What Would Happen Without Local Newspapers?
[Source]
The specter of cities without newspapers is looming, according to accounts like this piece about The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If that were true, what might happen?
Two interesting books by political scientists speak to this question. Notably, but not necessarily surprisingly, neither scholar has been quoted in the last year in any news article about the decline of newspapers — at least according to my quickie Lexis search.
The first book is Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability by Douglas Arnold. In 1993-94, Arnold gathered data about how 67 different local newspapers covered 187 different congressional representatives. He then merged these data with a large national election survey conducted in 1994.
He finds that greater newspaper coverage of congressional representatives makes newspaper readers more likely to: (1) report reading about the incumbent and challenger during campaign season; and (2) recognize the names of these candidates, know how long the incumbent has been in office, and like or dislike something about them.
Without local newspapers, it’s quite possible that people wouldn’t know as much about their representatives. And this has important consequences for accountability:
A basic premise of this book is that the nature of the informational environment affects prospects for accountable government. More and better information about what elected officials are doing in office increases both the chances that citizens will notice the information and the likelihood that the information will affect citizens’ decisions about whether elected officials deserve to be reelected or removed. A rich informational environment also affects how elected officials behave in office. When officials know that what they do will be reported to citizens, they behave differently than when they believe that their actions will be forever hidden.
The second book is even more relevant: Nothing to Read by Jeffery Mondak. Mondak studies the consequences of the 1992 Pittsburgh newspaper strike. The strike, which lasted from May 1992 until January 1993, ensured that Pittsburgh did not have a daily newspaper during the most of the 1992 campaign. Mondak compares then compares Pittsburgh voters to those in a similar city, Cleveland, which did not experience a strike. What did he find?
- Pittsburgh voters did make recourse to other sources of news. They were less likely than Cleveland voters to get information from local newspapers, but more likely to get it from television, radio, magazines, and national newspapers. Those most likely to read local newspapers — people interested and informed about politics — were more likely to seek other print sources.
- Pittsburgh and Cleveland voters were no different in how much attention they reported paying to news about the Presidential or Senate campaign. But Pittsburgh voters reported paying less attention to House campaign news.
- Pittsburgh voters were not less knowledgeable about current events, campaign news, or the presidential candidates’ policy positions — as measured by factual questions.
- Pittsburgh voters were not less likely to report discussing the Presidential or Senate race, but they were less likely to report discussing the House race.
- Pittsburgh voters also differed in the kinds of information they drew on in voting for their House representative. They were more likely to depend on the views of their friends, family, and neighbors — those with whom they discussed politics. They were less likely to draw on their presidential vote. That is, there were weaker presidential “coattails” for Pittsburgh voters. Pittsburgh voters seemed to lack the information necessary to connect the House candidates and the presidential candidates.
What conclusions can we draw? Clearly, the elimination of local newspapers does not mean that people will know nothing about politics, or learn nothing about politics. As Mondak notes, some people are intrinsically motivated to follow politics and they will find a way to do so via other media. Perhaps that bodes well for the Post-Intelligencer’s future as an exclusively on-line news source.
However, “other media” may be poorly suited to providing certain kinds of information, and in particular information about local politics. This is most evident in the consequences for the Pittsburgh strike for the House race. Mondak’s findings dovetail with Arnold’s in this respect: without local news coverage, people simply pay less attention to congressional campaigns. The irony, of course, is that the House was designed to be more intimately tied to public opinion.
Comments
But… a lot happened since the early 90’s. Like, you know, the internet. Can we honestly say the availability of sources for those inclined to seek them will be substantially reduced today if a local newspaper is closed down? After all, unlike the case of Pittsburgh in 1992, the papers are closing down now because hardly anyone is reading them anymore…
Posted by: Dubi | March 18, 2009 12:41 PM
Dubi: Thanks for telling me about this internet thing. As a blogger, I’m not really familiar with it.
The question is: are the alternative sources sufficient to pick up the slack when local newspapers go under? Esp. with regard to topics like the local congressional representative. And will people be as attentive to those alternative sources? There’s no question that I learn things reading the newspaper that I wouldn’t learn — or bother to learn — if I had only on-line sources to go to.
