Newspaper 2002 Abstracts
Newspaper Division
Watching The Watchdogs: An Ethnomethodological Study of News Decision Making at a Small Midwestern Newspaper • Dharma Adhikari, Tracy Everbach and Shahira Fahmy, Missouri at Columbia • This ethnomethodolgical study of news decision-making at a small Midwestern city newspaper involved six-week long persistent behavioral observation of news budget sessions, the core of the gatekeeping process’ news routines level. Through the qualitative paradigm of descriptive and interpretive epistemology, we identified four typologies of determinants – time-space dimension, content-based considerations, nature of news, intersubjectivity, and external pressure – as crucial in the sociology of news decided for the front page of the newspaper.
The Influence of Reporter Gender on Source Selection in Newspaper Stories • Cory L. Armstrong • Wisconsin-Madison • This study reviewed the level of attention and emphasis given to sources and subjects in overall news coverage and examined whether the gender of the reporter has an impact on male and female representations. A content analysis of 889 stories found disparities between male and female sources in news coverage, with males receiving a significantly higher public status than females. After looking at both structural and editorial influences, the reporter’s gender was found to contribute significantly in the portrayal of males and female sources and subjects in newspapers.
The Credibility Connection: Discovery of a Connection Between Credibility and the Third-Person Effect with Newspaper Stimuli • Stephen A. Banning, Louisiana State University • Studies by the American Society of Newspaper Editors have suggested the media is facing a credibility crisis. In this experiment with newspaper stimuli, credibility showed a strong relationship with the third-person effect in regard to political messages. The lower the credibility scores were, the higher the corresponding third-person effect scores were. There are implications for future elections in regard to potential censorship because higher third-person effect scores have been linked to higher tendencies to censor.
The Impact of Public Ownership, Profits and Competition on Number of Newsroom Employees and Starting Salaries in Mid-Sized Daily Newspapers • Alan Blanchard and Stephen Lacy, Michigan State University • This study of 77 dailies between 25,000 and 100,000 circulation found publicly held daily newspapers produced higher profit margins than did privately held dailies. Public ownership and higher profits were associated with smaller newsroom staffs. Public ownership was positively related with starting salaries. Also the presence of competition was positively correlated with newsroom size and starting salary. The impact of profitability on newsroom size was progressively greater for newspapers with higher than average profit margins.
The Romance and Reality of Copy Editing: A Newsroom Case Study • Glen L. Bleske, California State University • Editing textbooks talk about copy editing in an idealized newsroom, where editors upgrade poor work, improve writing, check facts and plug story holes. The books tell students about the romance, but they are light on the reality of burnout, deadline pressures, and the overburden on copy editors. This case study spends two nights with copy editors who push copy through their computers. They are more like technicians than wordsmiths, and the textbooks don’t talk about their disappointments.
The Influence of Level of Deviance and Protest Type on Coverage of Social Protest in Wisconsin From 1960 to 1999 • Michael Boyle, Elliott Hillback, Narayan Devanathan, Mike McCluskey, Sue Stem, Mark Shevy and Douglas McLeod, Wisconsin • This research examined the relationship between the nature of newspaper coverage of social protests and the level of deviance and type of protest. A content analysis of 291 protest news stories from the Milwaukee Journal, Wisconsin State Journal, Sauk Prairie Star, Watertown Times, and Park Falls Herald from 1960 to 1999 was conducted to compare indicators of the protest paradigm between protests that either support the status quo, seek moderate reform, or seek radical reform.
Exploring the Turnover Issue: Why Newspaper Reporters Intend to Quit Their Jobs Submitted • Lijing Arthur Chang, Nanyang Technological University • This study explores factors behind newspaper reporters’ turnover intentions and the link between their intent to leave their newspapers and their intent to leave journalism. A total of 361 Texas newspaper reporters were surveyed. Findings showed that overall job satisfaction, pay, staff size, age, gender, and marital status affect newspaper reporters’ turnover intentions. The reporters’ intent to leave their newspapers is also found to be a significant predictor of their intent to leave journalism.
Effects of Lead Frames on the Selective Reading of Associated News Reports • Lei Chen and Dolf Zillmann, Alabama • With headlines and texts held constant, the subheads of articles embedded in a newspaper were manipulated to convey factual information only, or such information embellished with conflict, misfortune, agony, or economic implications. The projection of human conflict and agonizing was found to foster greater selective exposure, measured in reading time, to the associated articles.
