Partisanship Influences Perceptions of Communications from Government Agencies

Government agencies have long distributed prepackaged “video news releases,” or VNRs, to media outlets, as part of their mission to keep the public informed about their policies and activities. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that distributing VNRs without clearly identifying the government as their source, as was done on at least two occasions by the Bush Administration, violates laws against covert propaganda. However, to date little has been known about the effects of attribution – or lack of attribution – of government VNRs on audiences.

A study by a team of researchers from Penn State University and the University of Hartford published in the current issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research indicates that the effects of attribution on audiences seems to depend more on who’s watching the VNR than on what the government agency is saying in it.

According to Colleen Connolly-Ahern, an Assistant Professor at Penn State University and the leader of the research team that included Susan Grantham of University of Hartford and Maria Cabrera-Baukus of Penn State, “The original reason for the legislation, and the premise upon which the GAO has operated, is that VNRs are somehow more credible when they appear to be independent news stories, and not identified as government communications. But our findings don’t indicate that at all.”

In fact, said Connolly-Ahern, the credibility of the communications seems to depend on your political affiliation. “Self-identified Republicans actually judged a VNR higher in expertise when they knew it was from a government agency, and not a traditional news story. For self-identified Democrats the effects were reversed, with Democrats finding the VNR less expert when it came from a governmental agency.” The data was collected during the last year of President Bush’s second term.

The role of government is to develop policies that support public interests and reduce risks for all citizens. But Connolly-Ahern, Grantham and Cabrera-Baukus’ findings indicate it’s important for administrators to understand that citizens may base the credibility of their communications on their relationship with the party in power.

The research was supported by a grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at the Penn State College of Communications. The authors are now planning to repeat the study. “The change in administrations has given us the chance to see whether or not the findings are different under a Democratic administration,” said Connolly-Ahern.

Contacts: Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Assistant Professor, College of Communications, Penn State University, connolly-ahern@psu.edu or Susan Grantham, Associate Professor, School of Communication, University of Hartford, Grantham@hartford.edu

• Download The Effects of Attribution of VNRs and Risk on News Viewers’ Assessments of Credibility by Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Penn State University; Susan Grantham, University of Hartford; and Maria Cabrera-Baukus, Penn State University.
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Research You Can Use is produced by a volunteer group of faculty and staff within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The group selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals that may interest journalists. Journalists may use the releases for stories or for continuing education.

A PDF version of all participating articles are available for download. For a reprint, contact the person cited or Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Ste. A, Columbia, SC 29210-5667, e-mail: AEJMCHQ@aol.com, telephone: (803) 798-0271. For more information about the Research You Can Use project, please contact Mich Sineath, e-mail: AEJMCpr@aol.com.

Future of Online News: Winners & Losers

A winter 2010 Newspaper Research Journal study found that newspapers and news Web sites generally cover the same topics but newspapers offer greater breadth and depth than their online counterparts. Yet online news was unmatched in its scope of international coverage and its strong focus on popular issues, analysis and opinion.

The study’s researcher Scott Maier, journalism professor at the University of Oregon, will lead a LIVE online chat at 12 p.m. EST on Thursday, February 18 to discuss the future of online journalism with a panel of new media experts:

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Kathy Best is managing editor, digital news and innovation, at The Seattle Times. Best joined The Seattle Times in February 2007, simultaneously making a leap across the country and across the print/digital divide. She works with a staff of 25 producers, designers and engineers at seattletimes.com and is the bridge between the Times newsroom and its online operations.

Before joining the Times, Best was the assistant managing editor for Sunday, national and foreign news at The Baltimore Sun; assistant managing editor/metro at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and assistant managing editor/metro at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Prior to her move into editing, Best was a reporter for 15 years in Illinois and Washington, D.C. She and her husband, investigative reporter Andrew Schneider, live in Des Moines, WA.

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Melissa Ludtke is the editor of Nieman Reports, a quarterly magazine about journalism published by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (www.niemanreports.org). She is the author of “On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America,” (1997, Random House and 1999, University of California Press).

Ludtke’s  journalism career began as a freelancer with ABC Sports; she went to Sports Illustrated, CBS News, and Time magazine where she worked as a reporter/researcher; at Time, Melissa became a correspondent at Time, reporting primarily on children and family issues, as well as on the 1984 presidential campaign and the 1984 Summer Olympics. As a baseball reporter at Sports Illustrated, she was the plaintiff in a 1997 federal lawsuit (Ludtke v. Kuhn) to gain equal access for women reporters to interview major league players.

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Jane B. Singer is an associate professor in the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and a Visiting Professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Central Lancashire (UK). From 2007 to 2009, she was the Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism at UCLan.

Singer’s research explores digital journalism, including changing roles, perceptions, norms and practices. Before earning her Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Missouri, she was the first news manager of Prodigy Interactive Services. She also has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. She currently is president of Kappa Tau Alpha, the national journalism honor society.

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Scott Maier’s 20-year career as a newspaper and wire-service reporter includes covering city hall, the state legislature, Latin America, and a variety of other news beats. He was founder of CAR Northwest, an industry-academic partnership providing training in computer-assisted reporting to newsrooms and journalism classrooms.

