2005 Annual Report - Newspaper Content Analysis

How did the front-page agenda of newspapers change in 2004 from a year earlier?

The year saw an easing-off of intense coverage of foreign affairs, indeed the lowest total in any year we have ever studied. The war in Iraq was still a major story, but coverage of the U.S. government took the lead. Some of this shift occurred because the Iraqi war became at times a domestic story with the 9/11 Commission, the torture policies of prisoners and the debates over U.S. intelligence.

Indeed, the government and the election combined took up so much of the space on the front page - nearly 44% of the stories over all - that coverage of every other news category fell from a year ago. Even coverage of a broad range of domestic issues, which had been rising in recent years, fell back markedly, from 22% of front-page stories to just 14%.

Lest anyone think, however, that this is a feature of just the biggest papers, the opposite was true. It was the smallest papers that devoted the greatest percentage of front-page stories to government affairs, and much more so to local than to national government. Among the smaller-circulation papers (those with under 100,000 circulation) government affairs alone accounted for 4 in 10 stories, and those were four times more likely to be local rather than national.

There were other differences, too, in the choice of topics between larger and smaller papers. The smallest papers also devoted twice the percentage of front-page coverage to crime - 6% versus 3% at the largest papers - a sign perhaps that other than the big celebrity crime stories, crime is fundamentally a local story. Smaller papers also gave more than twice the A1 space to lifestyle - 9% versus 4% at the largest.

In addition to fewer government stories over all, the biggest papers also carried more 2004 election stories (13% of the front pages of the big papers versus 5% at the smallest) and, not surprisingly, more international affairs (17% at the largest papers, 14% at mid- sized papers, and 12% in the smallest circulation group).

How does the agenda on the front page of newspapers compare to that of other media? The chart below illustrates differences among the media.

Topics in the News: Newspaper A1 versus Other Media

Percent of All Stories

Other Points About Newspapers Overall

Newspapers also stand out from other media in several ways besides the topics they cover.

For one thing, more stories in newspapers are gathered and written by the newspaper rather than secondary sources. In all, 82% of the stories are original, compared to 32% of Internet stories studied.

The comparison to television might be to stories with a correspondent involved or clearly some staff reporting, as opposed to brief anchor reads or something explicitly identified as coming from an outside source. On both the commercial evening network news and the morning programs roughly 62% of the stories involved correspondent work while 38% were briefs.²

A year ago, incidentally, 85% of newspaper stories were staff-written.