The “Community Integration Hypothesis” and Other Predictors of Campus Newspaper Readership • Steve J. Collins, Texas at Arlington • A student survey at a public university in the Southwest examined the variables that predict campus newspaper readership. Although satisfaction with the student paper was quite high, the majority of students reported reading no more than one in every four issues. Consistent with the Community Integration Hypothesis, time spent on campus, participation in campus activities, student group membership, living on campus, and having friends on campus all predicted high levels of exposure to the student paper. Readership was negatively correlated with year in school.
Newspaper Editors’ and Educators’ Attitudes About Public Trust, Media Responsibility and Public Journalism • Tom Dickson and Elizabeth Topping, Southwest Missouri State University • The authors surveyed educators who belonged to the Newspaper Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and editors of daily newspapers to find out whether they had a similar level of concern about public mistrust of the media and government as well as similar attitudes about the need to improve media responsibility and the importance of public journalism as a means to increase media credibility.
Hyperlinking as Gatekeeping: Online Newspaper Coverage of the Execution of an American Terrorist • Daniela V. Dimitrova, Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Amanda Reid, Andrew Paul Williams, and Lynda Lee Kaid, Florida • The execution of Timothy McVeigh marked the closing act of, what was then, the most horrific act of terrorism on American soil. This study focuses on the online coverage of McVeigh’s execution on the Web sites of the top fifteen print newspapers cited by Columbia Journalism Review as the “Best American Newspapers.” Using content analysis, the study compares the fifteen newspapersÕ Web sites by measuring the number of stories on this subject, the sources of the stories, and the number, destination and characteristics of hyperlinks that accompany these stories.
Negotiating the Gray Lines: An Ethnographic Case Study of Organizational Conflict Between Advertorials and News • Alyssa Eckman and Thomas R. Lindlof, Kentucky • This paper reports an ethnographic case study of how one newspaper organization undertook the redesign of its advertorial products. Examining the design and production of advertorials enables us to see and understand the moments when the values of the interpretive communities of advertorialists (advertising) and journalists are invoked. This case study examines the potential for internal conflict within a news organization as distinctly oppositional interests – advertising and news – seek to control a newspaperÕs symbolic goods.
The Cartography of Access: Charting Intersections Between State Political Culture and Open Records Law • Emily Erickson, Louisiana State University • This paper examines 12 state open-records laws to investigate the potential intersections between freedom of information and Daniel Elazar’s typology of state political cultures. Using statutory analysis and phone interviews with journalists and attorneys from the 12 states, the study supports the likelihood that political culture affects the character of open-records access, but appears to intersect with other components: geography, the era in which the law was enacted, and the competing value of privacy.
New(s) Players and New(s) Values?: A Test of Convergence in the Newsroom • Frank E. Fee Jr., North Carolina at Chapel Hill • A newsroom surveyed at two different periods provides a time study of changes in journalistic belief systems and the influence of convergence of work groups. Statistical analysis supports findings that the local work culture is strong and quick to socialize new members. The findings suggest that friction between work groups in newly converged newsrooms may result more from turf battles and power issues than fundamental beliefs about journalismÕs role and function in todayÕs society.
Whose Values Are News Values? What Journalists and Citizens Want • Frank E. Fee Jr., North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Within the context of declining newspaper circulation and journalist credibility, this study examines the nature of purported disconnect between readers and journalists. Direct comparison of these groups shows significant differences in the belief systems held by the journalists and non-journalists about the role of journalism. Findings also challenge at least some of the claims of the public journalism movement about reader wants and needs, and suggest that some practices to help readers may be unwelcome.
Partisans and Nonpartisans in News Coverage of Local Conflict • Fredrick Fico and Olivia Balog, Michigan State University • Some 255 local stories covering 51 issues in a state’s largest daily newspapers were examined to illuminate dominance by partisan and nonpartisan sources. Partisans dominated the space and attention in conflict stories. Few stories gave partisan opponents balanced treatment. Reporters who had a higher priority for conflict stories were more likely than others to produce balanced stories. Stories displayed more prominently were also more likely to be balanced.
The Use of Electronic Mail as aNewsgathering Resource • Bruce Garrison, Miami • This paper discusses reporters’ and editors’ uses of electronic mail in U.S. daily newspaper newsrooms. The study was based on a national mail survey of reporters and editors at randomly selected daily newspapers in fall 2001. Respondents described the levels and types of use of electronic mail on the job and their concerns about electronic mail. The study found a growing role for electronic mail, but concerns about how and under what circumstances it may be used successfully in gathering information for news stories.
