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Although a perception exists that student newspapers are commonly intimidated by administrators over news content, this study indicates that the actual affect is relatively small. Advertisers have had even less success. Just 4.3% of advisers nationally have complied with administrative requests not to publish news articles, and only 12.2% believe there is a link between administrative funding and news selection. This national survey (n=233) also indicates that advisers at two-year colleges and private institutions are significantly more willing to comply with administrative news requests than are those at other institutions.

Drawing on social system and reference group theory, this study hypothesized that top editors at large newspapers would be more satisfied with their jobs than top editors at small newspapers. Editors on larger newspapers were expected to be more satisfied because increased role specialization gives them greater autonomy, their salaries are higher, and their jobs are more prestigious. A national probability sample of top editors at daily newspapers in the United States supports the hypotheses that editors at larger newspapers are more satisfied and that autonomy is a mediating factor, but income is not related to job satisfaction.

This case study of an Alabama newspaper's series on infant mortality and of subsequent changes in related state health services shows that the series helped increase public support for policy changes to reduce infant mortality and created pressure on the governor and legislators to make those changes. Factors that seem to have affected the series' influence include expert agreement on solutions, the existence of supportive private citizen groups and public officials, Alabama's political situation, the newspaper's location in the capitol city, widespread distribution of series reprints, editorial and reporting follow-ups, and publicity when the series won a Pulitzer Prize.

In this study students read and rated twenty newspapers for enjoyment, readability, and attractiveness. The newspapers' efficiency of transmitting information was also tested through knowledge recall questions. The regression analyses generally show that students preferred papers that used accompanying materials, such as pullout quotes and many, though smaller, photographs.

Cleveland, Ohio, was among many destinations for Southern black migrants during World War I. The city's two competing black newspapers, the Cleveland Gazette and the Cleveland Advocate, represented divergent philosophies concerning race matters. The Gazette advocated uncompromised racial equality and viewed the migration as a weapon against oppression. The Advocate viewed the migration as a way to increase black solidarity. Despite these divergent perspectives, both papers functioned as advocates for race progress by urging the community to help the migrants succeed in their new home.

The contribution of electronic information technologies to breaking general assignment and routine beat news stories in large metropolitan newspapers is examined through a content analysis and in-depth interviews with reporters. Reporters working on breaking news stories make heavy use of their own paper's electronic backfiles and of fax technology, but do not use other information technologies available to them. Reporters use multiple sources for their stories and claim that electronic information technologies make it easier and faster to identify sources. However, the content analysis reveals reporters rely on the same types of sources representing the same institutional and social power structures as in the classic newsmaking studies.

Editors and editorial page editors remain positive about the role of the editorial in today's newspapers. They believe editorial pages provide information, analyses, benchmarks, and public forums to assist readers in making decisions and taking action on issues. This study provides comparative data about editorial page features for similar studies conducted in 1975, 1983, and 1992. In this survey most editors reported increased reader involvement in the editorial page, especially in letters columns.

This content analysis of four prestige newspapers' coverage of the first post-cold war congressional campaigns examined hypotheses concerning the amount and substance of international and foreign affairs coverage. As expected, although the news and opinion/editorial agenda of all four newspapers consisted of extensive coverage of the major international and foreign affairs stories taking place during the fall campaign period (such as the military build-up in the Gulf and the collapse of communism), coverage of foreign policy issues in the 1990 congressional races was conspicuously absent.

This study analyzed seventy-two issues from May 1989 of thirty-five African-American newspapers. Results showed a lower percentage of advertising from local sources than was found in newspapers that participated in the Inland Press Association's 1989 study of weekly newspapers. The African-American newspapers also had little advertising support from group-owned businesses. Large-circulation African-American newspapers had less advertising linage than did medium-circulation newspapers, which resulted in a smaller newshole for the large-circulation newspapers.

In a study that analyzed more than 250,000 photographs, among the findings was that coverage of African-Americans had increased, but that the price for added visibility was an increase in stereotypical (crime, sports, and entertainment) content categories. This finding supported a previous study of magazines for a similar time period. It is concluded that journalists need to be sensitive to the needs of all members of a community and not merely those who subscribe.

