Competition, Circulation And Advertising

Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 2004 by Lacy, Stephen, Martin, Hugh J

Gladney examined quality by surveying senior editors at 257 large dailies, medium-size dailies, small dailies and weeklies.29 His survey showed that editors across newspapers shared common perceptions of quality, but there also were variations. all editors agreed that local coverage and accuracy were the two most important measures of content quality. Good writing was third for all but weekly editors, who ranked it fourth. More variation was found among the other quality measures (news interpretation, lack of sensationalism, visual appeal, etc.). Similar patterns were found for organization standards. All types of editors placed integrity, impartiality and editorial independence among the top four measures of quality. all dailies put staff enterprise fourth, and weeklies placed it sixth. The number-one measure of quality, local coverage, requires a financial commitment to staff size.

Although definitions of quality vary, most editors will tell you that having adequate resources in the form of newshole, numbers of reporters and wire services are at least preconditions to achieving quality. An understaffed newsroom with a limited newshole will not produce as high quality journalism as a newsroom with sufficient staff and newshole. At the same time, this doesn't mean an editor should have all of the staff and newshole that she or he wants. This was the point of the model developed by Lacy.30 The model states there is a optimal point in the relationship between quality and circulation where the quality is high enough to serve most readers but not so high as to be inefficient in serving readers. This model has only been tested indirectly once.31

The increase in newsroom expenditures that flows from competition may not translate into higher quality, but the usual expenditures on larger staffs, a larger newshole and more news services certainly increase the probability of improving quality. A classic study by Danielson and Adams examined completeness of coverage of the 1960 election using a national sample.32 They measured completeness in the 96 dailies by seeing whether the papers covered a set of 42 election issues randomly selected from The New York Times' coverage. They reported a positive correlation between completeness of coverage and the size of the news staff and number of wire services. To argue that quality and circulation are not related would be inconsistent with the studies that have connected higher quality and content variations with increased circulation and penetration33 and with a study that found poor quality was related to a decline in circulation and penetration.34

Two articles reported research concerning the impact of newspaper competition on society. Vermeer found that counties with daily newspaper competition had closer U.S. senatorial elections.35 Lasorsa (1991) reported that people in counties with daily competition responded with a larger number of important issues facing the United States when surveyed than did people in counties without competition.36 These suggest that newspaper competition provides increased public information for readers.