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The article focuses on journalistic career of daily newspaper "The Independent" that ceased to be produced in print in March 2016 and mentions rise of the newspaper in 1987 by joint contribution of expert editors, photographers and correspondents.

Copyright of Zer: Journal of Communication Studies / Revista de Estudios de Comunicacion / Komunikazio Ikasketen Aldizkaria is the property of Universidad del Pais Vasco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses whether the announcement by the Hindustan Times (HT) in January 2017 to shutdown its four regional editions was the result of demonetization or digital challenge. Topics discussed include termination of media staff post closure of the publication's Business Bureau, rising competition in the business of news, and increasing shift of the rural consumers to digital technology.

This study, utilizing 19 in-depth interviews, offers a systematic qualitative investigation of the perceived impact of a newspaper's closure on community members' everyday lives and their sense of community. Results demonstrate a negative impact on community members' sense of community, with participants missing celebrated gatherings and noting increased isolation and diminished pride in their community. Findings also show the impact on residents' daily lives, with one participant declaring 'life is harder' without the newspaper. Overall, these findings present a picture of life in Caroline County, Virginia, following the Caroline Progress' closure after 99 years of service to the county. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed about local policies and elections. We test our theory using an original data set that matches 11 local newspapers in California to the municipalities they cover. The data show that cities served by newspapers with relatively sharp declines in newsroom staffing had, on average, significantly reduced political competition in mayoral races. We also find suggestive evidence that lower staffing levels are associated with lower voter turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes to the media environment have increased polarized voting in America through both addition and subtraction. We argue that the decline of local newspapers has contributed to the nationalization of American politics: as local newspapers close, Americans rely more heavily on available national news or partisan heuristics to make political decisions. We assess the impact of newspaper closures on polarized voting, using genetic matching to compare counties that are statistically similar but for the loss of a local newspaper. We identify a small but significant causal decrease in split-ticket voting in presidential and senatorial elections in these matched communities: in areas where a newspaper closed, split-ticket voting decreased by 1.9%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that newspaper publisher Post Newspapers has been closed by the Zambia government due to allegations that the publisher has failed to pay taxes worth Kwacha 53 million.

With the advent of the Internet, many U.S. metropolitan areas have seen newspaper closures due to declining revenues. This provides the researcher with an opportunity to analyze the microeconomic sources of media bias. This article uses a large panel dataset of newspaper archives for 99 newspapers over 240 months (1990–2009). The author found that, after controlling for the unemployment rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the political preferences of surrounding metropolitan area, conservative newspapers report 17.4% more unemployment news when the President is a Democrat rather than a Republican, before the closure of a rival newspaper in the same media market. This effect is 12.8% for liberal newspapers. After the closure, these numbers are 3.5% and 1.1%, respectively. This moderation of media bias after closure of a rival newspaper is robust to the inclusion of newspaper size, newspaper fixed-effects or metropolitan area fixed-effects as controls. The author also found that newspapers in smaller metropolitan areas have a larger moderation in their bias. Findings provide support for theories in which media bias is demand-driven, as surviving newspapers aim to increase their sales by gaining the former readers of a closed newspaper in the same media market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the images, metaphors and narratives in the media coverage of doping in the United States. It presents a case study with a focus on Marion Jones, the most celebrated track athlete of the turn of the millennium, and her husband, C.J. Hunter, a shot put world champion convicted of doping. The material consists of sport reports about the 2000 Olympic Games in three American newspapers. These Games proved controversial due to the allegations and inquiries of the media (both national and international) regarding doping issues and the prominence of the American athletes under suspicion. At the same time, the 2000 Olympics can be considered a watershed in American anti-doping policy. The media portrayed Jones and Hunter as the Beauty and the Beast or Svengali and his victim, using a famous fairy tale and a well-known novel to capture attention, label the protagonists and convey their interpretation of the story as well as their anti-doping messages. Their narratives focused on a relationship that also addressed questions about power as well as about gender and race. Beast was a synonym for Hunter, but it could also be used as a metaphor for doping that was framed exclusively in a moral discourse and regarded as a disgrace, a scandal and a contagious individual failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the United States Census Bureau, this article assesses the year-over-year change in the civic engagement of citizens in America's largest metropolitan areas. Of special interest are Denver and Seattle, where the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed during the intervening year. The data from the CPS indicate that civic engagement in Seattle and Denver dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009—a decline that is not consistently replicated over the same time period in other major American cities that did not lose a newspaper. The analysis suggests that this decline may plausibly be attributed to the newspaper closures in Seattle and Denver. This short-term negative effect is concerning, and whether it lasts warrants future attention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]