To investigate changes attendant upon the 1971 transfer of ownership of "The Windsor (Ontario) Star" from an independent owner to Southam Press Limited, owner of several Canadian newspapers, a content analysis was conducted of newspapers from the four-year period of independent ownership and the four-year period of Southam Press ownership surrounding the date of the transfer. Approximately 40 issues from each year were analyzed. All editorials and features on the editorial and opinion-editorial pages were examined with respect to area of interest, source of content, and direction of partisan political commentary. Editorial cartoons, letters to the editor, and front page lead stories were also examined. Among the major conclusions were that the change of ownership has not resulted in change in area of interest in any consistent pattern; that there has been a significant increase in the use of Canadian, rather than United States, sources in both front page leads and feature materials; and that more politically-oriented editorial and feature content is now being presented. The results suggest that the chain-ownership question cannot be dealt with adequately by the divergent hypotheses (socially desirable or undesirable) evident in the literature, but that the changes may be evaluated positively or negatively, depending on one's view of the role of a newspaper in a community. (GW)