Data from the 1860 U.S. Products of Industry censuses on Iowa and Wisconsin are analyzed to provide benchmarks against which to compare other data on investment, raw materials and labor costs, and the volume of products for frontier weekly newspapers. They answer questions about what it cost to start a paper, how many people were employed, what raw materials cost, how productive weeklies were as businesses, and how newspapers compared to other businesses.

This study of journalists' perceptions of local news coverage by independent and group-owned newspapers shows that journalists hold generally positive opinions about their publications' local news coverage. Journalists at independent papers more often rated their papers' commitment to quality local coverage as excellent and were more likely to strongly agree that their newspapers provided an appropriate amount of local coverage.

This multivariate analysis shows that residents in and near Richmond, Virginia, where the state capital is located, are significantly more knowledgeable about state politics than are residents living elsewhere in the state, especially in the northern Virginia – Washington, D.C. metro area. A newspaper content analysis demonstrates that Richmond-area residents are exposed to far more news of state politics and government than are residents of northern Virginia. The study suggests that the media environment is highly important in providing the opportunity for citizens to learn about politics.

In a comparison of two probability surveys, one conducted immediately after the Persian Gulf War and the other a year and half earlier, this study showed significantly higher levels of news exposure across all media channels during the war. Both exposure to newspaper and to cable and PBS news programming were positively related to levels of knowledge about the war. Exposure to CNN leveled off the potential differences in knowledge acquisition across educational levels. Exposure to network TV news might be related to gaining “image-oriented” information, while exposure to newspaper and to cable and PBS news programming were related to learning more abstract and complex information about the war.

This study compares occupational rhetoric of early-twentieth-century newspaper journalists on the involvement of journalists in politics to the actual conduct of a group of 146 Minnesota journalists who practiced their craft between 1923 and 1938. A quantitative collective biography of the personal, journalistic, and community lives of Minnesota editors and publishers suggests that a number of them either did not know about, or chose not to abide by, the admonishments of some members of their occupational group who warned that serving simultaneously as politician and journalist would call into question their ability to act in the best interests of the public.

A survey of high school students in Taiwan shows that understanding involvement can help elaborate the relationship between media use and knowledge. Measuring involvement as cognitive and behavioral with regard to the Gulf War produced results consistent with the hypothesis, which proposes that under conditions of high involvement, newspaper use will be correlated more strongly with knowledge than will television news use, and that under conditions of low involvement newspaper use will not be correlated more strongly with knowledge than will television news use. However, when survey respondents held extreme attitudes toward the Gulf War, the results were contrary to the hypothesis.

This experimental study shows that use of color is important to the reader, but that quality of color is not critical. The authors suggest this finding may suggest to newspaper editors that use of color advertising could heighten their competition with magazines.

This article explores the use of sources in national security reporting by twenty-three reporters for seven major newspapers, with particular emphasis on the distinction between “statist” and “civil” sources and on the degree of variation among reporters and papers.

Newsprint scarcity and post-World War I advertising volume caused a major revaluation of newspaper space, and the “new profession of public relations” was accused of grabbing free space. The ensuing newspaper industry campaign helped establish the foundation of continuing hard feelings between the press and public relations practitioners.

The impact of group ownership on U.S. newspapers has been the subject of controversy in American journalism. This study of professional practices at fifty-eight U.S. daily newspapers finds few differences between group-owned and independent newspapers. It does, however, find that the size of a newspaper group and number of papers in a group are associated with differences in some professional practices.

This study cautions researchers to be careful when comparing content-analysis research results of online searches to hand searches. How newspapers upload information into the data bases can influence the results. All data bases do not provide the same access to information.

The impact of newsroom policies on job satisfaction was studied in an onsite survey of 429 newsroom staffers at twelve West Coast daily newspapers. The study found that newsroom policy changes are affecting journalists' job satisfaction, primarily through the perceived impact of such changes on newspaper quality and on the balance between business and journalism in the newsroom. If the newspaper's quality was perceived as improving, job satisfaction was higher; if journalism was perceived as taking a back seat to business, job satisfaction was lower. Also important were the amount of emphasis on profits (which lowered job satisfaction) and on journalistic policies (which raised job satisfaction). Newspaper size was not found to be a major factor in job satisfaction, but ownership structure was.