Maier’s research interests include newsroom numeracy, media accuracy, diffusion of new technology and managing newsrooms for technological change. Maier received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.A. from the University of Southern California.

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To participate in the live event, visit http://aejmc.org/topics/newsroom/chat/, type in your name and chat!

Political blogs rely on mainstream media, not sources, for information

Since political blogs burst into prominence in the 2004 presidential election, many have argued that these blogs are a new and important form of political journalism that is increasingly supplanting mainstream media.

But a new study by an Emerson College researcher, published in the current (Autumn 2009) issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, shows that bloggers do little original reporting and that political blogs rely heavily on the mainstream media for their information.

“Nearly half of the hypertext links – which serve the roughly the same purpose as attribution in a newspaper story – in political blogs direct the reader to mainstream media stories. Only 15 percent take readers to ‘primary source’ material such as government documents or candidates’ public statements,” said Mark Leccese, the author of the study and assistant professor in the Journalism Department of Emerson College in Boston.

The study examined more than 2,000 hypertext links in six top independent political blogs – three liberal and three conservative – over seven consecutive days in January 2008 and placed each link into one of four categories: links to mainstream media, links to other blogs, links to other pages on the same Web site, and links to primary source material.

“I worked as a political reporter for newspapers for more than 20 years, so when political blogs became a phenomenon, I wanted to try to understand the similarities and differences in how bloggers and mainstream media reporters go about their work,” Leccese said. “Reporters build their stories from primary source material, so I designed a study to determine whether political bloggers do the same. They don’t.”

Readership of blogs has exploded in less than a decade. A Pew Internet & American Life survey in 2008 found that a quarter of American adults read blogs and that the second most popular topic for blogs – after “personal” – is politics. In a 2007 poll, 55 percent of Americans agreed blogs are “important to the future of American journalism.”

Almost half of the hypertext links in the six blogs studied – Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Talking Points Memo, Michelle Malkin, InstaPundit and Power Line – took readers to Web sites run by media organizations that employ salaried staff reporters.

“The standard format of a blog post is a link to a mainstream media story with comment and opinion added by the blogger,” Leccese said. “In that way, political blogs are like a newspaper comprised of only op-ed pages featuring opinion columnists who gather most of their information from secondary sources.”

About a quarter of the hypertext links took readers to other blogs. “This is the famous and now well-documented ‘echo chamber’ effect,” Leccese said. “This suggests that for political bloggers, opinion reinforcement is more important than gathering and disseminating information.”

One survey found that a third of bloggers consider themselves journalists. But this study argues that while bloggers may be considered journalists in the narrowest definition of the word—those who keep a journal or whose writing is featured regularly in a mass medium—they do not fit more common and widely accepted definition of journalists: workers in the mass media who seek out facts largely from primary sources and present those facts to media consumers.

CONTACT: Mark Leccese, assistant professor, Journalism Department, Emerson College, 617-824-3857, Mark_Leccese@emerson.edu.

• Download Online Information Sources of Political Blogs by Mark Leccese, Emerson College.
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Research You Can Use is produced by a volunteer group of faculty and staff within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The group selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals that may interest journalists. Journalists may use the releases for stories or for continuing education.

A PDF version of all participating articles are available for download. For a reprint, contact the person cited or Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Ste. A, Columbia, SC 29210-5667, e-mail: AEJMCHQ@aol.com, telephone: (803) 798-0271. For more information about the Research You Can Use project, please contact Mich Sineath, e-mail: AEJMCpr@aol.com.

Nontraditional Online News Media Seek Employees with Adaptive Expertise

Nontraditional online news sources are more likely to hire people with broad bodies of knowledge (“adaptive expertise”) while traditional news organizations more commonly seek out those with solid technical skills, according to a recent study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

Dr. Serena Carpenter, an assistant professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, examined over a six-month period 664 online media job postings on JournalismJobs.com to gauge whether online news media employers prefer employees with specific skill sets or with knowledge spanning several topics.

Traditional news media were still most interested in hiring new employees with “nontechnical routine expertise,” such as solid writing skills, working under deadline, editing, teamwork and communication skills, and Associated Press Style. About equally, however, they also were seeking employees with “technical routine expertise,” such as content posting and management, image editing, blogging, video editing, and social media knowledge.

Nontraditional online news media were as interested in nontechnical routine expertise as traditional news media, but less interested in routine technical expertise (perhaps because they assumed new employees already had such skills or that they could be easily taught). Instead, nontraditional online news media were significantly more interested in hiring employees with adaptive expertise, such as knowledge outside journalism/mass communication, creativity, independent and critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving abilities.

Regardless of their preferences, the job postings for traditional and nontraditional online news sources expressed interest in employees with some expertise in both areas, suggesting that teaching specific and broad knowledge areas should each have a place in the journalism and mass communication curriculum.

The study appears in the Autumn 2009 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

CONTACT: Serena Carpenter, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, Serena.Carpenter [at] asu.edu.

