More and more, advertising revenue, not circulation or concern for the underdog, seems to be determining the content of American newspapers. As Americans moved to the suburbs, suburban newspapers sprang up, taking readers and advertising revenue away from metropolitan dailies. "Counterattacks" by metropolitan papers such as zoned…

Reports that middle-level Chinese government officials are given almost verbatim translations of selected news stories and commentary from around the world in a publication called "News for Reference," which is widely distributed in China by the Hsinhua news agency. (FL)

Notes that despite recent United States Supreme Court decisions that have been unfavorable to the press, a First Amendment-based conditional privilege protecting the editorial process against governmental intrusion survives. (FL)

This paper contends that the failure of the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat" raises questions not only about whether the United States Justice Department's Antitrust Division should have worked harder to keep the St. Louis joint operating agreement (JOA) alive, but also about the efficacy of the Newspaper Preservation Act in preserving…

Notes that the percentage of daily newspapers that also produce a weekly or semiweekly edition has dwindled since 1876; outlines reasons for the continuance of the approximately 50 daily-weekly combinations in existence in 1978. (GT)

Reviews the past five years of community ties research. Examines recent research for evidence of progress in resolving important conceptual issues, and discusses problems that still persist despite previous cautions. (RAE)

A review of the literature reveals that publishers have suggested that magazines would cost twice as much and newspapers five times as much if they were not supported by advertising revenues. However, recent research indicates that this is not true. Although statistics regarding magazine publication are easier to obtain than those regarding…

Notes that while the Supreme Court decision in "Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia" enunciated the right to report, the response of lower courts on this issue has been mixed, and the impact of the decision is less than many suppose. (FL)

To investigate the role and portrayal of women in newspapers and to determine trends emerging from this portrayal, a study examined 15 published quantitative research studies (content analyses) on the portrayal of women in newspapers, dating from 1973 until 1988. Studies were gathered primarily from "Communication Abstracts," the…

The first of two articles in this report offers a survey of how community ties lead to various psychological needs that are the motivation for newspaper reading. It identifies three distinct audience segments: the traditional audience, with permanent bonds to the community, whose need for information, guidance, and community surveillance leads to…

Twenty-six American Newspaper Publishers Association research reports published since 1978 are reviewed in this paper. The paper analyzes each of the reports in order to provide an overview of what their findings really say and what newspapers can do in their own market areas to use the findings to improve their product. Among the topics covered…

This report provides a review of literature exploring accuracy in newspaper stories. The findings discussed do not reveal definite reasons for inaccuracy, but several possible error sources are delineated: amount of reporter involvement, type of news, psychological factors (stress, news reporters' fantasies, open/closed-mindedness, tendency to…

Psychographic analysis--combining demographic and attitudinal characteristics into groups and looking at variations in those characteristics--is useful in newspaper research to expand theories of media publics. One effective segmentation strategy (used at Minnesota Opionion Research Incorporated--MORI) is to divide the population into four groups,…

An examination of the ways in which United States postal policies affected the development of the magazine industry before Congress passed the second-class mail category in 1863 reveals how a medium is shaped at least in part by the technology, policy, and politics of its delivery systems. In the nineteenth century, magazines depended on the mails…

Predicated on the assumption that organized labor has long been misrepresented by the mass media, and bolstered by a literature review, a case study analyzed in detail labor news coverage from the "Columbus Dispatch" for the month of April 1994. A total of 37 articles were gathered that related to labor issues--articles on the ongoing…