This study sought to determine whether top editors at chain-owned and large newspapers would have more autonomy and freedom to improve editorial content than top editors at independent and small newspapers. The theoretical rationale is that role specialization promotes increased emphasis on news and editorials and, at the same time, removes the influence of publishers and owners from the news production process. The study found that differences between chain and independent ownership were not significant, but that top editors at larger newspapers did have more autonomy.

This paper reports on the methods, findings, and implications of a large-scale cross-cultural experiment on audience recall of brief news stories. Subjects from Spain and from the United States were exposed, one-at-a-time and under highly controlled conditions, to one of three local spot news stories presented via either newspaper, computer screen, television, or radio. Each of the 720 subjects was a student in a beginning course in media studies, in either a Spanish or an American university. The stories were the same for each group, with each carefully prepared in the two languages so as to be “matched.” Careful attention was given to making the stories as close as possible in length, topic, organization, and coverage of specific details so as to permit direct comparisons between similar subjects in the two cultural settings. Distinct patterns of results with statistically significant differences between the two cultural groups were found.

Historians have generally held that before the Civil War the popular press did little to help the woman's rights movement. But careful analysis of the New York Daily Herald, the New York Daily Tribune, and the New York Daily Times during the antebellum period indicates the movement received wide attention in New York's penny press. These papers became a conduit through which woman's rights activists communicated with the general public and helped to rescue a movement without a newspaper of its own from relative obscurity.

In starting Publick Occurrences, Benjamin Harris was influenced greatly by religious purposes. The newspaper's suppression after one issue was not, as some historians have declared, the handiwork of Massachusetts' Puritan clergy. On the contrary, the government's action was motivated in part by efforts of an energetic faction opposed to the leading clergyman, Increase Mather.

How the media covered the horse race changed during the course of the 1988 presidential primaries. A content analysis of newspaper and network coverage revealed that the press initially focused on general indicators of candidate strength, then concentrated on event-specific horse-race measures. After the New Hampshire primary, coverage began to center on the candidates' general momentum in the campaign. Also, different measures of horse-race coverage provided different perceptions of how each candidate was performing in the primaries. Finally, while the newspapers' coverage differed from the networks', there were few differences within each medium.

This study of newspaper and television coverage in the 1988 Democratic primaries before Michael Dukakis established himself as the front-runner suggests that the media covered this election differently than they did earlier ones that featured a clear leader. For instance, all those actively campaigning for the presidency in 1988 received relatively equal amounts of coverage and the nominal leader, Dukakis, enjoyed favorable coverage throughout the race.

Newspaper publishers and opinion page editors were surveyed to differentiate their political views. They were asked to respond to a 52-item questionnaire containing 30 liberal, conservative and pragmatic statements. The editorial decision-making process also was addressed. Results indicate diversity in political perceptions among publishers and opinion page editors, with the publishers being more liberal.

This article focuses on the market niche strategy used by E. W. Scripps in establishing newspapers in medium-sized cities, particularly on the West Coast. Scripps' newspapers blended vision and hard-headed business concerns in developing and sustaining daily publication.

This study of 798 potential voters interviewed beginning three days before the September 25, 1988, presidential candidate debate and ending four days later analyzed the influence of exposure to television post-debate analysis and television and newspaper reliance on evaluations of candidate debate performance, candidate image, and voting preferences. Exposure to the debate and to post-debate television analysis had measurable and consistent influences on the evaluation of Dukakis as a debater (Dukakis was the consensus post-debate analysis winner), on Dukakis's image, and on the probability of voting for both candidates. Television news reliance for debate information was significantly related to debater ratings and the candidates' images for both candidates. There was a slight relationship between television news reliance and the probability of voting for Dukakis.

A content analysis of six large U.S. newspapers during the late 1980s shows that their coverage of literacy varied widely, with most coverage getting inside rather than front-page placement. Almost all of the literacy coverage was staff generated.

