Going beyond the loosely defined but evocative ideas of previous research linking newspaper readership with ties to the local community, the two studies described in this report carefully distinguish between readers' sense of identification and their actual involvement in the community. The first study discussed in the report examines the impact of community involvement on newspaper use, explicating five components of community involvement: awareness, cognitive orientation, relating, correcting, and working for change. The second study detailed examines the relationship of newspaper use and community identification. The findings presented in the report reveal that both involvement and identification with the local residential community as a geographic place are more strongly related to newspaper use than are involvement and identification with any communities defined in terms of either formal or informal social groups. (HTH)