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

民主选举产生的政府的成功取决于民选代表的信息流通。200多年来，新闻媒体在美国一直发挥着这一功能。最近的发展威胁到大城市媒体市场中传统媒体（报纸、电视和广播电台）履行这一职能的能力。中心城市人口继续减少，郊区的扩张扩大了这些市场中政府单位的数量，并改变了它们的性质。与此同时，面对来自有线电视、卫星电视和互联网日益激烈的竞争，新闻报道人员正在被裁减，以支撑利润率。尽管这些转变幅度巨大，但关于新旧媒体充分报道城市政府的能力的学术研究仍然有限且支离破碎。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，以及政治博客和公民新闻网站等基于网络的媒体是否在提供地方政府的报道。为了解决这些问题和相关问题，这个项目将研究随机抽取的100名都市统计领域,为每一个内容分析新闻的新闻媒体在中部城市,所有的新闻媒体在选定的郊区城市地方政府确定的程度和质量报道当地新闻媒体和网络媒体和传统的数量和比例可以使用当地新闻报道,公民的政治决策和事件的报道更多的暂时的,也许,大规模的吸引力。这些结果将构成衡量传统媒体，特别是地方政府新闻在媒体变革时期的状况的基础，并评估新的替代品对传统媒体的影响。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.