Major Metropolitan Newspapers Research Articles

An oral history of the rise and fall of a newspaper library: The Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province newspaper library, 1968–2012

This is a case study chronicling the rise and fall of the newspaper library that serviced the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province daily newspapers in Canada during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This article examines a specific case of the decline of a major metropolitan newspaper company, the subsequent closure of the library that served two newsrooms, and the dissolution of its collections. A narrative inquiry approach to oral history was used to gather stories from the individuals involved in the development of the newspaper library. Reflections on the value and persistence of the collections developed by newspaper libraries are offered.

The relationship between volume of newspaper coverage and policy action for nutrition issues in Australia: a content analysis

ObjectivesUnhealthy diets are a leading risk factor for the global burden of disease. Research suggests that comprehensive, population-level solutions are required to attenuate this problem, though such policies have not been adopted. Increased media attention may lead to government-led policy action through issue definition and agenda setting. The aim of this study was to analyse which nutrition policy issues are covered in print media, and whether media attention correlated with relevant policy actions in Australia. Study design/methodsA content analysis was conducted on newspaper articles published between 1999 and 2019 from 11 major Australian metropolitan newspapers. ResultsOf the policy issues identified, few received meaningful media attention. Of those with peaks in media attention, only fortification and labelling issues coincided with government-led policy actions, while regulating junk-food advertising to children, sugar-sweetened beverage taxation, and the formulation of a National Nutrition Policy did not result in policy outcomes. ConclusionsGiven the limited coverage of nutrition policy issues, the relationship between media attention and policy actions for the captured issues may not be determinable. In addition, factors including social, political, and historical contexts may be stronger influences on policymaking than media attention. Although this study did not demonstrate a relationship between media attention and policy action because of low coverage of nutrition issues, it did identify the media are generally reporting nutrition policy issues with a positive public health framing. Promoting favourable coverage of nutrition policy issues is still an important tool for advocacy globally. Moving forward, increasing the volume of coverage of nutrition issues should be an advocacy priority.

Очерки В. Я. Ирецкого в контексте публицистики 1917-1918 гг.

This article aims to initiate a study of an extremely interesting body of texts by Viktor Ya. Iretsky that were published in the major metropolitan newspaper Rech' [Speech] and caused a resonance in 1917-1918. The study of the originality of the half-forgotten prose writer's revolutionary journalism in the context of the ideological searches of the author's famous contemporaries - M. Gorky, V.G. Korolenko, L.N. Andreev, A.A. Blok, I.A. Bunin - seems relevant. Based on newspaper, magazine, and book collections of the National Library of Russia, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the House of Russia Abroad, the article analyzes the essays published in Rech' from March 1917 to August 1918 using historical-literary and intertextual research methods. In the course of the research, the author selected the most revealing essays that are comparable to well-known journalistic works about the revolution, analyzed their artistic originality, evolution, and similarity to the journalism of 1917-1918. Iretsky's texts are thematically and ideologically similar to Andreev's articles and diary entries, Korolenko's writings, and - particularly - Gorky's cycle published in Novaya Zhizn' [New Life]; however, theses texts describe the facts, moods, and the revolutionary atmosphere from the point of view of an observer who opposes the revolution and, since May 1917, sees it only as destructive force. The author concludes that Iretsky's essays, reflecting the metamorphoses of the intelligentsia's perception of the revolution, problems close to Gorky's and Korolenko's notes, are more similar to emigrants' diaries, especially Bunin's Cursed Days, in their confessional nature, antiBolshevik pathos and artistry. The specificity of Iretsky's texts is explained by the attention to specific everyday material immersed in the cultural and historical context. The value of the essays is determined by its orientation to everyday life, inclusion of the living tissue of life in the texts; by its confessional nature, which back in 1917 and 1918 revealed a critical emigrant attitude - then expressed in diaries only - to the course of the revolutionary transformation of Russia; and by the inclusion of expressive historical and cultural figurative elements. Abstracting, analyzing the situation from the point of view of European history and culture (including the ideals of the French revolution), using images of works of Russian literature (Dead Souls by Gogol, The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, etc.) and reminiscences on them, Iretsky does not approach authors of political pamphlets, but rather such important figures of Russian journalism as Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Korolenko, and the diary prose of the brightest Russian writers.

Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern AmericansBuilding Natures: Modern American Poetry, Landscape Architecture, and City PlanningThe Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition

Book Review| March 01 2021 Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern AmericansBuilding Natures: Modern American Poetry, Landscape Architecture, and City PlanningThe Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans. By Guarneri, Julia. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press. 2017. 330 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $30.00; e-book available.Building Natures: Modern American Poetry, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning. By Daniel, Julia E.Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press. 2017. ix, 200 pp. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $27.50; e-book, $55.00.The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition. By Rowan, Jamin Creed. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. 2017. 195 pp. Cloth, $47.50; e-book available. Barbara Eckstein Barbara Eckstein Barbara Eckstein has pursued matters urban and environmental in the books Sustaining New Orleans (2006) and Story and Sustainability (coedited with James Throgmorton, 2003) and in other publications and actions. She recently retired from the English department at the University of Iowa where she taught courses in environmental humanities; built, with students, faculty and public partners, peoplesweathermap.org; and was a member of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2021) 93 (1): 148–150. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8878566 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Barbara Eckstein; Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern AmericansBuilding Natures: Modern American Poetry, Landscape Architecture, and City PlanningThe Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition. American Literature 1 March 2021; 93 (1): 148–150. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8878566 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The result of meticulous historical scholarship, Newsprint Metropolis provides a cleanly written account of the role played by major US metropolitan newspapers in the making of cities and their inhabitants from 1880 to 1930. For her case studies Julia Guarneri chooses Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The interest of Guarneri’s book, uninterrupted by any urban theorizing, lies in the explication of how this making occurred and in the numerous illustrations enhancing that explication. Both the decades and the cities at the center of the argument prove well chosen. Although the book’s introduction, which provides a less than fulsome account of the diversity of Americans, their news, and newspaper options, raises some questions about how they might fare in its pages, the chapters do tell a story increasingly attuned to exactly which readers are being made as Americans by major metropolitan newspapers,... Copyright © 2021 by Duke University Press2021 Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Regional and source differences in midsize newspapers reporting New York Times v. Sullivan

This study focuses on midsize newspaper coverage of the New York Times v. Sullivan case that strengthened press freedom. A content analysis of articles from 29 Northern, 25 Southern and six multistate major metropolitan newspapers identified differences in article frequency and placement related to source and coverage type. The hierarchy of influences model explains perceived regional bias. Midsize newspapers relied on wire news articles more often, with Northern papers publishing more editorials, including multiple editorials and original coverage.

“I’m a news junkie . . . I like being informed”: Mobile news use by a newspaper’s digital subscribers

A mixed methods research project combining quantitative online survey results with semistructured interview data explored how a major metropolitan newspaper’s digital subscribers engage with mobile news. Themes of continuity indicate that motivations in traditional newspaper use remain salient in mobile news: information-seeking, the pleasure of reading and powerful daily habits surrounding news use. In addition, participants’ responses suggest additional situational or process gratifications from using mobile media devices, in addition to gratifications derived from content.

Profile of Eleanor Early: Negotiating Women’s Popular Writing in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Profile of Eleanor Early:Negotiating Women’s Popular Writing in the Mid-Twentieth Century Brianne Jaquette (bio) In 1952, journalist and author Eleanor Early found herself being strangled by a snake while hunting for wild boars in Trinidad. In the summer of 2008, I found myself shifting through Early’s archives at the John J. Burns Library at Boston College. I had never heard of Early, but when I was searching the finding aids at Burns Library, I was immediately drawn to her name. Maybe it was the alliteration, but regardless of how trivial the initial appeal, she has stuck with me; I find myself thinking of her and her career path over and over again. With this profile, then, I want to draw attention to Early, a popular and widely known writer in the mid-twentieth century, in the hopes that others will be enticed by this figure as well. Early was an incredibly productive writer, and her work in a range of venues on a multitude of topics illustrates the negotiations that it took to be a woman in public and professional spaces over the course of the twentieth century. Early had a prosperous career spanning almost forty years from the early 1930s until her death in 1969 at the age of seventy-four. She was best known for her travel guides, including New Orleans Holiday (1947), Cape Cod Summer (1949), New York Holiday (1950), and Washington Holiday (1955). She also wrote other diverse books such as She Knew What He Wanted (1941) and New England Cookbook (1954).1 In addition to her numerous books, Early was a prolific journalist, who wrote on a variety of topics for major periodicals in the United States, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. Although Early had a long-lasting and far-reaching career, she is now an obscure figure in American letters. She was born in Newton, Massachusetts on 27 April 1895, but little biographical information is available about Early as a young child.2 In a short outline of her life, written to publicize one of her books, she wrote, “It is fashionable these days to have had a miserable childhood, but mine was exceedingly happy. I adored my parents [and] loved my brothers and sisters.”3 We do know that in her early years, she moved with her family to Wellesley, Massachusetts, and after graduating from high school in Wellesley, she attended Miss Wheelock’s School in Boston, where she trained to be a kindergarten teacher, graduating in 1917.4 [End Page 201] Instead of becoming a teacher as planned, Early secured a job as a reporter for the Boston American.5 An informational piece about her life written for Rinehart Publishers notes that the “main road for Eleanor Early looked like a comfortable career as a kindergarten teacher in her home town,” but Early was not fond of already carved out paths and gave up the “too comfortable” route of teacher for a more exciting position as a reporter in Boston.6 This move was quite bold for the young Early; according to Olga Owens, she had to be an “amazing girl” to go to town and get “herself a job.”7 Early was viewed as exceptional because her chosen profession was not particularly hospitable to women at that time. Sally Joy White, the first woman hired for the staff of a major metropolitan newspaper, had only achieved this feat in 1870.8 While the number of female journalists was ever increasing from a dismal 288 in 1880 to the more substantial 4,000 by 1910, there was still not an abundance of positions, support, or role models available to young women like Early.9 In addition to societal disapprobation, Early had personal barriers to work around or overcome when starting her job with the Boston American. Apparently she could not even type when she applied to work as a reporter and had to ask other people to type her stories for her. Despite this fact, she eventually became the successful author of a sports column, “Girls in Sports.”10 According to a newspaper article saved by Early, hers was the first sports column in...

