Article(electronic)#1June 1992
Use of an Electronic Database to Evaluate Newspaper Editorial Quality
In: Journalism quarterly, Volume 69, Issue 2, p. 447-454
Electronic database searching opens new avenues for newspaper research. One strategy for evaluating quality of newspapers is to compare newspapers for spelling, grammar and style errors. An electronic database search was utilized to evaluate the editing precision of 58 news organizations and their ratings were compared to their Pulitzer Prize records. A non-linear relationship was found. Winning a small number of Pulitzers correlates positively with editing precision, but the effect diminishes rapidly with additional Pulitzer Prizes.