Posted by: John Sides | March 18, 2009 01:19 PM
Dispersing the collected information is a snap these days, but collecting it is the biggest problem coming up.
Freelance simply won’t cut the mustard. To collect news and put it in context, a reporter needs a steady income over years, and the muscle of a big organization behind him to defend him from lawsuits, edit his copy and check his facts. She needs fellow reporters and editors to give an outside view of the stories she is building. If nothing else, he and she need a proper office to work out of, not a home that can be subject to break-ins or fires, or visits from large men with black suits and white ties.
I don’t know what business model news gatherers can move to now, except public institutions like the BBC and the CBC. But as you say, it’s an essential service.
Noni
Posted by: Noni Mausa | March 18, 2009 10:10 PM
Apparently the Pittsburgh and Cleveland papers covered down-ballot races.
In New York City, the papers never, ever, cover legislative races, either for the House or the state legislature (they do give some coverage to US Senate elections). So if the papers disappeared here I don’t think the voters would become less informed on these elections.
Posted by: Ed | March 18, 2009 10:56 PM
This is a nice little post on an important topic. I would add to this discussion the likelihood that coverage of offices and elections below the level of Congress — say state legislature and local contests — will suffer dramatically if this trend continues. I second John’s point that other media sources are either ill-equipped to handle the complexity or have to balance other considerations (e.g., time constraints). While new media such as the internet has the potential to fill the void, the question is whether it does? More importantly, will viewers/readers (i.e., citizens) have access to, and be sufficiently motivated to, invest the time and effort to navigate an increasingly fragmented online environment. For all of the faults we can find with traditional media sources — specifically newspapers — they do ensure some coverage of subnational politics and locate that information in plain sight.
Posted by: Eric | March 19, 2009 12:29 AM
This post presumes that the “local paper” is disappearing entirely, which is not true. Many, if not most (and perhaps all), papers that cease printing will still exist online.
The research you cite is obsolete given the advances in communications technology. Hence, Dubi’s comment about the internet is important and should not be dismissed with a poor attempt at sarcasm.
Posted by: superdude | March 19, 2009 12:22 PM
This is somewhat tangential to the post’s main point, but I’d add about the Post-Intelligencer’s switch from print to online that the great majority of current staffers will be laid off, as the online edition can’t support (or so it’s assumed) as big a workforce. So even if the online edition succeeds, it’s not much comfort to the journalists who have lost their jobs. Is it silly to worry about a relatively small number of journalists in one city losing their jobs, given a U.S. economy in recession in which job losses in the last several months have been in the several hundred thousands? Maybe, but when you hear the unemployment statistics on the news, they are just that: statistics. Thinking about a specific person out of a job, whether at the Post-Intelligencer or a business down the street, makes it more concrete.
Posted by: LFC | March 19, 2009 03:18 PM
Superdude: I am not presuming that all local papers will disappear. That is the possibility raised by the NY Times article to which I link. Moreover, I think the rest of my response to Dubi, as well as several other comments in this thread, raise serious questions about the potential of alternative news sources (on-line or otherwise) — questions you should engage before you dismiss scholarship as “obsolete.”
Posted by: John Sides | March 20, 2009 10:15 AM
John, I agree that the quality of alternate news sources may provide insufficient coverage, particularly of state and local races.
That does raise some interesting questions, though.
1. Will online media cover state and local races? Will they cover them better (local papers haven’t always been the best, anyway).
2. Will the quality of local papers diminish when they’re printed online, or might quality increase as they go from monopoly control of a geographic area to competition online?
3. What other alternate sources will people pursue? Will they abandon local news and camp out on the NYT or CNN websites?
These are questions that reflect the current reality in the media, and are crucial if we’re to understand the meaning of the demise of local print media.
And they’re questions that can’t be answered by research using data and a reality that’s nearly 20 years old. Too much has changed.
Posted by: superdude | March 20, 2009 11:34 AM