Free Newspapers in the United States: Alive and Kicking

Free newspapers are a substantial segment of the U.S. newspaper industry, as well as an under-studied topic within media research. This study considers the economic health of free newspapers in the United States and whether they face a dire future given their heavy reliance on advertising, a source of revenue that has been in decline for newspapers. One question guiding this research is whether free newspapers face two options: continue producing free content by relying on advertising (in addition to other revenue sources), or abandon the advertising-based business model. Seven research questions address a number of issues, such as whether free newspapers are profitable, if decision-makers are considering changing their business model, whether they are seeking alternative sources of revenue, whether reader engagement is connected to the price, or a lack of one, of a newspaper, and whether decision-makers are optimistic or pessimistic about the future of their industry. A Web-based survey asked decision-makers at free newspapers in the United States to respond to questions related to the health and future of their newspaper or newspapers. This survey was complemented by in-depth interviews with publishers of four different types of free newspapers in Texas. The study concludes by suggesting free newspapers are not only viable but in many markets they are thriving. Sweeping generalizations (often seen in industry discourse) about the future of print newspapers can be misleading. This study contributes a reality check and calls for further research on the economics of print media in the digital era.     

ONLINE FEATURE JOURNALISM

Although online journalism is still dominated by breaking news coverage, new genres are emerging that differentiate it more and more from old media journalism. This article explores the emergence of feature journalism in online newspapers. Through comparative qualitative text analysis of feature journalism in the US online newspaper palmbeachpost.com and the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no, two widely different approaches to the production of feature journalism on the Web are uncovered and a critical perspective on the remediation of journalistic genres in online newspapers is elaborated. The analysis shows that both these approaches display a clash between discourses of traditional feature journalism and discourses of online communication. It further reveals that genre development in online journalism is a complex process marked by contradictions and inconsistencies and that online newsrooms are struggling to find solutions on how to differentiate online journalism from old media journalism.     

Nineteenth-Century Journalism Online—The Market Versus Academia?

In a climate of fear about funding for libraries and the arts, the preservation of many periodicals and newspapers is under threat. Digitisation is therefore justifiable as a conservation directive however what of those volumes that are not chosen? Are we creating an alternative version of Victorian culture through so selective a gaze? Indeed, who is choosing these titles? There is a question of access, both of what material is available to digitise and also what it is perceived ‘the audience’ want. However, a further question is raised—who are ‘the audience’? What are these archives going to be used for? This article will examine the different forms of nineteenth-century periodical and newspaper archives that are available, how they are organised and who their perceived audience is, before going on to consider the pedagogical utility of such sites. How can we enhance students' understanding of nineteenth-century culture by using these archives in our lecture theatres? And if we do, what are the implications for research in the future?     

What Drives Media Bias? New Evidence From Recent Newspaper Closures

With the advent of the Internet, many U.S. metropolitan areas have seen newspaper closures due to declining revenues. This provides the researcher with an opportunity to analyze the microeconomic sources of media bias. This article uses a large panel dataset of newspaper archives for 99 newspapers over 240 months (1990–2009). The author found that, after controlling for the unemployment rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the political preferences of surrounding metropolitan area, conservative newspapers report 17.4% more unemployment news when the President is a Democrat rather than a Republican, before the closure of a rival newspaper in the same media market. This effect is 12.8% for liberal newspapers. After the closure, these numbers are 3.5% and 1.1%, respectively. This moderation of media bias after closure of a rival newspaper is robust to the inclusion of newspaper size, newspaper fixed-effects or metropolitan area fixed-effects as controls. The author also found that newspapers in smaller metropolitan areas have a larger moderation in their bias. Findings provide support for theories in which media bias is demand-driven, as surviving newspapers aim to increase their sales by gaining the former readers of a closed newspaper in the same media market.     

Organizational Changes in Newspaper Firms and Their Relation to Performance

Abstract

It is generally accepted that newspaper firms are passing through hard times. Readers and advertisers—their 2 main income sources—seem to be turning to other media, thus negatively affecting newspaper financial performance. To respond to these challenges, newspapers are changing the way they organize their activities. This study looks at a sample of newspapers to investigate extent to which 2 of these organizational changes (i.e., integration and outsourcing) are affecting performance. The study shows that the higher the degree of integration within the firm, the more positive the performance. Outsourcing is found to have a negative impact. These effects are over and above those of the perceived environment.     

