A case study: How to get on (or stay off) the front page

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2000 by Sumpter, Randall S

This exploratory study finds that editors generally agree about the attributes that front page stories should possess, but not all editors agree with the story selections produced by budget meetings. The editors who disagree most, supervise their own sections and shield their best stories from being picked for the front page.

Both academics and news professionals are calling for reform of the traditional news budget meetings used by daily newspapers to select front page stories. Critics claim these daily meetings of editors produce predictable or boring newspapers1 with front pages that typically showcase six or fewer stories including one that is invariably a "quirky attention-Better."2 The results fail to attract new readers3 or to prop up newspapers' reputations with existing readers.4

Various remedies have been suggested5 without answering a key question. Budget meetings - or something very much like them - have been used by editors for more than 100 years to hone front pages for readers.6 Why are they now failing to perform the same task?

Past research has developed a set of conclusions about budget meetings that do not match the current criticisms by news professionals and scholars. Those studies say editors use budget meetings to allocate front page space to the most "important" or most "newsworthy" stories of the day.7 A meeting is needed to determine what stories are most newsworthy because different forces affect the news judgment of different types of editors. Wire editors, for instance, may rate the most important stories to be those most frequently offered by wire services.8 Editors also may mimic the decisions of more prestigious publications9 or the anticipated judgments of trusted peers and senior editors within their own newsroom.10 Some use the meetings to enhance their prestige within the news organization by claiming a consistently larger share of the front page than other editors.11 Negotiations in the budget meeting presumably accommodate these conflicting forces while still producing front pages that please the readers and satisfy most editors' news judgments.

This exploratory case study used ethnographic methods and focused interviews with editors at a large daily newspaper to test research assumptions about budget meetings.

Research questions

RQ1

What budget meeting strategies do editors employ to get stories on the front page?

RQ2

Do editors agree with the story selections produced by budget meeting deliberations?

Method

Editors at the News12 were observed for six weeks and interviewed about their work. The News, a morning paper with a circulation in the range of 150,000 to 200,000, publishes in the capital of a southwestern state and employs 180 editors, reporters, graphic artists, photographers and page designers. It is owned by a corporate chain and has no direct, print media competitor. The fieldwork focused on a series of daily budget meetings - one at mid-morning to critique the current day's edition and to plan the next day's, another about 4 p.m. to select front page stories for the next day's edition, and a final, informal session held by top news managers between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. to refine the list of front page stories and to determine their placement.

The first week of fieldwork identified 12 editors who always were asked to recommend front page stories during the 4 p.rn. meeting or who always selected those stories at the 6 p.m. meeting. They are listed by pseudonym, job title, and experience and education level in Table 1. For the next four weeks, the researcher observed how these editors reached their decisions about front page stories. The editors also were asked to explain their story selections during individual focused interviews. The researcher re-interviewed 11 of the 12 editors six months later to check the stability of earlier observations.

Results

Nine of the 12 editors held journalism or journalism-related university degrees. Six had worked as reporters and editors for more than 20 years. With one exception, all the editors had worked at other newspapers. Five had worked at newspapers with larger circulations than the News.

Either Cathy, the deputy managing editor, or Robert, the assistant managing editor, chaired the budget meetings. Other editors referred to them as senior editors or as glass office editors because the walls of their offices were made of glass panes. Cathy and Robert always polled five line editors, who directly supervised reporters, and Harold, the wire editor, for their front page recommendations. Besides Harold, the line editors were Conrad, the state editor; Brian, the metro editor; Cynthia, the deputy metro editor who sometimes substituted for Brian; Jason, the business editor; and Sheila, the sports editor. Three news desk editors also routinely attended these meetings. They included Tom, the slot; Joe, the copy chief who sometimes substituted for Tom; and Brenda, the news editor.

None of the meetings lasted more than 30 minutes during the six-week study period nor did their format vary. For each meeting, the line editors and wire editor prepared budget sheets briefly describing the stories that their desks were developing for the next day's front page and their estimated lengths. These lists were distributed to other editors before the meetings. At 10 a.m., one of the glass office editors critiqued that day's edition and then asked each editor to discuss the merits of the stories they proposed for the next day's edition. One of the glass office editors also chaired the 4 p.m. meeting at which the news desk slot compiled two lists: A keep list of stories slated to appear on the front page and a look list of stories that required further evaluation because either reporters had not finished them or the news wires had not transmitted them. Line editors noted during the course of the case study that the length of the look list was an index to whether it was a weak or strong news day. At 6 p.m., only the senior editors, the slot, and the news editor met to make the final story selections. They seldom selected more than five stories for the front page.