The impact of beat competition on city hall coverage

Journalism and Mass Communication Quaterly

Volumn 76, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 325-340

  Lacy, Stephen ^a   Coulson, David C ^a   St Cyr, Charles ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040915791     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769909907600210     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Stephen Lacy and Todd F. Simon, The Economics and Regulation of United States Newspapers (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1993), 106-107.
2. Lacy and Simon, Economics and Regulation, 106.
3. Robert E. Park, "The Natural History of the Newspaper," in Mass Communication, 2d ed., ed. Wilbur Schramm (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975): 8-23.
4. Maxwell McCombs, "Newspaper and the Civic Culture," Newspaper Research Journal 4 (summer 1983): 5-9.
5. For a listing and brief review of this research, visit the financial commitment bibliography at Robert Picard's media economics Web site, (www.tukkk.fi/mediagroup/resources/default.htm).
6. The approach was first named in Barry R. Litman and Janet Bridges, "An Economic Analysis of Daily Newspaper Performance," Newspaper Research Journal 7 (spring 1986): 9-26, and was made more formal in Stephen Lacy, "The Financial Commitment Approach to News Media Competition," The Journal of Media Economics 5 (summer 1992): 5-21.
7. The approach was first named in Barry R. Litman and Janet Bridges, "An Economic Analysis of Daily Newspaper Performance," Newspaper Research Journal 7 (spring 1986): 9-26, and was made more formal in Stephen Lacy, "The Financial Commitment Approach to News Media Competition," The Journal of Media Economics 5 (summer 1992): 5-21.
8. The separately owned and operated figures come from Editor and Publisher International Year Book 1997 (New York: Editor & Publisher, 1997). Joint operating agreements occur when two dailies in the same city combine all their business operations but maintain separate newsrooms. Seventeen cities were listed with JOAs early in 1998 in David C. Coulson and Stephen Lacy, "Newspapers and Joint Operating Agreements," in Contemporary Media Issues, ed. W. David Sloan and Emily Erickson Hoff (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 1998), 206, but the JOAs in Nashville and El Paso closed during 1998.
9. Stephen Lacy and Lucinda Davenport, "Daily Newspaper Market Structure, Concentration and Competition," The Journal of Media Economics 7 (3, 1994): 33-46.
10. Stephen Lacy and Shikha Dalmia, "Daily and Weekly Penetration in Non-Metropolitan Areas of Michigan," Newspaper Research Journal 12 (summer & fall 1993): 20-33.
11. Stephen Lacy, "The Impact of Intercity Competition on Daily Newspaper Content," Journalism Quarterly 65 (summer 1988): 399-406.
12. Stephen Lacy, Frederick Fico, and Todd F. Simon, "The Relationship Among Economic, Newsroom and Content Variables: A Path Analysis," Journal of Media Economics 2 (fall 1989): 51-66.
13. Dominic Lasorsa, "Effects of Newspaper Competition on Public Opinion Diversity," Journalism Quarterly 68 (spring/summer 1991): 38-47.
14. Jan P. Vermeer, "Multiple Newspapers and Electoral Competition: A County-Level Analysis," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 72 (spring 1995): 98-105.
15. For a discussion of the research into beat reporters and sources, see Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content, 2d. ed. (New York: Longman, 1996): 105-137.
16. Charles T. Duncan, "How the Weekly Press Covers News of Local Government," Journalism Quarterly 29 (summer 1952): 283-93.
17. David C. Coulson and Stephen Lacy, "Journalists' Perceptions of How Newspaper and Broadcast News Competition Affect Newspaper Coverage," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (summer 1996): 354-63.
18. Duncan, "How the Weekly Press Covers."
19. Coulson and Lacy, "Journalists' Perceptions."
20. David C. Coulson, "Impact of Ownership on Newspaper Quality," Journalism Quarterly 71 (summer 1994): 403-410; and Coulson and Lacy, "Journalists' Perceptions."
21. David C. Coulson, "Impact of Ownership on Newspaper Quality," Journalism Quarterly 71 (summer 1994): 403-410; and Coulson and Lacy, "Journalists' Perceptions."
22. Ardyth Broaderick Sohn, Jan LeBlanc Wicks, Stephen Lacy, and George Sylvie, Media Management: A Casebook Approach, 2d ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999), 3-5.
23. Editor & Publisher International Year Book 1997.
24. Stephen Lacy and James M. Bernstein, "Daily Newspaper Content's Relationship to Publication Cycle and Circulation Size," Newspaper Research Journal 9 (spring 1988): 49-57.
25. Stephen Lacy and David Matustik, "Dependence on Organization and Beat Sources for Story Ideas: A Case Study of Four Newspapers," Newspaper Research Journal 5 (winter 1983): 9-16.
26. Outliers were defined as cases with values greater or less than three standard deviations from the mean. In all cases, the outliers were on the positive side of this range.
27. This comparison showed patterns that are often found when Likert-type scales are used. The residuals are not normally distributed because these scales result in limited variation in case values. Because this regression analysis is not making inference and regression is fairly robust with respect to this violation, the differences from normality are not likely to affect the conclusions of this study.
28. These 75 reporters were used to answer this question because they have more direct experience with the issue being addressed. The 15 reporters who reported other dailies covering city hall on a less than daily basis were dropped here. Their responses indicated that there was an impact, but it was not as great as with daily coverage. The following are the mean responses, respectively, of reporters with daily competition and those who had less than daily competition: increases stories, daily = 4.84, less than daily = 4.20; makes it harder to find time for in-depth stories, daily = 4.8, less than daily = 4.0; makes me publish unimportant stories, daily = 3.92, less than daily = 3.47; makes me report on news I might have missed, daily = 4.15, less than daily = 3.27; makes me sensationalize, daily = 2.43, less than daily = 1.73. The number of respondents to each question varies from 75 because of missing data.
29. The data used for equations in Table 3 include all journalists who said they had another daily covering city hall, whether that coverage was daily or fewer times during the week.
30. Lacy and Bernstein, "Daily Newspaper Content's Relationship," 53.
31. George A. Gladney, "Newspaper Excellence: How Editors of Small & Large Papers Judge Quality," Newspaper Research Journal 11 (spring 1990): 58-72.
32. Data in Table 4 include all journalists who said a TV station covered their beat, whether that coverage was daily or fewer times per week.
33. Lacy, "Impact of Intercity."