The good,the bad,and the ugly: Financial markets and the demise of Canada's Southam newspapers

Abstract

The impact of financial markets on media management practices is apparent in Canada, where public trading in newspaper company shares has contributed significantly to concentrated press ownership. Fluctuations in newspaper share values have often shaped firm strategies as a result. This paper presents the Southam newspaper chain as a case study of the impact of financial markets on newspaper management practices. Historical analysis is used to show how Canada's oldest and largest newspaper chain, which was known for its commitment to quality journalism and for allowing its local publishers editorial independence, made a fateful decision when it went “public”; with a share issue in 1945. The increasingly widespread ownership of its stock led to Southam's gradual takeover in 1996 by Hollinger Inc., which cut costs and reduced staff chain‐wide. Sale of the Southam newspapers in 2000 to CanWest Global Communications has seen editorial control centralized at company headquarters and partisan support shown for the ruling federal Liberal party, contrary to Southam's founding principles. As a result, the Canadian Senate began hearings into the media in 2003, bringing the possibility of government regulation to reverse the impact of financial markets on the management of media firms there.     

King Demos and His Laureate

This article uses online archives of digitized American and British newspapers to examine the importance of newspaper publication to Rudyard Kipling. Taking ‘The White Man's Burden’ as its particular example, this article recovers the history of that poem's publication and initial reception. That history revises both the poem's date and place of first publication, from Britain to America. In the process, Kipling emerges as a more transatlantic poet than was previously thought, and as a figure who is more influential in America. He is seen to have a sophisticated understanding of the demands and nature of newsprint, of newspapers as a literary and poetic medium, and of newspaper poetry as a journalistic genre. Many agencies and interested parties are seen to be involved in the poem's publication, and the nature of its cultural success offers further evidence for a transatlantic press history.     

A Balance Between Imitation and Contrast: What Makes Newspapers Successful? A Summary of Internationally Comparative Research

What is it that helps printed newspapers successfully compete with other media for the audience: marketing efforts, content, or their design? This article discusses the results of the most recent studies of an extensive research program on this topic. It began with the evaluation of 350 local dailies in Germany in the mid-1990s. Papers were reexamined: 60 in 2001, 28 in 2002. Success factors revealed in the foundation study-such as clearly structuring the content, local orientation and a generous design-are still valid, but now have to be applied in a more refined manner. A replication with 50 U.S. newspapers provided material for both an analysis of newspaper success in the United States and for a German-American comparison. The recipes for newspaper success point to convergence between the two countries, but also to some cultural differences in what reading a newspaper means.     

Press,Paper, and the Public Sphere

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe.     

The Bricks That Build the Clicks: Newsroom Investments and Newspaper Online Performance

As the world embraces the Internet for media consumption, the concept of a hybrid newspaper—a printed newspaper with a companion Web site—is becoming more prevalent. Many hope that online advertising revenue (OAR) will help newspapers make up for losses in print (offline) revenue. However, there is little research that has empirically investigated whether and how investment in the “bricks” (i.e., the newsroom staff and resources that produce news content) will help to build “clicks” (i.e., more online visitors and, subsequently, OAR). This article examines the issue via an econometric analysis of 12 years of longitudinal data from a hybrid newspaper. The results show that the basic success of the clicks model depends on the investment in the bricks of the newspaper (i.e., its newsroom). Specifically, although news gathering is a very expensive part of the news business, it is also a creator of value and directly brings in OAR in addition to print advertising revenue. Therefore, as newspapers seek to capture more OAR, they may need to increase, rather than decrease, investment levels in the newsroom.     

PREFERENCE,PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

Many studies reveal that quality journalistic writing in the form of well-written feature stories is one of the few true journalistic tools that help newspapers in their struggle against declining readership. In Slovenia, however, there is little acknowledgement of this. Academic research illustrates that readers want well-written sophisticated feature stories, but they are offered poorly written elementary feature stories. One of the reasons for this discrepancy might be the tradition of the latter in Slovene press; besides few practising journalists are familiar with the theory of journalistic forms, and most of them are not aware of the advantages of quality, sophisticated feature stories. Feature stories are undervalued in Slovene press to such an extent that as a genre they are rarely examined in commercial readership surveys. Thus, the readers’ preference for them remains vague and ambiguous. Such surveys do not help the newspaper publishers determine what kind of articles their readers really want and in what form/genre they want them.     

The Space for News

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price.     

