2004 Annual Report - Newspaper Content Analysis

How much difference does circulation size make in the character of what people get from newspapers? Do the very largest papers in the country - those with circulations above 750,000 - cover the same topics in roughly the same way as slightly smaller metropolitan newspapers or even medium-sized papers? (Comparisons below look at the two mid-range groups combined.)

In general:

• The news becomes more and more local and less international as circulation size decreases.

• Wire copy becomes more prevalent as the paper gets smaller.

• Articles become shorter at smaller papers.

• Anonymous sourcing becomes less common as circulation size decreases.

At the largest papers, those with more than 750,000 circulation, just 40 percent of the space studied was devoted to local articles (remember one section front is metro). This increases to 69 percent at midrange papers, 100,000 to 750,000 (the two-mid circulation groups combined), and then 75 percent at the smallest papers (less than 100,000).

The reverse occurs with national coverage. Large papers devoted 25 percent of the space studied to national articles. Midsized papers devoted 14 percent and small papers 12 percent.

And, if one relies on a smaller local paper, those with less than 100,000 circulation, how much international news would they get on the three section fronts? Just 9 percent of the space examined, versus 22 percent at the largest papers and 13 percent at the papers in between.

The length of articles shifts with newspaper size as well. Larger papers, not surprisingly, run longer articles on their section fronts. At the very largest general circulation papers in the country - The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post - the majority of articles, 64 percent, were more than 1,000 words. It was closer to a quarter of all articles at the midsized papers, and just more than one in ten articles at the smallest circulation papers.

Story Length by Circulation Category
Percent of All Stories

Story Length	Large	Mid	Small
1,000 or Less	37%	71%	87%
More than 1,000	64	29	13

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Looked at another way, the average article length at the largest papers was about 1,200 words. The average was just more than 800 words at midsize papers and fell to less than 600 words at the smallest papers.

Traditionally, smaller newspapers have relied on wire services such as The Associated Press and Reuters and so-called supplemental services, such as The New York Times News Service, for much of their national and international coverage. They simply lack the resources to keep reporters in Washington or in other parts of the world. This study confirms that this is still true. Almost 40 percent of A1 articles were from wire services at the smallest papers, 31 percent at papers with circulations of 100,000 to 700,000, and less than 1 percent at papers with circulations more than 750,000.

Papers of different sizes also differed in how they sourced articles. The biggest papers were much more likely to use anonymous sources, especially in their own staff-written articles.

Almost half of all articles in the biggest papers contained some kind of anonymous sourcing, though most of the time the paper did attempt to describe the sources, their potential biases or why they were credible.

The level of anonymity declined with circulation size. At the midsized papers, only a quarter of articles contained anonymous sourcing.

At the smallest papers, confidentiality was even more limited. Just 18 percent, for instance, contained confidential sources with some attempt at describing them and 3 percent of articles contained fully blind anonymous sourcing without any description of the source or why it was credible.

Wire copy was more likely to contain anonymous sourcing than was staff-written copy. Fully 42 percent of wire articles versus 27 percent of staff-written articles contained anonymous sourcing (with some attempt to describe the source).

Why, then, don't smaller papers, with heavier reliance on wires, have more anonymous sourcing than larger ones?

The answer appears to be that in their original work smaller papers are much less likely to offer sources anonymity than are larger papers. Indeed, staff-written copy at the smallest papers studied was a third as likely to contain anonymous sourcing than staff-written copy at the biggest papers. Overall, 15 percent of staff-written articles at small papers contained anonymous sources (with some description) versus 46 percent at the largest papers.

Articles on Page A1 were more likely to contain anonymous sources than those on metro or lifestyle. At the biggest papers, the majority of A1 articles contained anonymous sourcing (63 percent with some description attempt to describe the source and 5 percent contained totally blind anonymous sourcing). At the smallest papers, it was less (37 percent with some description, and 8 percent totally blind).