoun and Oksana Boyko, Kansas State University • This agenda setting study in a collegiate setting shows strong similarities between the sports staffs’ sports agenda, readers’ sports agenda and actual coverage. Females and males showed a strong positive correlation regarding sports agendas, but differed slightly in sex-based sports. A strong positive correlation occurred between a two-week constructed sample and a one-week constructed sample in the content analysis. However, the two-week sample better accounted for all sports than the one-week sample.
Content and Framing of Children’s Health Reporting • Rebecca Gruhn and Katherine Hawkins, Clemson University • A review of a random sample of newspapers published during 2001 in a large mid-western state indicated that while a wide variety of children’s health topics received coverage, such coverage often inaccurately represented threats to children’s health in that state. In addition, stories were overwhelmingly framed from a non-public health perspective, promoting the false conclusion that threats to children’s health and safety are random and not preventable.
Newspaper diversity in Chicago: A study of competing editorial pages • Tom Hallock, Ohio University• In an era of diminishing daily newspaper competition and increasing group ownership, a content analysis of the editorials of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times from two separate years during the administration of President George W. Bush found ideological and subject diversity, indicating that competing newspapers offer readers a choice of editorial opinions and editorial topics. The findings contradict the conclusions of previous research that found no or little effect of competition on newspaper editorials.
Ordinary People and the Weekly Newspaper • John Hatcher, Syracuse • It has been said that community journalism, small daily and weekly newspapers, report on the “everyday lives of ordinary people,” suggesting a uniformity of content based on routinized practices. However, research suggests community heterogeneity has a strong influence on the content of newspapers. This study asks whether community type can be used to predict the variability in source diversity in weekly newspapers. This study uses a content analysis of 659 sources from 40 issues of 10 different weekly newspapers to ascertain the reliance on official sources in reporting the news. The results find partial support for the prediction that community diversity influences source diversity in weekly newspapers.
What The Public Expects of Local News • Don Heider, Maxwell McCombs and Paula Poindexter, University of Texas at Austin • What does the public need to know? What role should news play in local community life? What are the central characteristics of good journalism? Debates and discussions about these fundamental questions primarily have been limited to journalists and those who study journalism. But what about consumers of journalism? This study set out to discover what everyday citizens think about journalism, and in particular, what role the public thinks journalists should play in reporting the local news.
Uncovering the Quality of Converged Journalism: A Content Analysis of The Tampa Tribune News Stories • Edgar Huang, Lisa Radamakers, Moshood A. Fayemiwo and Lillian Dunlap, USF at St. Petersburg • A content analysis, coupled with an in-depth interview, was done in this case study on The Tampa Tribune, a component of The News Center in Tampa, in an attempt to answer the question whether converged journalism has jeopardized journalistic quality. After comparing the quality factors shown in the Tribune stories before, at the beginning of, and three years into convergence, this study has found that media convergence has overall sustained the quality of news reporting.
Houston Harte: Setting The Standard for Community Journalism by Building a Better Community • Cathy Johnson, Angelo State University • This study seeks to tie the contemporary jargon of community journalism to a role model of the past. Houston Harte recognized that in order for his newspaper to thrive, the community would have to prosper. During a period when no one was calling it community journalism, the publisher literally built his adopted community of San Angelo, Texas. His exemplary model shows that a newspaper can focus on the community and still turn a profit.
The Long-Run Relationship Between Newsroom Investment and Change in Circulation for Medium and Large Dailies • Stephen Lacy, Charles St. Cyr; and Susanna Guzman, Michigan State University • This study examines the relationship between newsroom investment in 1984 and the change in weekday circulation over periods of five, ten, and fifteen years at forty-one daily newspapers with more than 25,000 circulation. A significant positive association was found between newsroom investment in 1984 and the percentage change in circulation five years later. The relationships ten and fifteen years after the index measurement were consistent with the hypothesis but not statistically significant.
Salience Transfer between Online and Offline Media in Korea: Content Analysis of Four Traditional Papers and Their Online Siblings • Gunho Lee, University of Texas at Austin • This study explores the intermedia agenda-setting effects among four Korean traditional newspapers and their online siblings. Rank order correlations revealed that there are clear, if not universal, intermedia agenda-setting effects among those papers. Two of the four traditional newspapers set the agenda of their own online siblings, while one online version of the four newspapers set its offline newspaper’s agenda. In general, the traditional papers wielded more power in setting the others’ agenda than their online siblings did, while the online siblings were more vulnerable to the agenda of other papers than the traditional papers were.
‘Everyone else has a TV Weatherman on the Weatherpage’ Institutional Isomorphism and Commitment to Newspaper-TV Partnering • Wilson Lowrey, University of Alabama • This study uses the institutional theory of organizations to explore the degree to which newspapers and TV stations pursue partnerships for concrete benefits, and the degree to which they pursue them to keep up with perceived trends. Findings from a national survey of newspaper editors and TV news directors revealed that pursuit of concrete benefits best predicted initiating partnerships while strength of commitment to partnering correlated more strongly with managers’ professional involvement and with the level of partnering of nearby “flagship” news institutions.
