The success of democratically elected governments depends on a flow of information about elected representatives. News media have served this function in the United States for more than 200 years. Recent developments threaten the ability of traditional media outlets (newspapers, TV, and radio stations) in large metropolitan media markets to fulfill this function. Central city populations continue to decline and suburban sprawl is expanding the number of and altering the nature of government units in these markets. Simultaneously, reportorial staffs are being cut to shore up profit margins in the face of growing competition from cable, satellite and the Internet.
Despite the magnitude of these transformations, scholarship about the ability of both old and new media to adequately cover city governments remains limited and fragmented. This leaves unanswered questions about how well news media cover local governments, which factors influence coverage, and whether or not Web-based media, such as political blogs and citizen journalism Web sites, are providing local government coverage.
To address these and related questions, this project will study a random sample of 100 metropolitan statistical areas and for each content analyze news from all news media in the central city and all the news media within a selected suburban city to determine the extent and quality of local government coverage in traditional local news media and Web-based news outlets and the amount and proportion of local news reporting that can be used by citizens for political decisions versus coverage of events with more transitory and, perhaps, mass appeal. The results will constitute a base against which to measure the state of local news in traditional media, and particularly local government news, in a period of media change and also assess the impact of new substitutes for traditional media. By examining influences such as competition and ownership structure, the study will help inform government policy for electronic media.
