The Last Lap

Sample Design

Seventeen media outlets—3 newspapers, 8 broadcasts, and 5 Internet sites—were monitored for twenty-one days. The first monitoring period was seven days long, and began Saturday, September 23, 2000 and continued through the inclusion of Friday, September 29, 2000. The second monitoring period began Saturday, October 7, 2000, and continued through the inclusion of Friday, October 13, 2000. The third and final monitoring period began Saturday, October 14, 2000, and continued through the inclusion of Friday, October 20, 2000.

Newspapers were selected to develop a sample of coverage provided by both national press (New York Times, Washington Post) and regional publications (Portland Oregonian, Orlando Sentinel), representing both geographic and demographic diversity. Broadcast sources included both the flagship program and the morning news show from the three major over-the-air networks; the Newshour to represent public broadcasting; and CNN's The World Today as a sample of content on cable all-news networks.

Five Internet news sites were selected to develop a sample of that election coverage. The New York Times on the web and MSNBC were chosen as the two most visited political news sites according to Media Metrix. Slate is a popular web-only news site. Salon is a more liberal news site and the National Review is more conservative.

Inclusion and Screening

Both print and broadcast sources were monitored via the use of the LEXIS-NEXIS advanced search tool. Search criteria was designed to cast the widest net possible. Any appearance of the names Bush or Gore qualified a story for inclusion in the original sample.

Internet sources were monitored twice a day, at 9:30 AM and again at 4:30 PM. We monitored the political front-pages of each web site, defined at the first "click" to political news from the home page. All national campaign stories highlighted on that page were captured the first time they appeared.

These criteria insured the inclusion of all pertinent stories; yet also produced an initial sample of several thousand articles or broadcast segments. The sample was next refined by eliminating duplicate stories, photo captions, letters to the editor and unedited transcripts of candidate debates or speeches.

Stories were then screened for agreement with the project's inclusions rules. Stories less than 75 words long (newspapers and internet) or shorter than 20 seconds (television) were excluded from the sample. Those stories that met the length requirement were next screened to identify cases where any designated Recurring Theme was referenced in the headline, subhead, or 3 lead paragraphs AND 1/3 or more of the text of the article was tied to any of the four major candidates or campaigns; OR any designated Recurring Theme constituted 50% or more of the story in a way that made direct reference to any of the four major candidates or campaigns.

The resulting project sample consisted of 1,149 stories, all of which were fully coded and are included in the final data analysis. In some limited cases, the LEXIS-NEXIS database will not deliver stories written by unaffiliated news services. However, all stories under the editorial control of the newspaper are included. All stories written by staff reporters, OpEd pieces, and "specials to the news publication" are part of this analysis.

Coding Process

Researchers worked with a detailed, standardized coding scheme. All stories were first coded for basic inventory variables -- source, dateline, length, etc. Then, the project director coded for content variables -- recurring themes, dominant candidate -- and intent variables -- story trigger, frame, tone, and impact. In all cases, coders worked with a defined set of rules per variable. Of particular note:

Tone: The 2 to 1 Rule
When calculating Tone, coders must quantify all the pertinent text that is positive for the Dominant Candidate, as well as all pertinent text that is negative for the Dominant Candidate. Additional weight is given to text within the headline of the story. In any case where the ratio between positive:negative equals or exceeds 2:1, the story is coded as positive tone for the Dominant Figure. Likewise, when the ratio between positive:negative equals or exceeds 1:2 the story is coded as negative tone for the Dominant Figure. All other stories are coded as neutral. In this study, stories determined to be straight news accounts were not coded for Tone.

Story Impact: The One-Half Rule
When calculating Story Impact, coders identify all text that implies which individuals or group's interests are at stake/affected by the events in the story. Only if 50% or more of the text makes this connection is the story considered for impact; all other stories are coded as "No impact implied at 50% or more."

Intercoder Reliability

Intercoder reliability measures the extent to which individual coders, operating independently of one another, reach the same coding decision. Tests were performed throughout the project: no systematic errors were found. As previously stated, the project director made all final decisions on both the content and intent variables.