Gatekeeping on the New York Times’ Op-Ed Pages: How Diverse Is the Content? • Guy Golan, Florida and Wayne Wanta, Missouri • A content analysis compared staffwritten stories on the New York Times’ op-ed pages to those written by guest columnists. Results show that guest columnist topics and focuses were vastly different from staffwriters, supporting a “diversity hypothesis.” Staffwriters, however, were more opinionated. Results also show that few voices outside U.S. politicians and experts were heard after the September 11 terrorist attacks, though topics and focuses changed very little, showing mixed support for a “convergence hypothesis.”
Reporters, Robes, and Representative Government • William Dale Harrison, Auburn University • This study investigates how differences in institutional goals at the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress lead to differences in source usage in newspaper articles. Matched pairs of articles by reporters at the same news organizations and surveys of these reporters provide data. The study indicates significant differences in source usage, which support a theoretical approach that reporting practices and news content are affected by an institution’s goal to maintain its legitimacy rather than journalistic norms.
Framing a Mysterious Evil: U.S. Newspapers’ Coverage of North Korean Leader Kim Jong II, 1994-2000 • Kwangjun Heo, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper analyzed two major U.S. newspapers’ coverage of North Korean leader Kim Jong II from 1994 through 2000. Based on a content analysis of news reports, the study found that the newspapers conveyed negative images of Kim. However, there were significant changes in portraying Kim between 1994 and 2000. These results suggested that government sources have strong impacts on news media framing when the press has limited access channel to the issue.
News From Afghanistan: How Five U.S. Newspapers Covered The Taliban Before Sept. 11, 2001 • Beverly Horvit, Texas at Arlington • News stories about the Taliban in the five years before Sept. 11, 2001, were examined in The Boston Globe, Columbus Dispatch, Plain Dealer, Tampa Tribune and Washington Post. Of 278 news stories, 181 were in The Post. Excluding The Post, the four other newspapers ran an average of 4.5 stories on the Taliban each year. This study confirms The Post’s elite status but also confirms fears that international news coverage in U.S. newspapers is inadequate.
“Portraits of Grief,” Reflectors of Values: The New York Times Remembers Victims of September 11 • Janice Humes, Georgia • The systematic examination of obituaries can provide a useful tool to explore the values of Americans of any era. And such an examination can help in understanding an important aspect of American culture, the public memory of its citizens. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, The New York Times began publishing a remarkable series of “Portraits of Grief,” small sketches recalling the lives of individuals lost in the terrorist attacks.
A Different Nuclear Threat. A Comparative Study of the Press Coverage of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident and the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident in Two Soviet and Two American Elite Newspapers • Elza Ibroscheva, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This study examined the news coverage of the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl nuclear accidents and the role of political ideology in deciding the content of news in two elite U.S. newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and two elite Soviet newspapers, Pravda and Izvestiya. The study concludes that both the U.S. and the Soviet news media were heavily influenced by the Cold War climate and the dominant ideology of each society.
Practicing Diversity: An Exploratory Study of Implementing Diversity in the Newsroom • Anne Johnston, North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Dolores Flamiano, James Madison University • In interviews at four newspapers, the authors found that the critical issues facing the journalists at these newspapers included overcoming the negative images of the newspapers in the community, reconnecting with ignored communities, and using minority gatekeepers to provide an additional perspective on stories. It was found that the newspapers were generally still operating under diversity paradigms that measured success in diversity in terms of numbers and targeting to minority communities.
Longitudinal Effects of Ability Groups on News Writing • Stacey Frank Kanihan, Mark Neuzil, and Kristie Bunton, University of St. Thomas • Ability grouping and news writing are analyzed over four years to assess whether grouped instruction produces lasting improvements in writing. Students (N=135) were placed into remedial and regular groups. Writing content (lead, organization, accuracy) and mechanics (grammar, AP style) were measured several times during the introductory writing course and two years later. Regular students improve and maintain writing skills over time; remedial students improve during the writing course but lose significant ground in the years to follow.
On the Straight and Narrative: The Effect of Writing Style on Readers’ Perceptions of News Story Quality • Jean Kelly, Jan Knight, Jason Nedley, Lee Peck and Guy Reel, Ohio University • Some communication professionals suggest that the inverted pyramid is ineffective and call for a narrative approach to news. The results of this experiment show that straight news and narrative stories often did not differ in their ability to engage readers, and in some cases the narrative may have actually been more effective. Secondary analyses revealed that story subject matter did not influence readers’ assessments of story traits and that story style did not influence salience.
