Explores how Indiana state legislators use statehouse reporters for information and publicity purposes, identifies characteristics of lawmakers associated with particular motivations for using reporters, and relates these characteristics to how reporters are perceived to influence the policy making process. (FL)

Examines the usefulness of constructs tapping "external" and "internal" influences on statehouse reporters in Michigan and Indiana. (FL)

A study examined how statehouse reporters covering the 1982 session of the Indiana General Assembly used information sources. Specifically, it focused on reporter reliance on key senate leaders, on the visibility of those senators in published stories, and on the institutional images transmitted in stories in which those and other senators were…

Data gathered in a study of news coverage of the parttime Indiana and fulltime Michigan state legislatures were used to determine if source use in stories, portrayals of lawmakers and of the legislature as a whole, and topic coverage varied with the length of the legislative session. A content analysis was conducted of the 111 stories written by…

Reporters' perceived concern for their editors' news priorities and their own role self-concepts were examined for their effects on how reporters covering the Indiana State Assembly used diverse sources of information. Subjects, 34 reporters and 39 state senators, were surveyed concerning their contacts with each other during the 1982 legislative…

A study tested five sets of hypotheses derived from an interaction model of the ways reporters and legislators exchange information. Three hypotheses attempted to distinguish among election-oriented, policy-oriented, and specialist legislators in the ways they seek information, and two hypotheses predicted the patterns of reporter-legislator…