Accuracy Matters: A Benchmark Assessment of Newspaper Error and Credibility • Scott R. Maier, University of Oregon • A survey of 4,800 news sources cited in 14 newspapers provides a large-scale assessment of newspaper accuracy and credibility. Sources found errors in 61 percent of local news stories, an inaccuracy rate higher than reported in 65 years of accuracy research. Newspaper credibility significantly declined in relation to frequency and severity of errors. Inaccuracy negatively affected source willingness to cooperate with the press. The cross-market study, the first of its scope, sets a normative standard for media accuracy.
Answering the Challenge: How Media Writing Instructors Compared at Accredited and Non-Accredited Journalism Programs • Mark Masse and Mark Popovich, Ball State University • Research findings from a national study of media writing instructors reveal modest differences between accredited and non-accredited institutions in teaching attitudes among media writing instructors, provide evidence of significant professional experience among faculty at both categories of journalism programs, and demonstrate the need for continued innovation in the teaching of writing among all journalism educators. This study finds that media writing instructors are currently in transition from traditional to more progressive (e.g., convergence) teaching practices.
Missouri Newspaper Reporters: Perceptions of Prestige, Peers and Job Satisfaction Based on City Size and Personal Characteristics • Jarrett Medlin and Clyde Bentley, University of Missouri • A survey of newspaper reporters in the state of Missouri sought information on how they perceived both their prestige in the community and what people in their communities they identified as peers. Education had a negative correlation with job satisfaction, and reporters portrayed themselves as peers to school teachers in their communities.
Effects of Domestic Violence Coverage Training on Student Reporters • Ginger L. Park, Terri Clark and Joye Gordon, Kent State University • This study’s purpose was to determine if training student journalists would influence how they write domestic violence stories. A treatment group received sensitivity training. The treatment and control groups were assigned to write a story base based on a fictitious account of domestic violence. Quantitative content analysis showed that training had a slight to moderate observed effect with the most pronounced difference being that trained students used fewer statements that excused the perpetrator.
Victim Identification and Low Reporting • R. Riski, Peninsula • No abstract available.
Technology Outruns the Law: Newspapers and the E-Mail Public Records Quagmire • Ron Rodgers, Ohio University • Governmental e-mail as the fillip for violations of the public’s right to know stems from confusion about when an electronic message becomes part of the public record and when privacy – and the right of nondisclosure – adheres to an e-mail sent to or from a public official. This paper looks as where policy is heading as reflected in recent court rulings and in the discourse of commentary by legal and non-legal officials in the trade, periodical, and daily press.
Using House Ads to Promote E-newspapers: A Longitudinal Content Analysis • Shelly Rodgers, Yan Jin, Yoonhyeung Choi, Wanda Sui and Ann Brill, University of Missouri • The authors propose a framework that draws on distinctiveness theory to examine how print newspapers are cross-promoting their Web sites using in-house ads. A content analysis of 15 newspapers was undertaken in 2000 and 2003. Three distinctiveness factors were examined including persuasion, integration and targeting. Findings revealed that while newspapers are doing a fairly good job integrating house ads into the newspaper, there is still room for improvement. The authors conclude that newspaper URLs need to be more prominent, more strategically positioned, and more carefully targeted to males and females for proper marketing of the e-newspaper.
Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Courts of Appeals: Notes on a Model of News Coverage of the Judiciary • Thomas Schwartz, Ohio State University • A line of research analyzing news media coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court has found the coverage to be poor in quantity and quality. Using method and theory similar to those studies, this study finds that coverage of the U.S. courts of appeals also is weak.
A Survey of Photo Editors‘ Attitude Toward Technology • Michelle Seelig, University of Miami • A national survey of photo editors at the top 100 U.S. daily newspapers was conducted to uncover the architectural changes that influence the way photo editors do their job. This research has three goals: to assess the role of technology in the photo-editorial decision process; to assess photo editors’ attitudes toward technology; and determine photo editors’ overall satisfaction with technology. The findings presented show photo editors to have a positive attitude toward the technology.
Revisiting The Police Blotter: Public Service Stories or Assembly Line Journalism at Its Worst? • James Simon and Sean Hayes, Fairfield University • It is one of the most basic rules of journalism: get the other side of the story. Yet when it comes to reporting crime news, newspapers have long been criticized for over reliance on police blotter items which fail to include comment from the accused. This study examined all juvenile justice stories carried by the three largest newspapers in a state over a three-month period. While 81 percent of the stories used police as a source for information, only 7 percent of the stories included comment from juvenile defendants, their attorneys and their relatives.
Message Control on the Campaign Trail: The Influence of Access on Political News • Elizabeth Skewes, University of Colorado • This study looks at the struggle for message control in campaign coverage, using interviews with reporters who covered the 2000 election and participant observation. The study finds that reporters battle with the candidates and their staffs for control over the news, and they are wary of being manipulated. Campaign staffs try to control the message by limiting press access to the candidate. This leads to an undercurrent of tension between the press and the campaign.
