Newspaper Content, A Day in the Life

The differences were even greater when it came to national news. The local metro dailies studied were notable in how comprehensive they tried to be. It is clear that those publications imagine themselves as institutions of record from which readers can get as full an account of the events of the world as space permits. As of 2005, they had not ceded to other papers or Web sites the task of the news beyond their town.

Federal Highway Bill Coverage, by Media

All three of the smaller papers, for instance, (as well as the New York Times and the L.A. Times) carried a story on the inside pages of their front sections about a bill in Congress to increase funds for federal highways. That story appeared nowhere on local television. Nor did it appear on national television news, either network or cable.

The other big news out of Congress this day, a bill to crack down on gangs, was a story in the Bend Bulletin and the Milwaukee Journal, but the Houston Chronicle passed. Yet TV viewers were far less likely to see it. The only word of it on TV in the three cities was a brief tell story on WITI in Milwaukee at 10 p.m. and another on KTRK’s 6 a.m. news in Houston .

The differences were equally striking when we compared what local residents got in the way of international news. On May 12, the local metro papers contained nearly as much coverage of foreign affairs topics as the three major national papers (8% of all space versus 11% in national papers) and twice as much as local TV.

Certain international stories, in particular, were virtually absent from TV yet were major news in the local papers. Often the stories that newspapers carried and television did not seemed somewhat complicated. Every metro paper studied devoted significant space to the news that North Korea had taken nuclear rods from power plants with the intent to use them in making nuclear weapons. In Houston and Bend , that was a Page 1 story. It never appeared on any of the local TV programs studied , and was mentioned on only one network evening newscast.

North Korean Nuclear Rods, Coverage

The quality of the national and foreign coverage also was not as different as some might guess between the local metro dailies and the national papers. The reason was simple. What appeared in the local papers was usually coverage from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. On major stories getting significant treatment, those major papers were more often the source of wire copy than the Associated Press. The AP showed up far more as the source for shorter stories and briefs.

For the North Korea story, all of the local papers monitored relied on the New York Times. On the D.C. plane scare of the previous day, the Bend Bulletin used the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle relied on the Chicago Tribune syndicate and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used the New York Times.

Still, if we look at the overall geographic focus of the content in these papers, beyond just the topics, the local metro dailies covered more of the news from a local angle. The stories in these papers were more than twice as likely to focus on the metro or regional area as were the national papers (47% versus 24%). In other words, even if the topics themselves were national or international, these papers were more likely to try to put it in a local context, to bring the story home.

Geographic Focus of Stories, by Media

Percent of all Stories