Sorry for just circling around to this, but UNC-Chapel Hill journalism professor Leroy Towns had an interesting post on his Talk Politics blog a while back on the subject of politics & government coverage by North Carolina metropolitan daily newspapers.
A group of students at the journalism school did a content analysis of six NC dailies for a two-week period. Here are some of the detailed findings:
The survey is further indication that we have abandoned state and
local politics for the national scene: the newspapers carried about as
much national political and government news as state and local combined.And we are a nation of sports fans. Combined, the six newspapers
carried much more sports news than political and government news, 27%
sports to 22% political and government. Only the Wilmington StarNews
carried more politics and government than sports?just barely.It also is interesting that all six newspapers followed a similar
pattern in the amount of political news. The StarNews, however, carried
the most local politics and government (9%), nearly twice as much as any
of the other five newspapers. The StarNews also carried considerably
more politics and government in total than did the other five
newspapers.The Winston-Salem Journal carried the least number of local and state
politics and government articles. The N&O and the Fayetteville
Observer trailed in national political and government news.
Be sure to follow the link to Towns’ blog post and read the comments. The results ought to be interpreted carefully, but I still think they are interesting.