The Battle of the Downs

The first newspaper publishers of the seventeenth century faced a momentous challenge. How could they compete in a highly competitive news market with their periodical invention? The newspaper was generally a cautious medium, offering an assortment of short international news reports without overarching editorial opinion. The newspaper rarely displayed the wit and polemic present in other news media of the early modern period, and operated with a rigid schedule of publication. This article portrays how such standards could be cast off in the face of military victory and defeat. The naval battle of the Downs in 1639 engaged two rival newspaper markets in Amsterdam and Antwerp. By analysing the simultaneous reporting of the battle in the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands it becomes clear that newspaper publishers employed numerous tactics in order to shape the coverage of the battle—and to strive for the relevance of their newspapers.     

The role of a local newspaper after disaster: an intrinsic case study of Ishinomaki,Japan

The city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture was devastated by the tsunami that struck Japan’s North East Coast on 11 March 2011. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Ishinomaki, which included interviews with senior journalists from the city’s two local newspapers, the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun and the Ishinomaki Kahoku, this paper presents an intrinsic case study of the role a local newspaper in Ishinomaki after the Great East Japan Disaster. The evidence reveals that in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami journalists recognised how their newspaper could serve the immediate information-needs of the local community by providing essential lifeline information, describing a duty to report, despite the operational difficulties that their newspapers faced. In the longer term recovery phase, interviewees acknowledged how their newspapers have attempted to communicate a message of hope to the city and provide an alternative perspective to the national media, which sometimes gave a false impression of the state of Ishinomaki’s recovery. This paper offers some insights into journalistic role conceptions, illustrating how journalists from the two newspapers embraced the role of information-disseminator after the disaster, and also identifies avenues for further research.     

ORIGINS OF ANIMOSITY

The importance of newspapers in nineteenth-century British politics has long been recognized by historians. Lord Palmerston understood keenly the power of the press and cultivated good relations with a number of papers. This article will elucidate more thoroughly than heretofore his early forays into the world of press intrigue. Palmerston did not, however, earn the regard of The Times, at least not until much later in his career. The Times, edited by Thomas Barnes from 1817 until his death in 1841, was the most powerful newspaper of the era. This article will examine the origins of its long-running feud with Palmerston, demonstrating the personal and political differences at the heart of its inception.     

浅析报纸媒体灾难性事件报道的演化——以《光明日报》为例

在媒体及信息多元化的时代,媒介环境也越来越复杂化,而作为传统媒体典型代表的报纸,正面临着严峻的市场竞争和新媒体异军突起的挑战。面对这样的局势,探析报纸媒体的新发展已成为了一项重要议题。本文针对灾难新闻报道具有特殊代表性的特点,在梳理现有研究和相关概念的基础上,以《光明日报》对1998年长江特大洪水、2008年汶川地震、2013年雅安地震的报道为例,利用内容分析法从报道内容、报道语言、关注程度三个角度出发进行了对比分析,总结其报道的差异性,从信息交流的角度分析报纸媒体如今的发展变化,并总结今后的发展趋势。     

手机报市场分析与发行赢利模式研究

本文对手机报的市场前景和经营模式进行分析,并结合重庆手机报的实例研究发现,手机报具有典型的高固定成本和低边际成本的特点;发行量的扩大,将使得分摊到单份手机报上的编辑成本大为降低。随着3G时代的到来,手机报还将迎来更加光明的发展前景。     

Agenda-setting and the internet: The intermedia influence of internet bulletin boards on newspaper coverage of the 2000 general election in South Korea

The purpose of this study was to explore the intermedia influence of the Internet on traditional news media. Accordingly, this study examined the influence of Internet bulletin boards on newspaper coverage of the 2000 general election in South Korea at both first and second levels of agenda-setting through content analyses of major newspapers and the Internet bulletin boards during the campaign. Results of cross-lagged correlation analyses showed that newspapers influenced Internet bulletin boards at the first level of agenda-setting. Additionally, at the second level of agenda-setting, the influence of Internet bulletin boards on newspapers was found. Although reciprocity appeared in a few time spans, the results imply that the Internet funnels and leads public opinion as well as affecting the coverage of other media.     

清季上书在报刊:形态递嬗与关系特征

同为帝制王朝统治下情上达的形式,上书与报刊如何区分、两者关系如何,这一问题尚未得到系统解答.以报刊为基本史料,论文探究清季以降上书的形态递嬗,及其与报刊的关系特征.研究发现,报刊中的上书依据时序递嬗,呈现出勃兴、低落、迭起三个阶段性特点;上书与报刊的关系,以“关于上书的新闻”和“作为言论的上书”为特征;比较起来,上书与...