Suchergebnisse

How do partisans react when their candidate wins or loses a gubernatorial election? Previous work shows that when parties win presidential elections, demand for their affiliated local newspapers decreases relative to the losing party's newspapers. However, it is unclear if this negative link extends beyond presidential races into state-level elections. To test this relationship, we analyze demand for partisan and non-partisan newspapers in Virginia and New Jersey—two states that hold off-cycle gubernatorial elections with no competition from federal elections—from 1933 to 2005. We find demand for local newspapers associated with the winning party declines after gubernatorial elections compared to demand for other newspapers. The results also shed light on whether (and which) winning partisans are disengaging completely or shifting their consumption to independent newspapers. Taken together, our study suggests that state-level elections significantly influence local newspaper consumption and adds valuable local context to our understanding of the political dynamics of news demand.

ObjectivesCan presidential candidates influence their coverage in Iowa's smaller local newspapers? I extend the approach of previous research by examining the impact of campaign press releases on newspaper stories before the 2016 Iowa caucuses.MethodsI coded the topic and tone of candidate press releases, and located "hits" in Iowa newspapers between September 2015 and January 2016 for the top two Democratic and Republican candidates.ResultsPress releases were used primarily for information dissemination in Iowa, while competitive messages decreased as a share of campaign communications. Small, weekly community newspapers hardly covered the campaign.ConclusionsNewspapers in cities outside the state capital are ripe for campaign influence through the Associated Press and deserve more scrutiny, since their combined circulation rivals the largest state newspaper. Media–candidate relations are changing, but press releases remain a critical tool for campaigns to earn local coverage.

Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms—ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising—have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting that local newsrooms produce. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the investigative content of news articles based on article text and influence on subsequent articles. We use our method to examine over-time and cross-sectional patterns in news production by local newspapers in the United States over the past decade. We find surprising stability in the quantity of investigative articles produced over most of the time period examined, but a notable decline in the last 2 y of the decade, corresponding to a recent wave of newsroom layoffs.

Recent technological advances have dramatically lowered the cost of transmitting information over large distances. In the late 1990s, the New York Times implemented a national distribution strategy, expanding delivery in over 100 cities. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data on local newspaper circulation, Times penetration, and local newspapers characteristics, we find that as Times circulation grows in a market, local newspaper circulation declines among college-educated readers. Local newspapers reposition toward local and away from national coverage, raising circulation among individuals without a degree. Availability of national newspapers in local markets changes the relationship between local preferences and local products.

Responding to conflict, in Indonesia and elsewhere, requires an understanding of its distribution, forms, and impacts. In this article, we outline an attempt to use local newspaper monitoring to measure the levels and impacts of violent conflict during the period 2001–2003 in two Indonesian provinces (East Java and NTT). We also assess variation in incidence, impact, and form across and within areas. The study data suggest first that previous research has vastly underestimated the impacts of violent conflict in Indonesia. Comparing our data with those of the previous attempt to use newspapers to map conflict in Indonesia (by the UN Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery [UNSFIR]), we find three times as many deaths from collective violence. These differences are a function of the level of news sources used, with provincial papers picking up only a small proportion of deaths in our research areas. Further, we argue that the impacts of certain types of violence between individuals should be included, leading to even higher figures. Second, our data call into question the dictum that violence in Indonesia is concentrated in a small number of regions. While there is variation between districts, we record large impacts from collective violence in areas not previously considered conflict-prone. Third, substantial variations in conflict form are found across regions, and these result in different kinds of impacts. This underlines the importance of consideration of the role of local factors in driving conflicts and suggests that approaches must be tailored to local conditions. Finally, we demonstrate that using local newspapers to measure and analyze conflicts presents a useful tool for understanding conflict in Indonesia. The use of subprovincial news sources captures more accurate estimates of conflict incidence than other methods, such as provincial newspaper mapping or surveying. It can also provide a basis for a deeper understanding of variations in patterns of conflict across areas and provide insights into how we might respond.

Abstract
Any constitutional move towards a federal system in the United Kingdom would inevitably be unbalanced by England's obvious economic, cultural and numerical dominance. Some form of English regional devolution is therefore essential if we are to progress as a multinational state post Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article adopts a deliberately polemical approach to a consideration of the potential role of regional English newspapers in that context, suggesting that their established links with a coherent audience, rooted in place, might allow them to act as a vehicle for debate and nurture a sense of regional identity often absent from contemporary English politics. Regional newspapers are 'culturally specific' and have a key role to play in articulating the popular experience of post-devolution political change: this might also present this struggling sector with valuable commercial opportunities as they take advantage of the new political paradigm to further embed themselves within their communities.

Drawing on institutional anomie theory, we examine how the crisis in local newspapers has induced organizational wrongdoings in local communities. We argue that, because local newspapers are the primary source of accountability journalism in local communities, their decline leads to an anomic state that increases the scale of organizational wrongdoing. We also investigate whether institutional complementarity helps overcome the anomic state: Due to functional similarity, community social connectedness compensates for the scarcity of local newspapers. Our analysis of U.S. metropolitan areas for the period of 2007–2015 reveals that the positive relationship between local newspaper scarcity and the scale of organizational wrongdoing is not present in all communities but does appear when a community lacks community social connectedness. We also find that this moderating role of community social connectedness is observed only for internal organizational wrongdoings that are less visible to the public than external ones.

This analysis tests two distinct predictions regarding local newspapers' coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A public service view of local newspapers predicts that a robust local newspaper sector would mitigate the politicized national partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-19; reducing the disparity in social-distancing behaviors between predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic counties by increasing compliance in Republican counties. The alternative hypothesis, informed by a demand-side view of the market pressures local newspapers face, predicts that increased competition between local newspapers will increase the degree to which local newspapers amplify the rhetoric of national officials in line with the partisan composition of their community, further polarizing adherence to social-distancing behaviors across predominantly Republican versus predominantly Democratic counties. The results of this analysis offer strong support for the second hypothesis; but, an additional analysis of vaccination rates offers a more nuanced perspective than a simple public service versus demand-side dichotomy would imply.