Political Power And The Press: Vice President Charles Fairbanks. • Robert Spellman, Southern Illinois University • Charles Warren Fairbanks, vice president under President Theodore Roosevelt, dominated Indiana politics for two decades at the turn of the 20th century. Crucial to his rise to national prominence was the support of Indiana’s most influential newspapers. Unknown to the public was Fairbanks’ controlling or significant financial interests in those newspapers. His majority ownership of the Indianapolis News, the state’s leading newspaper, did not become public knowledge until after his death.
The Impact of Investment in Newsrooms on Newspaper Revenues and Profits: Small and Medium Newspapers 1998-2002 • Esther Thorson and Qun Chen, University of Missouri; and Steve Lacy, Michigan State University • This paper presents a study of five consecutive years (1998 – 2002) of Inland Daily Newspaper data to test the theory that financial investment in the newsroom will influence circulation, which, in turn, will influence revenue and profits. The regression findings show that the model is supported by the data. Using regression generated by the data for each of the five years, the authors calculated how a 4 percent increase in newsroom investment would influence revenue and profits if circulation increased 0, 2 and 4 percent as a result. The results indicate that although investment in newsroom reduces profit in the short term, in the long term it will increase revenue and profit.
Community Newspapers As Instruments of Social Control: Updating Community Conflict and the Press • Michael L. Thurwanger, Bradley University • This study updates research into the social control function exercised by local newspapers in covering community conflict. Newspapers serving Illinois communities selected as the site of corrections facilities constructed or approved for construction between 1977 and 2001 were used in this content analysis. The study provided additional evidence of community newspapers acting in the distributive information control function. A moderate correlation between various aspects of coverage and community structural pluralism was also found.
What the milkman saw: The regional press and frame adjustment in the shadow of war • Fred Vultee, University of Missouri • As President Bush sought to make his case for a war against Iraq, he and his administration consistently framed such a conflict as part of a broader war against terrorism. A content analysis of a major regional daily newspaper suggests that while this alignment was broadly accepted at the outset, press accounts became increasingly less receptive to it as the conflict drew nearer and even less as fighting began.
Objectivity and Conglomeration: A Test of Media Ownership Theory • Xinkun Wang and Renita Coleman, Louisiana State University • This study tests the theory of media ownership by comparing the publicly owned Boston Globe with the privately owned Boston Herald on bias in coverage of the 2000 presidential election. As the theory predicts, the publicly owned newspaper was more objective than the privately owned paper, showing more favoritism toward the candidate it endorsed. Corporate ownership, which has generally been criticized, may not be all bad since the corporate-owned newspaper did a better job of fair and balanced coverage.
The Now What Factor: The Level of Innovativeness Among Online Newspapers • Amy Schmitz Weiss, University of Texas at Austin • This study examines levels of innovativeness by a content analysis of 20 online newspaper homepages. Results showed that the most innovative online newspapers were using a combination of innovative practices and techniques. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun were the most innovative among the 20 online newspapers in this study.
Correct This! A Content Analysis of 2003 Errors Posted by The New York Times • Terry Wimmer, West Virginia University • Credibility research for more than 60 years has examined the corrections published in the nation’s newspapers. This project used content-analysis to examine corrections in The New York Times in 2003, the year of the Jason Blair scandal. Objective errors still dominate the newspaper’s corrections, and getting basic information correct: names, identifiers, and spelling, remains a problem. Subjective errors might be the greater threat to credibility, and this project suggests new methodologies for scholars and journalists to improve credibility with readers.
Internet Newspapers Public Forum and User Involvement • Sandy Ye, Louisiana State; and Xigen Li, Arkansas State • This study looked at public forums of the Internet newspapers and user involvement in public forums. A content analysis of 120 U.S. Internet newspapers found 39.2% of the Internet newspapers offered public forums. A majority of newspapers (70.2%) with public forums had less than 15 discussion forums. Newspaper size had a significant effect on diversity of public forums. The findings suggest that the forums of the Internet newspapers have yet to be developed as an effective tool to advance public discourse and democracy deliberation. There was a relatively low user involvement in the public forums regardless of newspaper size.
Local Newspaper Goes Easy on National Story Reporting the Tulia Drug Bust Story: A Case Study • Teresa Young, Wayland Baptist; and Roger C. Saathoff, Texas Tech University • This case study describes how a local weekly newspaper fared compared to its counterparts in larger, more pluralistic towns and cities when 39 of 46 people arrested in a regional drug sting operation in a small West Texas town are African American and the government’s lead witness is completely discredited with charges of racism? The results of this study confirm previous work criticizing small local newspapers for a failure to meet socially responsible journalistic standards.
Growing Up With Parents Who Read and Watch the News: What is the Effect on College Students? • Amy Zerba, University of Texas at Austin • In using social learning theory and the uses and gratifications approach as a theoretical framework, this study shows that parents’ regular use of newspaper and television news does influence college students’ news exposure. Results also showed students’ attachment to print and television does influence news exposure. Findings show attachment to reading print is a consequence of parents reading newspapers and a determinant of students reading newspapers. The results suggest parents’ modeling behavior of media use has an effect.
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