To explore the theoretical relation of newspaper competition to overall news quality, a study used a model of newspaper competition based on economic assumptions to investigate whether the product quality of a newspaper is positively related to the financial expenditure on it, and whether newspaper circulation is positively related to quality.…

A study examined whether the suburban press is better off if competing metropolitan daily newspapers are allowed to merge operations in a joint operating agreement (JOA) as provided by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, or if the weaker of the two dailies is allowed to close down, throwing the suburban paper into competition with a monopoly…

Noting that television network coverage of hostage crises tends to emphasize the same topics while depicting them in similar ways, and that networks may be unwittingly granting legitimacy to terrorist grievances, a study investigated the nature of "NBC Nightly News" coverage of the Trans World Airline (TWA) hostage crisis. Specific…

A study investigated audience motives for movie attendance. Subjects were 493 college students, who indicated on an eight-point scale the extent to which a series of 70 reasons for movie going matched their own reasons for movie attendance. Three frequency of attendance groups were identified: infrequent--once in two to six months;…

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…

Since the most pervasive ethic of American journalism is that of objective news reporting (the apparently impartial reporting of verifiable data from a detached point of view), a study examined how and to what extent general news reports differed over time in terms of objective reporting. The news content in six representative daily newspapers for…

The communications of suffragist Lucy Stone illustrate the changes that the growth of women's magazines brought to nineteenth century feminists. As indicated in letters to friends and family, Lucy Stone became an active proponent of women's rights at a time when public speaking tours were the best means of reaching a wide audience. As the printing…

The issue of whether to "standardize" or "specialize" in international advertising campaigns is important because it may help determine whether each audience should be addressed separately or whether advertising agencies should attempt to address the collective global consumer. Print and television advertisements for American…

The editorial pages can be seen as fertile territory for examining female journalists' attitudes and behavior toward topics traditionally considered "women's." To study the numbers, characteristics, attitudes on several women's issues, and behavior in relationship to several women's issues, first a mailing list was compiled from the…

To investigate the nature, content, and validity of criticisms of the news media and to determine whether these criticisms are made objectively, a study surveyed 550 members of the Mass Media and Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Response rate was 41%. Questions examined statements…

A study investigated the possibility that news sources account for the pattern of journalistic topic selection. It was hypothesized that the proportions of content in raw news materials made available to reporters by sources would be similar to the proportion of content found in published stories, and that the proportions of sources for these raw…

A study examined the extent to which the violation of any one of more than 20 deleted Federal Communications Commission "underbrush" rules or policies (minor rules and policy statements) might result in a threat to the violator's broadcast license. All of the deleted policies and regulations, the criminal codes of California, Florida,…

To investigate what the news is by looking at journalists' practices and sources from a historical perspective, a study conducted a computer content analysis of levels of attribution and institutional sources in "The New York Times" and "The Los Angeles Times" from 1885 through 1985. Using the GENCA program that matches a…

Using media content data produced by Issues Management of Alexandria, Virginia (also known as "The Conference on Issues and Media"), a study examined agenda-setting for network television news, newspapers with broad syndication, and national weekly news magazines. Issues Management bi-weekly publishes the combined content for all three…

A study was conducted to assess the dimensions of a National Public Radio (NPR) audience's interests in programing, and how these interests define subaudience groups. Telephone surveys were conducted with 276 persons who were over 18 years of age and who usually listened to the local university operated NPR station at least one day per week. The…