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A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers

Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms—ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising—have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Turkel, Eray, Saha, Anish, Owen, Rhett Carson, Martin, Gregory J., Vasserman, Shoshana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325361/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34282020
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105155118
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author Turkel, Eray
Saha, Anish
Owen, Rhett Carson
Martin, Gregory J.
Vasserman, Shoshana
author_facet Turkel, Eray
Saha, Anish
Owen, Rhett Carson
Martin, Gregory J.
Vasserman, Shoshana
author_sort Turkel, Eray
collection PubMed
description Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms—ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising—have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting that local newsrooms produce. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the investigative content of news articles based on article text and influence on subsequent articles. We use our method to examine over-time and cross-sectional patterns in news production by local newspapers in the United States over the past decade. We find surprising stability in the quantity of investigative articles produced over most of the time period examined, but a notable decline in the last 2 y of the decade, corresponding to a recent wave of newsroom layoffs.
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spelling pubmed-83253612021-08-13 A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers Turkel, Eray Saha, Anish Owen, Rhett Carson Martin, Gregory J. Vasserman, Shoshana Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms—ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising—have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting that local newsrooms produce. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the investigative content of news articles based on article text and influence on subsequent articles. We use our method to examine over-time and cross-sectional patterns in news production by local newspapers in the United States over the past decade. We find surprising stability in the quantity of investigative articles produced over most of the time period examined, but a notable decline in the last 2 y of the decade, corresponding to a recent wave of newsroom layoffs. National Academy of Sciences 2021-07-27 2021-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8325361/ /pubmed/34282020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105155118 Text en Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Turkel, Eray
Saha, Anish
Owen, Rhett Carson
Martin, Gregory J.
Vasserman, Shoshana
A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title_full A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title_fullStr A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title_full_unstemmed A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title_short A method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
title_sort method for measuring investigative journalism in local newspapers
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325361/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34282020
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105155118
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