Revisiting Newspapers' Role In Democracy: New Research Suggests An Impact
from the but-how-big-and-will-it-last dept
We've seen a number of stories recently claiming that the death of newspapers would somehow harm (or even do away with) democracy. The whole idea seemed silly, but some new research actually backs up some of that claim. And while I have some problems with it, it's worth presenting the evidence to the contrary as well. The research paper, Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post (pdf file), looks at how the closing of the Cincinnati Post at the end of 2007 impacted local politics in Northern Kentucky in 2008. The research tried to control for other variables and found a noticeable impact: namely, more incumbents won re-election, fewer people ran for office and voter turnout decreased. Some of the impact was small, but the research does a pretty good job trying to control for many other factors.That said... even the researchers admit that this is just one example, and only covers a short period of time. It's not surprising that immediately following the closure of a newspaper, there may not be other sources to fill the gaps (and even if there are, residents may not be as aware of them). What will be quite interesting to watch is what happens next. However, if you happen to live in the Northern Kentucky region, it certainly sounds like there's a wide-open opportunity to create a locally-focused news site.
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News or Newspapers
I guess Northern Kentucky lacks other sources of local news?
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Re: News or Newspapers
They call the airport the "Greater Cincinnati Airport" but it's located in Erlanger, KY. Cincinnati just seems to annex the surrounding towns to the point that everything in the smaller towns rely exclusively on the larger town. In this case the newspaper may be one of those things however I think they still have the Cincinnati Inquirer(or something like that) and a few more..but don't quote me on that..
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Correlation of Cause and Effect
It should be noted there is another paper in this locality so I don't see there is necessarily a correlation that the closure of one paper caused a change in the political theater.
The Post was a distant second to the Cincinnati Enquirer when it closed. It only had a circulation of 27,000. Cincinnati has a population of over 350,000 so it stretches credibility to claim a circulation that reached only about 10% of the adult population has such a far reaching and immediate impact.
The post closed in January 2007. I wonder how many candidates had declared prior to the close of the paper. If fewer candidates were declaring before the Post's demise then the there isn't really a correlation between the closure and new entrants into politics. Political interest may have declining long before the Post exited the scene.
And finally, let's not forget there was a bruising presidential primary campaign underway and a financial shock reverberating through the economy, both of which I am more inclined to believe had greater impact on politics than some low circulation local daily.
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Re: Correlation of Cause and Effect
Note also that you tried to compare the Post to the Enquirer, but so did the paper. The paper noted that the suburbs supported most by the Post were the ones that saw the correlations reported in the paper's conclusion.
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Re: Correlation of Cause and Effect
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Re:
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Cincinnati Post?
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Re: Cincinnati Post?
Cinci is the relevant city to that area of KY.
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The internet is far from ubiquitous
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Re: The internet is far from ubiquitous
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hmm . .
http://xkcd.com/552/
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