Locally generated content comprises nearly 80% of front page content for most American newspapers, with Associated Press and other wire service content comprising between 15% and 20% across various circulation categories. However, newspapers with daily circulation between 30,000 and 50,000 provide a sharp distinction – a “curve” or “groove” – publishing an average of barely 60% locally generated content on their front page, pulling nearly 40% from wire services. The anomaly declines somewhat for publications with daily circulation between 50,000 and 100,000. This statistical content analysis of 42 American newspapers of diverse circulation sizes also reveals a universal focus on domestic politics, which comprises nearly a third of all locally generated and wire content, and reveals key commonalities across circulation categories and regional boundaries. / text

In my research I use qualitative content analysis to determine if and how the hegemony of the capitalist class in the United States influences the content of news texts on poverty. I analyze messages from two contrasting historical eras, the War on Poverty era and the post-Reagan era.

Historians disagree on the reasons the Populist Movement and labor failed to achieve a political coalition. Some find the cause in a backward-looking Populist ideology that imagined solutions to the problems of rapid industrialization could be found in a yeoman republic. According to this view, rank-and-file Populists neither understood nor had sympathy with the problems facing workers in the mass industries of the late twentieth century. Others see Populism as a progressive movement that accepted industrialization but sought to bring it under government control so that its material advantages would benefit all citizens, especially the producer classes of farmers, laborers, and small businessmen. These historians blame the failure of a coalition to develop on the immaturity of the labor movement; it was not intellectually or organizationally advanced enough to appreciate Populists’ shared interests with workers or to accept their offer of a coalition. Richard Hofstadter and Oscar Handlin are key scholars in the first school; Lawrence Goodwyn and C. Vann Woodward are acknowledged spokespersons for the second. This study attempts to address the coalition issue by examining the responses of Populist and Republican newspapers to the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pullman Strike of 1894. These strikes were selected because both were notorious for their violence and bloodshed and both elicited armed government intervention on behalf of business. Newspapers were examined around the time of the strikes to gain a sense of local Populist sympathy with labor and of its commitment to a political coalition of farmers and workers. Populist response was compared to opinions expressed in Republican newspapers to determine if significant ideological differences existed between the Parties. Reviewing newspapers throughout the state and for events that occurred two years apart served as a check on regional and chronological variations. In all, over 400 newspaper editions were reviewed. The study’s findings solidly support to the perspective that depicts Populism as actively seeking a coalition based on a realistic understanding of labor’s position in an industrial economy. Universal editorial stances in favor of labor also advance the position that this was an authentic grass-roots expression and not simply a reflection of national leadership ideology. All Populist newspapers called for a political coalition of farmers and laborers. Populist response was markedly different than Republican. With a few exceptions, Republican newspapers took the side of capital. Further, this investigation revealed no evidence of desire to return to an imaginary yeomen republic in Populist newspapers. The study also examined the newspapers for instances of anti-Semitism and nativism associated with Homestead and Pullman. There was little evidence of either. While this might not be surprising with regard to anti-Semitism since the strikes did not revolve around issues of banking or credit, it is significant with regard to nativism. Anti-foreigner sentiment was often associated with strikes and with the importation of cheap, European labor. If nativism infected the Populist Movement, as is claimed by many historians who see it as a reactionary movement that practiced status politics, it should have been reflected in the pages of these newspapers. Its absence raises questions about negative conceptualizations of the Movement. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept, of History.

This study compares the May, 1974 and May, 1975 editions of suburban daily newspapers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The purposes of the study were to determine how, when, and why suburban daily newspapers in the metroplex altered their editorial content and to evaluate the effects of the changes on circulation. The thesis is organized into four chapters. Chapter I introduces the study. Chapter II gives a historical overview. Chapter III analyzes the data. Chapter IV contains some conclusions. Some conclusions that emerged from this study include: 1. Suburban newspapers have small editorial staf fs. 2. Eight of the newspapers altered their content. 3. The changes helped them maintain or increase their circulation. 4. All of the editors responding to the questionnaire said that local news and sports are their primary goals.

The analysis of mainstream newspaper content has long been mined by communication scholars and researchers for insights into public opinion and perceptions. In recent years, scholars have been examining African-American authored periodicals to obtain similar insights. Hearkening back to the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement in the United States, the highly-publicized killings of African-American men by police officers during the past several years have highlighted longstanding strained police-community relations. As part of its role as both a reflection of, and an advocate for, the African-American community, African-American journalistic texts contain a wealth of data about African-American public opinion about, and perceptions of, police. In years past, media content analysts would manually sift through newspapers to divine interesting police-related themes and variables worthy of study. But, with the exponential growth of digitized texts, communication scholars are experimenting with computerized text analysis tools like topic modeling software to aid them in their content analyses. This thesis considers to what degree topic modeling software can be used at the exploratory stage of designing a content analysis study to aid in uncovering themes and variables worthy of further investigation. Appendix A contains results of the manual exploratory content analysis. The list of topics generated by the topic modeling software may be found in Appendix B. / Media Studies & Production / Accompanied by one .pdf file: NLG Thesis Appendices Final.pdf

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of determining what differences, if any, existed between two newspapers with different circulation characteristics and whether the two papers were in competition. The thrice-weekly News-Advertiser and the five-day daily Leader were measured by a content analysis over eight weeks and by a readership and advertiser survey. This study concludes that the two newspapers are in competition in six of eleven designated categories of the content analysis, using Spearman rho and t-tests. However, the two newspapers seemed to be aiming at different markets in Lewisville, because one paper subscribes to a news service and prints thousands of inches of wire news and the other paper is all local news.

"The development of newspapers in Dallas can be classified into certain definite dates: 1849-1865---the founding of the first newspaper to the Reconstruction period following the Civil War; 1865-1885--the postwar period and the expansion of newspapers; 1885-1906--the development of the present newspapers, the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald, and others; 1906-1942--the advent of sensational journalism and the emergence of the newspaper as big business; and 1942 to the present--a decade of unprecedented growth and entrenchment."--leaf iv.

Many recent books and articles have aimed to account for the recent financial crisis. They have exposed the facts, identified the causes, and assigned responsibility. They have proposed solutions to prevent a similar crisis to happen in the future. The debate is still ongoing, revealing a process of History in the making. My dissertation builds on this debate, but it does not contribute to it. I do not try to understand who is responsible for this crisis. I instead try to grasp how responsibility for this crisis was constructed. I explore the production of - and response to - a discourse of accusation. To study accusation discourses, I conducted a media analysis of three main national newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. I show how a blame game dominated by Democrats participated in the crystallization on Wall Street’s responsibility. To study responses to accusation discourses, I conducted thirty-three interviews in three Wall Street banks from Fall 2008 to Summer 2010. I show that bankers became increasingly defensive over time, while never accepting any personal responsibility for the crisis. Similarly, they reject the label of the “greedy banker.” Overall I argue that the complexity of modern social arrangement loosens the intrinsic connection between responsibility and accountability.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 396-404).

Most newspapers today are struggling to survive in an increasingly fragmented and digital media environment. How have their owners or corporate parents shaped or adapted their business practices to in order to thrive? This question guides the overall approach to this study. The focus is on one newspaper, the Dallas Morning News. In particular, how has the News used corporate messages to respond to the changing media landscape? This study employs forms of rhetorical and discourse analysis to determine the effectiveness of the News' corporate messages during a 10-year period in order to answer this question. This study finds that the News used inconsistent and ineffective corporate communications throughout this tumultuous period.