How Four Metropolitan Newspapers Reacted to Michael Sam’s Announcement About Being Gay

The aim of this study is to learn how major newspapers write about a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender athlete and to determine how major newspapers use language to write specifically about an athlete who publicly announces that he is gay. A content analysis study was done of newspaper coverage about Michael Sam during the 15 days after he announced he is gay. Data was obtained from four major metropolitan newspapers — The Houston Chronicle, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch — to identify trends after Sam’s announcement. Results of the analysis show journalists made poor word choices and some dismissed him as an athlete, but the majority of the coverage praised Sam for deciding to announce his sexuality publicly. Data obtained in the study seem to imply that, although most instances showed writers using proper LGBT terminology, more work needs to be done. The findings have relevance for theory building and practical implications for sports reporters, journalists and other media.

The Creation of the Nippon Newsreel Company: Personal Rivalry and Profit in Wartime Japan

Japan’s war in China contributed to the growth of Japanese-produced newsreels, but shortages and rations caused by the war also lead to calls in the late 1930s to merge the newsreel operations of Japan’s major metropolitan newspapers – the Asahi Shinbun, the Mainichi Shinbun and the Yomiuri Shinbun – and the Dōmei News Agency into a single company. Some of those calling for the merger were from the news industry, and the creation of the Nippon Newsreel Company [Nihon nyūsueiga-sha] in 1940 demonstrates that oversight of wartime media was not necessarily carried out through heavy-handed government mandates. Moreover, the merger was delayed for nearly two years due to disagreements within the news industry itself. Opposition to the merger was not in the name of ‘freedom of the press’. Proponents of the merger felt that news should be used for the national good while the opponents saw the loss of newsreel operations in economic terms. This debate was the consequence of the rivalry between Furuno Inosuke, president of the Dōmei News Agency, and Shōriki Matsutarō, president of the Yomiuri Shinbun. These two men represented different views of the role of the Japanese news industry. Furuno was a long-time advocate of news for the good of the nation and pushed for the creation of Japan’s first national news agency. Shōriki, on the other hand, also supported the national well-being, but seems to be more concern about the financial health of his newspaper. Their disagreement reveals that despite the war, the initiation and execution news media policies were subjected to personal and professional rivalries and ambitions.

Book Review: Media Ethics at Work: True Stories from Young Professionals, edited by Lee Anne Peck and Guy S. Reel