No Exceptions to the Rule: The Ubiquity of Journalism Norms Throughout 29 Years of Environmental Movement Coverage • Linda Jean Kensicki, Minnesota • Research has suggested that the present media merger frenzy will result in one-dimensional content due to a reduced number of media outlets and pervasive cross-ownership. This research examined 1,180 articles about environmental pollution over 29 years from four very different newspapers. It was found that content was overwhelmingly skewed to be more relevant to those in upper socioeconomic classes regardless of socioeconomic readership, geographic location, specific issue or time. Heavily weighted coverage that could not have been found through random chance alone was attributed to pervasive journalistic norms.
News Coverage of the U.S. Attack on Afghanistan: A Comparison of The New York Times and Arab News • Changho Lee, Texas-Austin • This paper compares how The New York Times and Arab News covered the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, which was a response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S. The study consists of a content analysis based on VBPro, which is complemented by textual analysis. On the whole, the results showed The New York Times displaying a more pro-war position and Arab News, a more anti-war one. Articles in the former focused on military operations and war-supporting nations.
The Non-Linear Web Story: An Assessment of Reader Perceptions, Knowledge Acquisition and Reader Feedback • Wilson Lowrey, Mississippi State University • The study tests assumptions that non-linear Web news stories benefit readers. The study also explores impact on non-linearity of narrative structure on reader feedback. Findings suggest readers of non-linear stories perceived they had more control over the reading process than did readers of linear stories, but there were no significant difference in perceived credibility, perceived involvement by the readers, or in knowledge acquisition. Readers of linear stories were significantly more likely to focus on story content in their feedback about the story.
Newspapers, Community Engagement And Friendship Networks: Linking Local News Consumption To Community Engagement • Michael McCluskey and Hernando Rojas, Wisconsin-Madison • Newspaper usage has been shown to be a better predictor than television viewing of civic activities and friendship networks. This analysis hypothesizes that type of newspaper makes a difference, that local-newspaper readership better predicts civic activism and national-newspaper readership better predicts friendship networks. Survey results (ANOVA) supported the hypotheses. After controlling for demographics, relationships between newspaper typology and friendship networks remained significant, but newspaper typology and community activity relationship, although in the expected direction, lost significance.
Election Night Coverage in Canada: Newspaper Web Sites Hindered by the Canada Election Act • Mary McGuire and Janice Neil, Carleton University • While newspaper web sites had the technical ability to provide real-time results on election night in Canada in November 2000, they were not able to compete in providing the fastest and most reliable outcomes. While many media Internet sites were hindered by technological limitations, the legal prohibition on the publication of results to regions of the country in which the polls were still open was more consequential and impeded the ability of news sites to provide breaking news.
How Many News People Does a Newspaper Need? • Philip Meyer and Minheong Kim, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Newspaper editors and newspaper investors see the news-editorial staff in different ways. To an editor, the staff creates the influence that makes the newspaper a viable commercial product. To an investor, the staff is mostly cost that shrinks the bottom line. We looked at more than 400 newspapers and found that those with above-average staff size (adjusted for circulation size) in 1995 were more successful at retaining circulation in the next five years. The explained variance was small but significant.
They Are Not Us: Framing of American Indians by the Boston Globe • Autumn Miller and Susan Dente Ross, Washington State University • Analysis of news, feature, and editorial content in the Boston Globe found historical negative frames of Native Americans continue. Stereotypical good and bad Indian images are less frequent than in turn-of-the century media but emerge more subtly through frames of degraded and historic relic Indians. The virtual absence of American Indian voices and unattributed negative content marginalize American Indians. Differences among the frames across story types support theories that structure and organization influence content frames.
Use of Minority Sources in News • A.N. Mohamed, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania • In the 1980s, Gannett editors and reporters were instructed to seek the opinions of African American and other minority news sources in connection with every news subject, not just “ghettoized” race issues. To determine the effectiveness of this practice, 15 newspapers (five each from Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Scripps-Howard) were content analyzed. The findings confirm EntmanÕs hypothesis that minority sources speak about a narrow range of (race-related) issues and are more likely to speak in angry, complaining tones.
National Security v. Civil Liberties: What is the Newspapers’ Position? A Content Analysis of Editorials • Nikhil Moro, Ohio State University • This study analyzes 96 American newspaper editorials about the USA Patriot Act of 2001 to gauge the newspapers’ position in the national security versus civil liberties debate. Historical and legal theory, about press freedom and the press’ attitude toward the First Amendment, is used as a background for the analysis. The hypothesis that a majority of editorials would support national security over civil liberties during a conflict between the two is not supported, nor is the theoretical proposition that newspapers do not stand up unselfishly for First Amendment principles.