This exploratory study applied a widely used psychological test to measure job burnout among a sample of reporters and copy editors at five daily newspapers of dissimilar size. Results indicate that the employee most likely to suffer from burnout is a young, entry-level journalist working as a copy editor at a small dairy newspaper. However, other variables were also found to significantly relate to job burnout. These include age, job title, total years of experience, income and job satisfaction.

An analysis of several public newspaper companies reveals the degree of inside control is associated with financial performance in ways that support a journalistic theoretical explanation rather than an economic one. Public companies emphasized profits more than did private companies, contrary to an economic argument that expects lower profits from a company whose stockholder-owners are separate from management.

This study used a content analysis of four Haitian newspapers to determine how they define their roles in American communities and in Haiti. The results of the study suggest that the newspapers are not ethnic presses encouraging assimilation but are alternative presses with political agendas.

This article explores how one of the principal mechanisms of media accountability — press ombudsmen — affects journalists. The article uses data from a national survey of journalists to examine the extent to which journalists who work at newspapers with ombudsmen hold different attitudes about appropriate behavior and about their newspaper's performance than do journalists who work at newspapers without ombudsmen. The study shows that the presence of newspaper ombudsmen does not affect journalists' views of controversial newsgathering techniques. Age turns out to be the best predictor of attitudes, with younger journalists more likely to see controversial news-gathering techniques as justified.

Televised presidential news conferences marked an advancement in media history; for the first time, tools of electronic journalism were used in covering them. Yet as early as 1955, when the first TV news conference was held under Dwight Eisenhower, it was also known that these events could benefit a president at least as much as the journalistic community. In opening news conferences to cameras and microphones, Eisenhower sought a means of channeling information directly to millions of home viewers in a way that could not be mediated by skeptical reporters, particularly those who wrote for newspapers and magazines. Despite complaints by print reporters, Eisenhower took steps to make TV news conferences a fixture, his press secretary conceiving them as a “very potent way of getting the president's personality and viewpoints” across to the American public.

In June 1985, Shiite Moslem gunmen commandeered a TWA jetliner from Athens, Greece. The group held more than 150 people hostage and demanded the release of 700 Shiite Moslems jailed or detained by Israel. A passenger, U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, was beaten and killed, his body pushed from the plane onto the runway. After 17 days of negotiations, with agreements reached for the release by Israel of hundreds of detainees, the hostages were released. Focusing on language in the New York Times, elite and essential for studies of international news images, a dramatistic analysis explores the newspaper's portrayal of the victim. The study suggests that the news reports of Robert Dean Stethem's killing may serve as a mythic drama of sacrifice. That is, in gripping portrayals of the victim's sacrifice to terrorism, the language of the news reports offers readers the opportunity to participate in a great drama of hope and despair, purpose and pain.

This content analysis of three newspapers looks at the extent to which two context elements, routine and conflict, affect the mix of sources. The hypothesized effect (that nonroutine and conflict-based news would contain a greater diversity of sources) was found only for proximate news stories. Although journalists can develop a diverse pool of sources in their own communities, only the most visible sources are easily reachable in other locations.

This study reports results of a large-scale experiment in which subjects were exposed to news stories presented by one of four media. The goal was to provide both baseline data and a reasonably definitive answer as to the relative level of recall resulting from presentations by newspapers, computer screen, television and radio while controlling for other factors. Facts from news stories presented by newspaper or computer screen were recalled at a significantly higher level than were facts from the same stories when presented via radio or television. Somewhat surprisingly, results from computer screens were closer to newspapers than to television.

This study, a statewide follow-up to the original 1968 Chapel Hill, N.C., agenda-setting study published in 1972 in Public Opinion Quarterly, used poll and content analysis data to compare media use and agenda agreement for different types of reference groups: men vs. women, non-whites vs. whites, young vs. old, higher- vs. lower-formally educated and rich vs. poor. When individuals increase their newspaper reading, then agreement on important public issues within the gender, racial and age groups to which they belong increases to a point of near consensus. Those of higher vs. lower education also come close to sharing issues, although the sharing is less dramatic between rich and poor. Increased television news viewing also results in higher reference group consensus on key public issues. The study concludes: one major function of mass media is to enhance group consensus within the larger social system by providing issue agenda options more attractive than just those historically learned and expressed as an aspect of one's gender, race, age, level of education, or — to a lesser extent — level of wealth. Media public issue agendas compete with unique historical agendas of readers/viewers and often win, to the benefit of the social system if the system can agree on workable solutions to the important problems.