Media Ethics at Work: True Stories from Young Professionals. Lee Anne Peck and Guy S. Reel, eds. Los Angeles, CA: CQ Press, 201 3. 344 pp. $52 pbk.One of the time-tested methods of teaching ethics is through the use of case study. In their book Media Ethics at Work: True Stories from Young Professionals, editors Lee Anne Peck and Guy S. Reel do not deviate from this approach. Instead, they refine it.Along with their twenty-two contributors, the two have created a lengthy body of case studies not from seasoned professionals working for major metropolitan newspapers or big-city television stations. Instead, they have created cases using information from students working for their student media outlets and professionals within a few years of graduation. As such, the authors contend, their cases are more like to resonate with students in college-level ethics classes.As the cases selected cover all the major topics in a typical ethics course, from plagiarism to knowing when a source is off-the-record to digital manipulation of photographs, the book is an excellent text for an ethics course or supplement to a reporting course or for training in a student media environment.The book gets off to a seemingly slow start, reviewing the philosophical theories of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Ross, and Rawl among others. Anticipating a quick jump into the cases, this may seem like an unnecessary delay. However, it proves to be a foundation for the book. Just as the plot of a successful novel recurs throughout the book, the references to the individuals who developed ethical theories recur through this book and becomes part of what makes this book useful and unique.Through twenty-three cases, the authors acknowledge such fundamental ideas as the following: Few ethical dilemmas are clear cut. Standards might include transparency, accuracy and fairness. Making ethical choices is a skill that gets better with experience. Even if you can legally publish such information, that doesn't make it ethical to do so. Acknowledging the tenets of various professional codes of ethics, they add such concepts as [I]t's clearly important to demonstrate care in your professional work, thus avoiding unnecessary harm.The authors also give suggestions on where young professionals can turn in times of crisis, including professional organizations, mentors in the workplace, co-workers and former professors. Both scholarly approaches and professional standards can help a practitioner reach a decision, say the authors in their discussion about a young public relations professional asked to impersonate a twelve-year-old online. Consistent references to the codes of ethics of major and minor media associations will prove a consistent resource to students. …

Who Will Pick Georgia's Vidalia Onions? A Text-Driven Content Analysis of Newspaper Coverage on Georgia's 2011 Immigration Law

Media accounts on debates around immigration reform in the United States have framed a range of arguments from supporting tougher immigration enforcement to providing amnesty to the large numbers of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the country. The main objective of this article is to discuss the potential social and economic impacts of the Georgia anti-immigration bill House Bill (HB) 87 as framed by newspaper stories leading up to the bill's passage in 2011. The second objective is to examine differences in argument framing of the media coverage between major metropolitan newspapers compared to bilingual (English and Spanish) newspapers in Georgia. The third objective is to report on participant observation of political advocacy meetings held in rural Georgia to advise distressed Latino immigrants about the bill's implications. A content analysis was conducted of four months of newspaper articles from three major metropolitan newspapers and two bilingual newspapers. The metropolitan newspaper...

Out on assignment: newspaper women and the making of modern public space

Out on Assignment illuminates the lives and writings of a lost world of women who wrote for major metropolitan newspapers at the start of the twentieth century. Using extraordinary archival research, Alice Fahs unearths a richly networked community of female journalists drawn by the hundreds to major cities--especially New York--from all parts of the United States. Newspaper women were part of a wave of women seeking new, independent, urban lives, but they struggled to obtain the newspaper work of their dreams. Although some female journalists embraced more adventurous reporting, including stunt work and undercover assignments, many were relegated to the women's page. However, these intrepid female journalists made the women's page their own. Fahs reveals how their writings--including celebrity interviews, witty sketches of urban life, celebrations of being bachelor girls, advice columns, and a campaign in support of suffrage--had far-reaching implications for the creation of new, modern public spaces for American women at the turn of the century. As observers and actors in a new drama of independent urban life, newspaper women used the simultaneously liberating and exploitative nature of their work, Fahs argues, to demonstrate the power of a public voice, both individually and collectively. | Out on Assignment illuminates the lives and writings of a lost world of women who wrote for major metropolitan newspapers at the start of the twentieth century. Fahs argues that, as observers and actors in a new drama of independent urban life, newspaper women used the simultaneously liberating and exploitative nature of their work to demonstrate the power of a public voice, both individually and collectively.

Market Forces: Defining the Adoptable Child, 1860–1940

Discomfort about the notion of adoption as facilitating a market in children has been one of the major motivations for regulation and control, not only for intercountry adoption but throughout the history of in country adoption as well. This paper explores the nature of the market in Australia, beginning in the decades before legalisation but looking also for continuities in the ways in which in country and later intercountry adoptions have been debated. Drawing on an analysis of advertisements from major metropolitan and regional newspapers it argues that benevolence always exists in an uneasy alliance with assumptions about the right to a child, creating a ‘shopping list’ of desired characteristics which the market has rarely been able to satisfy.

The E-Reader as Replacement for the Print Newspaper

This study examines the effects of a major metropolitan newspaper’s withdrawal from a city and whether an e-reader pre-loaded with a digital subscription to the newspaper would act as a replacement. In-depth interviews with 20 former readers of the newspaper found the device, the Kindle DX, to be generally liked for its readability but a poor substitute for the published version of the newspaper.