Above the Fold: The Implications of Micro-Preservation to the Analysis of Content Importance in Newspapers • John E. Newhagen, Maryland • Nicholson Baker’s (2001) book detailing the micro-preservation of newspapers, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, set off a firestorm of criticism among library preservationists. Microform and Imaging Review went so far as to devote an entire issue to a scathing review of the book (Cybulski, 2001). The foundation for the uproar is the allegation that libraries have been systematically eliminating original copies of newspapers since the 1950s and replacing them with micro-preservation media such as microfilm to save space.
Source Diversity and Newspaper Size: The Use of Sources in Local News • Kristy H. Nichols, Louisiana at Lafayette • The purpose of this study was to examine the types of sources used in staff-written, front-page stories of local newspapers and to examine whether circulation size is related to the sources these newspapers use. This study’s results indicated that smaller local newspapers used fewer government sources and more non-government sources than larger local newspapers; and local newspapers rely less on government officials as sources than national newspapers studied in previous research (Brown, et al., 1987).
Prepared for Crisis? Breaking Coverage of September 11th on Newspaper Web Sites • Quint Randle, Brigham Young University, Lucida Davenport and Howard Bossen, Michigan State University • This study comprised a content analysis of newspaper Web site home pages captured live on the late morning and late afternoon of September 11th, 2001. While it focused on immediacy, it also examined editorial and visual elements, localizing and multimedia. Major findings were that 65 percent of the Web sites in the morning and 38 percent in the afternoon said nothing about the WTC attacks. Newspapers missed an opportunity to reassert their role as primary sources of unfolding information.
A Case Study of the Photographic Principle • Michelle I. Seekug, Miami • This case study examines the thought -processes of news professionals as they pertain to the importance and function of news photos at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the impact of technology on those decisions. This paper forwards the photographic principle a concept used to frame the process by which news professionals at The Philadelphia Inquirer exemplify responsible photojournalism especially given the latest technology and its potential use or misuse to social construct news photos.
Translating the Tower of Babel: Issues of Language and Culture in Converged Newsrooms A Pilot Study • Bill Silcock and Susan Keith, Arizona State University • This paper focuses on issues of newswork language, routines, and culture conflicts that can occur in the convergence process. This paper reports on a pilot study that sought to identify areas where news operations and journalism schools that adopt convergence in the future may encounter language- and culture-based challenges. Tapping into the experiences of professionals and professors working with convergence the goal of this study was to see whether bringing together people with backgrounds in print and broadcast has created a virtual Tower of Babel.
Politics by the Numbers: The Role of Money and Public Opinion in Presidential Campaign Coverage • Elizabeth A. Skewes, Colorado at Boulder • This paper uses content analysis to examine the impact of a presidential candidateÕs poll ratings and fundraising on news coverage in 1999 – before the start of the 2000 primaries. It finds that polls and fundraising influenced news coverage – the amount and the prominence – early in 1999. But by the end of the pre-primary year, the factor that most influenced a candidate’s coverage was the amount of coverage he or she had received earlier in 1999.
Women Sportswriters: An Even Playing Field? • Karen Sloan, Miami • Sports reporting has been considered by many as the last bastion of male dominance in the newsroom. A national survey of women sportswriters questioned the veracity of this assumption. Findings indicated that women sportswriters face additional challenges on the job, but are generally able to overcome these obstacles. The perception of sports journalism as a male-dominated industry in which women rarely succeed is no longer valid.
Sourcing Patterns of National and Local Newspapers: A Community Structure Perspective • Yonghoi Song, Missouri-Columbia • This study compared the sourcing patterns of national and local newspapers in order to see the degree of official and elite source dominance in political news as well as nonpolitical news. The findings show that local newspapers rely more heavily on official and elite sources than national newspapers do. The trend is more obvious in the coverage of nonpolitical news. The results of this study suggest that the newspaper sourcing patterns reflect the structure of the community they serve.
The New York Times’ John Walker Lindh Story: A Constructionist Framing Analysis • Juyan Zhang and Betty Houchin Winfield, Missouri • Through a constructionist framing analysis of The New York Times’ coverage of the John Walker Lindh story, the intrinsic cognitive dissonance in the story was found to change through frames. WalkerÕs identity was transformed from being a Taliban fighter to “a Californian.” His psychiatric was attributed as a cause his behavior, but his family’s attempts to make a psychiatric legal case was defined as “a public relations strategy.”
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