A survey of journalists at four daily newspapers found that nearly nine of 10 journalists use a database every week, most often to obtain background information or to check facts. Most journalists surveyed said they believe it was important to cite information taken from a database although many also believed that citation is unnecessary or impractical when the cited information is very factual or already widely used. Younger journalists seem to make more use of databases and about half of those surveyed felt that use of database information resulted in better stories.

Charting the use made of 197 news releases mailed from a Mississippi university to 121 daily and weekly state newspapers tested this question: which results in more use, the proximity of the public relations release source or localization of the facts in the story. The influence of proximity proved to be very slight but localization of stories resulted in relatively higher use. This study compared costs and concludes that localization of public relations news releases may be worth — in the age of word processing computers — the small extra expense.

This study examined the possible influence on newspaper coverage of tobacco-related issues by the importance of tobacco in the sample newspapers' economy, the public relations activities of the Tobacco Institute and the importance that journalists place on providing an objective balance of points of views in stories. Modest differences in “support” of tobacco were found in headline slant and in use of tobacco industry sources in major smoking-related stories when newspapers of different regions were compared. Stories show how the tobacco industry attempts to take advantage of reporters' desire to balance stories, but with only limited regional differences.

Conversational analysis of language used (and recorded) during 64 different news conferences reveals patterns that editors use in arguing over what stories should appear on the front page. Editors' routinely signal front page newsworthiness by elaborating/defending their choices and work hard to defend the newsworthiness of their choices. Traditional news values are part of the strategy that editors use, but editors also find ways to obscure the role their own ideology may play in their own news selections. One strong trend is that stories are more likely to be chosen for the front page — with little argument — if they are part of a recent ongoing story. News themes, in other words, like individuals, have history.

A content analysis of the New York Times and Washington Post for the years 1983 to 1987 shows that these newspapers demonstrated a pattern of legitimating U.S. government policy in the United States-Nicaraguan conflict. About half of all sources named in both newspapers were government officials with a stake in the official view. “Contra” officials representing Nicaragua's anti-government forces supported by the United States were seldom cited. But there was some critical coverage; however, criticism centered primarily on the means of achieving stated U.S. policy goals rather than on the appropriateness of the policy itself.

Development reporting in 14 rural Georgia weekly newspapers is examined, and the extent and manner of development news in these newspapers are compared with results from previously published studies of development news in other countries. The data indicate that the rural Georgia newspapers tend to devote less space to development news, to emphasize physical facilities development more and to quote or portray government sources less. These results are interpreted as indicating a need for more attention to development communication in local media in rural areas of the United States.

A national survey of newspaper editors examined how editors view the importance of different criteria in selecting foreign news to run. Results show that editors considered these factors important in making choices: threat to the United States and world peace, anticipated reader interest, timeliness, and U.S. involvement. Editors also regarded loss of lives and property as important but less so than other factors. Most editors appear to focus more on factors having significant impact or consequences, especially when American security and national interest are involved. Canonical correlational analysis indicates that editors' perceptions of foreign news factors are determined by individual differences and organizational constraints in the newsroom.

This study uses newspapers and magazines to find some support for Alex Edelstein's theory of the problematic approach to media content. Although 55% of the 1988 U.S. election issues were defined as problematic — especially in terms of individual or social losses of value — about half the stories were not presented in any problem context. Three-fourths of the stories from the French sample presented stories in a problem context. About one-fourth of the stories from both U.S. and French samples emphasized the horse race aspect of elections.

Journalists from 12 daily newspapers, surveyed on-site, confirmed what newspaper industry analysts have noted: Newspapers are becoming more reader-oriented and market driven. This is particularly true of group newspapers which, on nearly every level of measurement, showed a stronger market-oriented management. But there are some indications that greater devotion to business principles does not always come at the expense of good journalism and that business-oriented policies are not always viewed as disruptive to sound newsroom policy.