Kansas Readers Feel Loss When Town's Paper Closes

Smethers, Steven; Bressers, Bonnie; Willard, Amber; Harvey, Linda M.; Freeland, Gloria

doi:10.1177/073953290702800402

Cited by 11 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 2 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…In this pre-television era, most of the respondents said they missed the hard news that their newspaper provided-but in Berelson's estimation, only about a third were able to engage in enough discussion of the news to indicate that they ever actually read it. More recently, a pair of studies replicated Berelson's work in small towns where the local newspaper was not delivered on a given day (Bentley, 2001) or was permanently shuttered (Smethers, Bressers, Willard, Harvey, & Freeland, 2007). Like Berelson, both projects found that many of the interviewees primarily missed their newspaper for reasons related to habit or entertainment-but not because of a lack of access to hard news.…”

Section: Empirical Evidence Of Local Newspapers' Importancesupporting

confidence: 55%

Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement

Shaker

2014

Political Communication

122

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LEE SHAKERUsing data from the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) For generations, scholars (de Tocqueville, 2001;Janowitz, 1968;Kaniss, 1997;Tarde, 1903) have asserted that newspapers provide critical information to citizens and serve as vital watchdogs of public officials. Today, as newspapers struggle through a rocky transition from an analog past toward a digital future, the question of newspapers' importance is especially pressing. In Paul Starr's (2011) words, "More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems. It is true that they have often failed to perform those functions as well as they should have done. But whether they can continue to perform them at all is now in doubt." So, as newspaper circulation dwindles and the very future of the print product is questioned, there is scholarly and public attention upon their plight. But how important are newspapers to their communities, and how concerned should we be as they decline?Using data from the 2008 and 2009 November supplements of the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the United States Census Bureau, this article examines the civic engagement of citizens in the largest American metropolitan areas. The analysis compares the year-over-year change in the civic engagement of citizens in cities that lost a newspaper in the intervening year-namely, Denver and Seattle-and cities that did not lose a newspaper over the same time period. The contrast over time and across cities provides unique Lee Shaker leverage to address the questions raised above, and the CPS data indicate that civic engagement in both Seattle and Denver dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009. This decline is not consistently replicated in the other cities examined, even after controlling for several other alternative explanations. Though the causality of the decline in civic engagement cannot be definitively established with the CPS data, the findings of this article lend additional empirical support to what many already believed: Newspapers are vital institutions in our democracy, and their decline warrants our concern.

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Section: Empirical Evidence Of Local Newspapers' Importancesupporting

confidence: 55%

Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement

Shaker

2014

Political Communication

122

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“…In a 1949 study of the New York newspaper strike, Berelson discovered that readers missed the newspaper for news and because it was 'a tool for daily living' for social prestige and social contact. Sixty years later, Smethers et al (2007) echoed these findings in examining how the closure of the Humboldt Union impacted the residents of Humboldt, Kansas. They concluded that community members felt a sense of loss and could not find replacement local news sources.…”

Section: Community Functionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The importance of these functions comes into focus when considered in conjunction with studies investigating civic engagement in communities that lost their newspaper (Schulholfer-Wohl and Garrido, 2011;Shaker, 2014;Smethers et al, 2007;Wotanis, 2012). Schulholfer-Wohl and Garrido's (2011) study of the closure of the Cincinnati Post found that the absence of the Post 'made local elections less competitive alongside several dimensions: incumbent advantage, voter turnout, campaign spending, and the number of candidates for office' (p. 23).…”

Section: The Democratic Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The closure of a local newspaper also extends to community integration, routine, and ritual (Berelson, 1949;Smethers et al, 2007;Wotanis, 2012). In a 1949 study of the New York newspaper strike, Berelson discovered that readers missed the newspaper for news and because it was 'a tool for daily living' for social prestige and social contact.…”

Section: Community Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Searching for Sheboygans: On the future of small market newspapers

et al. 2018

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This article addresses the knowledge gap regarding small market newspapers in the United States. We address a deceptively simple research question: what is the state of small market newspapers in the United States as seen through the eyes of practitioners and industry experts? Based on in-depth interviews with experts and practitioners, we argue for a more nuanced vocabulary to describe newspapers and local news. Grouping all newspapers into a monolithic industry – as general sector analyses often do – suggests a homogeneous experience. That is not the case. Smaller publications face their own challenges and opportunities, and they define success and innovation on their own terms. This reality needs to be better understood.

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“…Broadly speaking, small newspapers tend to be more closely tied to their audiences. Editors of weekly newspapers—which tend to be much smaller organizations than dailies—report getting more feedback from their readers and have been characterized as having a closer connection to the communities in which they operate (Smethers, Bressers, Willard, Harvey, & Freeland, 2007; Weaver, Beam, Brownlee, Voakes, & Wilhoit, 2007). Because of smaller newspapers’ tendency to be more closely connected with their audiences and because of previous research connecting perception of audience demand with lack of technological adoption in small newspapers, this study proposes the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2 : The relationship between journalists’ perceived audience technology demand and their news organizations’ public-facing technology use will be stronger for smaller newspapers than larger ones. …”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing Through the User’s Eyes

Coddington

2018

Electronic News

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Drawing on the concept of audience construction, this study offers an empirical test of the argument by Boczkowski that journalists’ perceptions of their audience influence their implementation of new technologies. It uses a national survey of U.S. newspaper journalists to determine whether their perceptions of audiences’ use of and demand for video, social media, and mobile-oriented design predict their own public-facing use of those technologies. Findings indicate that journalists’ perceptions of audience demand, but not audience technological use and access, are significantly associated with news organizations’ increased technology use, suggesting that journalists view their audiences more as market-oriented technological consumers than as dynamic users.

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Kansas Readers Feel Loss When Town's Paper Closes

Abstract: This study reports readers' perceptions of loss when the the newspaper in Humbolt, Kan., ceased publication after 129 years. Readers did not find that local media alternatives filled the void left by the newspaper's demise.

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement

Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement

Searching for Sheboygans: On the future of small market newspapers

Seeing Through the User’s Eyes

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