• Download An Application of the Theory of Expertise: Teaching Broad and Skill Knowledge Areas to Prepare Journalists for Change, by Serena Carpenter, Arizona State University.
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Research You Can Use is produced by a volunteer group of faculty and staff within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The group selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals that may interest journalists. Journalists may use the releases for stories or for continuing education.

A PDF version of all participating articles are available for download. For a reprint, contact the person cited or Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Ste. A, Columbia, SC 29210-5667, e-mail: AEJMCHQ@aol.com, telephone: (803) 798-0271. For more information about the Research You Can Use project, please contact Mich Sineath, e-mail: AEJMCpr@aol.com.

Using Anonymous Sources Harms Credibility of News Industry

Researchers have shown once again that the use of anonymous sources harms the credibility of news stories, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Readers sometimes believe sources have a vested interest in being anonymous, and they may also interpret the use of un-named sources as reporter incompetence, according to the study. Either way, the result is lower credibility.

The researchers, Miglena Sternadori and Esther Thorson, examined how readers reacted to investigative news stories using anonymous sources, as well as how the designation of a story as an “award winner” affected believability.

Stories in which the source had a vested interest and stories in which the author did not explain the use of anonymous sources ranked lowest in terms of credibility. Stories in the “award winners” category had more credibility with readers.

The authors called on future researchers to examine the effects of different types of anonymous sources on credibility.

Sternadori is an assistant professor in the Department of Contemporary Media and Journalism at the University of South Dakota. Thorson is a professor and acting dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

The study appears in the fall 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.

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Print Editions of Papers Reach More Readers than Online Sites

Newspaper Web sites reach only 15 percent of local Internet users, while print editions still gather far more readers, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

H. Iris Chyi and Seth C. Lewis examined readership in 68 local news markets across the nation and found that newspapers reached more people in print form than through online editions. In most local markets, more users logged on to national news Web sites, such as MSNBC or Yahoo! News for information more so than their local newspaper’s Web site.

The study also found that circulation size was not an indication of a Web site’s reach. Some smaller newspapers were more successful than larger papers in reaching more readers through the Web.

Chyi and Lewis said the results of their study suggest the answer for newspapers struggling in today’s economy is not to drop the print edition all together, calling such a solution “too simplistic.”

Chyi is an assistant professor and Lewis is a doctoral student in the department of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

The study appears in the fall 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.

• Download Use of Online Newspaper Sites Lags Behind Print Editions by Hsiang Iris Chyi and Seth C. Lewis
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Patriot Act Coverage Focuses on Concerns for Individual Liberty

Newspapers focused on concerns for individual liberty over national security during the debate surrounding the controversial Patriot Act, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Examination of four major newspapers showed a strong emphasis on the legal issues surrounding the law, which was passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Researchers Weimin Chang and Ralph Izard concluded that media kept a watchful eye on the government as the debate over the Patriot Act raged across the country.

The study also shows articles often cited sources that were critical or skeptical of the law, as opposed to federal government officials.

Chang is an associate professor in the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University, and Izard is the Sig Mickelson/CBS Professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.

The study appears in the fall 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.

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Multimedia Growth at Newspapers a Slow Process

Newspapers are not moving as quickly into the multimedia world as some observers profess, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

In a national survey, researcher John Russial found little staff time devoted to producing cross-platform materials, such as video or audio for the Internet. Most of the work done for the Web was the production of “breaking news” bulletins, a writing-based activity.

Despite calls for training of reporters in various multimedia fields from industry experts, most cross-platform work is being produced by photographers or staff members in specific online departments and not by print reporters, Russial found.

With the high price of producing cross-platform material, multimedia content will not grow significantly until newspapers find ways to convert extensive multimedia coverage into profit, Russial writes.

Russial is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. His study is published in the summer 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

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Women More Likely to Leave Newspaper Careers

More female journalists are leaving their jobs at newspapers, citing their own feelings of cynicism and exhaustion, according to a recent survey published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Scott Reinardy examined the attitudes of journalists working at newspapers across the country, asking about job demands, family life and whether they intended to leave the field.

More than 60 percent of the female journalists surveyed said they either intend to leave the field or “don’t know” if they will. Those who said they were intending to leave the newspaper business expressed feelings of burnout

Reinardy also found that levels of exhaustion were higher among women than among men and that women had a lesser sense of professional accomplishment than did their male colleagues.

Reinardy is an assistant professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas. His study is published in the summer 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

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High School Publication Experience, Academic Performance Linked

Experience at a newspaper or yearbook in high school leads to higher levels of academic achievement in college, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

The research team of Jack Dvorak and Changhee Choi found students with high school publications experience achieved higher grade point averages during their freshman year of college than did students with no publication experience.

Students with high school journalism experience also achieved better high school grade point averages, higher scores on the ACT exam and higher grades in their first college English course than did students with no publication experience.

While Choi and Dvorak say the study does not prove causality, the pair concluded that high school journalism activities provide an outlet for talented and active students to express themselves and hone their skills.

Dvorak is a professor and Choi is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism at Indiana University. Their study is published in the summer 2009 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

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