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issues of the day so that they can hold government officials accountable (Gurevitch and Blumler
2000). Must local TV news trade substance for sensationalism to survive, or can news directors
succeed by taking the journalistic high road? This paper examines the relationship between
quality of news content and commercial success and comes to the surprising conclusion that
quality is not merely good practice but a practical good.
Theoretical Orientation
The cause of the degradation in news quality has stimulated much scholarly debate.
Scholars have deplored the tendency of news to focus on events and conflict (Patterson 1994;
Iyengar 1987, 1991). Some have argued that media consolidation inevitably lowers the quality
of journalism (Alger 1998; Bagdikian 2000; McChesney 1999), while others have claimed that
the problem lies in the “race to the bottom” in a competitive marketplace (McManus 1994; Zaller
1999; Hamilton 2004: 23). For some or all of these reasons, tabloid journalism has become the
accepted formula for success in local news.
Certainly, the conventional wisdom is not without some basis. A study performed by the
Pew Center for People and the Press found that, when questioned about what types of news
stories they follow most closely, crime rated the highest among all respondents (Graber 2001).
But this analysis may reflect the supply of news rather than the demand for it.
Producers of TV news face an increasingly competitive market for viewers who are
becoming all the more scarce (Patterson 2000; Baum 2002), and this is particularly true for local
news (Gottlieb and Belt 2001; Powers 2001). Some of this decline is attributable to increases in
viewership of cable TV and to the growth of the internet as a news source (Patterson 2000;
Ramstad 1997; Stempel, Hargrove and Bernt 2000). In order to survive in the shrinking and
Convention