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The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice? |
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Abstract:
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The conventional wisdom in local TV news is that quality journalism does not sell and that only by focusing on crime, disasters and other “soft news” can newscasts get good ratings. Political scientists have decried the poor quality of TV news as a betrayal of the press’s mandate to inform citizens of the important policy issues of the day so that they can hold government officials accountable. This study tests the proposition that audiences prefer tabloid journalism, by looking at external measures of commercial success, i.e. the Nielsen ratings data. Utilizing data from a five-year study matching the content quality of 33,911 local news stories from 154 TV stations in 50 TV markets nationwide to corresponding ratings success, we show that solid reporting and a focus on significant issues actually produces better ratings than slapdash or superficial tabloid journalism. These surprising results have practical implications for democratic practice and local TV news. |
Most Common Document Word Stems:
news (215), stori (117), 1999 (77), local (66), 2002 (65), 1998 (64), rate (61), qualiti (59), 2001 (54), tv (53), journal (53), late (52), audienc (50), station (48), earli (47), market (43), 2000 (42), lead (35), newscast (33), 2 (30), report (29), |
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Association:
Name: American Political Science Association
URL: http://www.apsanet.org
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Citation:
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MLA Citation:
| Just, Marion. and Belt, Todd. "The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Sep 02, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60822_index.html> |
APA Citation:
| Just, M. and Belt, T. , 2004-09-02 "The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60822_index.html |
Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The conventional wisdom in local TV news is that quality journalism does not sell and that only by focusing on crime, disasters and other “soft news” can newscasts get good ratings. Political scientists have decried the poor quality of TV news as a betrayal of the press’s mandate to inform citizens of the important policy issues of the day so that they can hold government officials accountable. This study tests the proposition that audiences prefer tabloid journalism, by looking at external measures of commercial success, i.e. the Nielsen ratings data. Utilizing data from a five-year study matching the content quality of 33,911 local news stories from 154 TV stations in 50 TV markets nationwide to corresponding ratings success, we show that solid reporting and a focus on significant issues actually produces better ratings than slapdash or superficial tabloid journalism. These surprising results have practical implications for democratic practice and local TV news. |
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| Document Type: |
.pdf |
| Page count: |
35 |
| Word count: |
8714 |
| Text sample: |
| The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice? Marion R. Just Wellesley College mjust@wellesley.edu Todd L. Belt University of Hawai`i at Hilo tbelt@hawaii.edu Abstract The conventional wisdom in local TV news is that quality journalism does not sell and that only by focusing on crime disasters and other "soft news" can newscasts get good ratings. Political scientists have decried the poor quality of TV news as a betrayal of the press's mandate to inform citizens of the important policy |
| of quality news is unrealistic and presumes a level of citizenship that is unnecessary in a representative democracy (Zaller 2003). 2 Persons on the street were considered experts however for stories about public opinion. 3 Due to coding difficulties there was no way to separate lead from non-lead stories. Thus comparisons had to be made to the entire sample including lead stories. 4 The story-level data was weighted and used instead of station level data for two reasons. First |
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