SMALL NEWSPAPERS, BIG CHANGES: AWARENESS OF MARKET-DRIVEN JOURNALISM AND CONSEQUENCES FOR COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS __________________________________________________________ A Dissertation presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School University of Missouri-Columbia _________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________________________________ by RICHARD ROBERT GROSS Dr. Glen Cameron, dissertation supervisor MAY 2005 © Copyright by Richard Robert Gross 2005 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements The successful completion of a work of this length and complexity involves the effort of many people other than the author. I wish to acknowledge those individuals here. I am grateful for the time, effort and commitment of the members of my Doctoral Committee, each of whom became a friend while serving as a co-worker and critic. Chair Glen Cameron provided the initial suggestion for my topic, market-driven journalism at community newspapers. He provided constant encouragement and support, critical insight and a timely kick in the pants. He also stewarded through two juried publications that served as useful underpinnings for this study and bolstered my scholarly credentials as well. Glen, I honestly could not have done this without you. Thanks here is also made to Dr. Cameron for his assistance in securing a $500 grant from the Maxine Gregory Foundation to help fund travel and telephone costs associated with conducting interviews and gathering copies of the newspaper stories analyzed in the content analysis chapter of this work. Dr. R. Dean Mills served as my co-chair for a time until the time demands of securing the future of the Missouri School of Journalism made it necessary for him to relinquish that role. Nonetheless, he read every line of my initial draft and made countless suggestions and the occasional demand. Dr. Mills would not let me settle for less than the finished work of which I am capable. For that I am deeply grateful. ii Dr. John Calhoun Merrill has been an inspiration throughout my time at Missouri and has become a dear friend and role model. His inquiring mind, indomitable spirit and intellectual productivity are as formidable as his genuine love of teaching journalism (and his capacity for inventing bad jokes and puns). I owe a great debt to Dr. Keith Sanders. He usually has few words; however, his few words during my defense provided a much-needed new perspective that allowed me to successfully complete this resulting work. I studied with Dr. Kit Salter for only one class during my time at Missouri, but it was a memorable learning experience, many of the lessons of which can be found in this work. He was a fair and critical observer of the terrain at a critical moment in my navigation of it. Like Dr. Merrill, Dr. Salter genuinely loves teaching and he has a grateful student in this author. To all of my Committee members, thank you for being concerned, provocative, demanding and eventually approving of my efforts. Thanks here is given to those who in my initial interviews guided me to the places and papers that eventually found their way into this work: James Sterling, Chair in Community Newspaper Management at the Missouri School of Journalism and a publisher with over 30 years of newspaper experience; Larry Brown, a cultural geographer with the Department of Geography at the University of Missouri, and a specialist in rural communities in the Midwest; and Heather Oliver, a Graduate Student in the University of Missouri’s Department of Rural Sociology at the time this study was undertaken. iii I am deeply appreciative of the degree of access, amount of time and fullness of candor of the 29 publishers, editors, reporters and jacks-and-jills of all the newspaper trades who participated in the interviews at the nine participating newspapers. Similarly, thanks go to the owners/publishers of the participating newspapers for allowing me access to their newspaper archives and directing me to pertinent information. The interviews and newspaper content are the core material of this study, and the core of my gratitude goes to those who made possible my research and the successful completion of this study. The Missouri Newspaper Association provided source material and information free of charge about each of the newspapers and many of the staff members included in this study. Thank you. Thanks, too, to Cynthia Santos and the helpful folks at Missouri’s S.O.S. Temporary Services who transcribed my lengthy interview tapes and prepared the final copy. Finally, many colleagues, friends and family members provided all-important emotional support and encouragement during the long process of researching, analyzing and writing this work. To the aforementioned John Merrill and Kit Salter, thank you for going beyond the Committee Member “job description.” To my mom and Lewis Carroll: wherever you are, I know you know how much your love and support have meant to me. To Cyndi, Lizzy, Harold and Richard, it seems an embarrassing excess of riches to have friends as good as iv you. To my brother Bill, thank you for all those letters addressed to “Dr. Gross” before I was Dr. Gross. You gave me a target at which to aim. To everyone mentioned here and those I may have failed to mention: a sincere thank you. I’m so happy I did not let you down. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………. vii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….1 2. THE LITERATURE OF MARKET-DRIVEN JOURNALISM…….22 3. DETERMINING WHAT DRIVES JOURNALISM: A QUALITATIVE METHOD…………………………….......60 4. THE SHOW ME STATE: ITS PLACES AND PAPERS AS THE RESEARCH LABORATORY……………………….78 5. SMALL-TOWN JOURNALISTS: BIG CITY PERSPECTIVE…...103 6. MARKET-DRIVEN JOURNALISM AND AUDIENCE DIVERSITY……………………………………….150 7. THE CONTENT ANALYSIS………………………………………175 8. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS……………241 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………...280 VITA…………………………………………………………………...300 vi SMALL NEWSPAPERS, BIG CHANGES: AWARENESS OF MARKET- DRIVEN JOURNALISM AND CONSEQUENCES FOR COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS 2005__________________________________________Richard Robert Gross Supervisor: Dr. Glen Cameron This study examines the attitudes of journalists at small or community newspapers toward the concept of market-driven journalism, and its implications for content diversity in their newspapers. The researcher queried 29 journalists with differing editorial responsibilities and experience at a convenience sample of nine community newspapers throughout the state of Missouri. The study presents the attitudes and beliefs of those journalists in their own words; relates their understanding of market-driven journalism and its effect upon audience diversity, the extent to which market considerations, audience diversity and the demographics of the newspapers’ circulation area are reflected in the content of their newspapers. The author employed qualitative method using several data sets to examine the possible relationship among certain phenomena related to the question of market-driven journalism at small newspapers. The study concludes that journalists at small newspapers do have an understanding of the impact of market-driven journalism even when they do not identify it by that term, that financial considerations do have an impact on news coverage by these newspapers to varying degrees depending on the resources of the newspaper, and that community newspapers do not adequately represent the composition of their communities, particularly new and growing population segments. vii Chapter One Introduction This study examines how journalists at smaller, community newspapers understand the somewhat academic concept of “market-driven journalism,” and its implications for content diversity in their newspapers. The author queried journalists with various editorial responsibilities and experience at a convenience sample of community newspapers throughout the state of Missouri. The study presents the attitudes and beliefs of those journalists in their own words; relates their understanding of market-driven journalism and its effect upon diversity, and how market considerations are reflected in the published product. The study also relates the extent to which that content reflects the demographics of the newspapers’ circulation area and considers the market and diversity implications of that finding for the future of community newspapers and of journalism. The study expands upon two secondary data analyses completed by this author and his co-authors on data initially gathered by a team of Missouri School of Journalism researchers at The Los Angeles Times (Gross, Cameron, Curtin, 2001; Gross, Craft, Cameron, Antecol, 2002). The original research and data collection have resulted in several publications of which the studies noted above are but two. Although not specifically intended to be comparative, issues similar to those examined at the large, demographically diverse Times are considered in this study in the community newspaper environment. The distinctiveness of this study includes the nature and scale of the media venues studied, the depth of qualitative data, the breadth of the number of papers and content examined, and the implications of the data for the broader issues of the influence of money, class and diversity on American journalism. The author used qualitative method on several data sets to examine the possible relationship among phenomena related to the