Scale and Complexity of Media Markets as Determinants of Local Government News Coverage

民选政府的成功取决于有关当选代表的信息流动。新闻媒体在美国已经发挥这一功能200多年了。最近的发展威胁到大都市媒体市场中传统媒体（报纸、电视和广播电台）履行这一功能的能力。中心城市人口继续下降，郊区的扩张正在扩大这些市场中政府单位的数量，并改变其性质。与此同时，面对来自有线电视、卫星电视和互联网的日益激烈的竞争，报道人员正被削减到海岸，以提高利润率。尽管这些转变的规模很大，但关于旧媒体和新媒体充分报道市政府的能力的学术研究仍然有限，而且零散。这就留下了一些悬而未决的问题：新闻媒体对地方政府的报道有多好，哪些因素影响报道，以及基于网络的媒体，如政治博客和公民新闻网站，是否提供地方政府的报道。为了解决这些问题和相关问题，该项目将对100个大都市统计区的随机样本进行研究，并对每个内容分析来自中心城市的所有新闻媒体和选定的郊区城市的所有新闻媒体的新闻，以确定地方政府在传统地方新闻媒体和网络上的报道的程度和质量，这两个因素是：当地新闻媒体的报道数量和比例，以及公民可用于政治决策的当地新闻报道数量和比例，以及对更具短暂性和可能具有大众吸引力的事件的报道。 调查结果将成为衡量传统媒体中地方新闻，特别是地方政府新闻在媒体变革时期的状况以及评估传统媒体新替代品的影响的基础。 通过研究竞争和所有权结构等影响因素，这项研究将有助于为政府制定电子媒体政策提供信息。

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.