Representations of cycling in metropolitan newspapers - changes over time and differences between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia

BackgroundCycling is important for health, transport, environmental and economic reasons. Newspaper reporting of cycling reflects and can influence public and policy maker attitudes towards resource allocation for cycling and cycling infrastructure, yet such coverage has not been systematically examined.MethodsThe Factiva electronic news archive was searched for articles referring to cycling published in four major metropolitan newspapers - two in Sydney and two in Melbourne, Australia, in the years from 1998 until 2008. After excluding articles not about cycling, there were 61 articles published in 1998, 45 in 1999, 51 in 2003, 82 in 2007 and 87 in 2008. Each article was coded for positive or negative orientation, and for framing of cyclists and cycling. Inter-rater reliability was calculated on a sample of 30 articles.ResultsOver the past decade there has been an increase in the reporting of cycling in the major newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne (from 106 in 1998/99 to 169 stories in 2007/08), with a significant increase in reporting of cycling in Melbourne, from 49 to 103 stories (p = 0.04). Recent reporting of cycling was generally positive (47% of articles, compared with 30% of articles which were negative) and focused on benefits such as health and the environment. Three quarters of negative stories involved injury or death of a cyclist. The Sydney based The Daily Telegraph reported the most negative stories (n = 60). We found positive framing of 'cycling' was more widespread than negative, whereas framing of 'cyclists' was more negative than positive.ConclusionsQuantity of reporting of cycling varies over time and by newspaper, and even between newspapers in different cities owned by the same media company. News coverage appears to reflect developments in the different cities, with increases in positive reporting of cycling in Melbourne following increases in cycling in that city. Negative cycling newspaper stories may deter people from considering cycling as a transport option, but real physical or political improvements to the cycling environment may be necessary before coverage becomes more positive.

Uncritical reverence in CM reporting: Assessing the scientific quality of Australian news media reports

Objectives: The study is an exploratory study of a media event in Australia based on the publication of two separate systematic analyses of complementary medicine (CM) therapies. The objective of the study was to measure the scientific quality of Australian newspaper media reports about two international peer-reviewed research papers reporting results on complementary medicines published in biomedical journals during Feb/March 2007. For purposes of clarity, we refer to the papers as the ‘Antioxidant Study’ (Bjelakovic et al 2007) and the ‘Prenatal Multivitamin Study’ (Goh et al 2007). Methods: We sourced articles that were published about the two research papers in mainstream metropolitan and national Australian newspapers during February and March 2007. We then applied a model of analysis called the Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ) to measure the scientific quality of the news reports. Results: We identified 14 newspaper articles and one newswire article about the Antioxidant Study and two newspaper articles about the Prenatal Multivitamin Study. Of the seven ISQ criteria, ‘validity’ and ‘precision’ were rated the least adequate, ‘important consequences’ of the research were reported partially in the Antioxidant Study and wholly in the Prenatal Multivitamin Study, and ‘opinion from fact’ was adequate in the majority of articles. Conclusion: This exploratory study conveyed an overall inadequacy in the scientific quality of the newspaper reporting about the two CM studies in major metropolitan and national Australian newspapers. Whilst we found that journalists were careful to attribute opinions to their sources, their reports conveyed a very limited understanding of biomedical research methodologies and a subsequent incapacity to scrutinise these methodologies with rigour.

The Burden of Being First: Carol Sutton and the Courier-Journal

Carol Sutton was a groundbreaking women's page editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal in the 1960s. She went on to become the first female managing editor of a major metropolitan daily newspaper. It led to her being named one of Time magazine's women of the year in 1976. After less than two years as the managing editor, she was removed from the position but remained at the newspaper. She then worked on minority recruitment projects.

PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPERS AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE: BÜYÜK CİHAD AND THE GREAT STRUGGLE FOR THE MUSLIM TURKISH NATION (1951–53)

Employing rhetoric all too familiar to Turks today, major metropolitan newspapers in Turkey in December 1952 and January 1953 raised the specter of widespread Islamic or religious “reaction” (irtica). Staunch defenders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's policy of secularism, or laiklik, journalists in Istanbul and Ankara identified the existence of a “black press” (kara basın) manipulated by religious “reactionaries” (mürteci) determined to use print media to challenge the very secular foundations of the modern Turkish nation and to upset the established order. To prevent this, the time had come to prosecute vigorously both individuals and organizations that used newspapers or journals to exploit religion and promote obscurantist propaganda. Chief among these was not a metropolitan publication but, rather, an incendiary religious newspaper produced in the Black Sea city of Samsun—the very same city in which Mustafa Kemal had first set foot in 1919 in his efforts to lead what became the Turkish War of Independence. This black newspaper was Büyük Cihad, “The Great Struggle.”

The Cinderella of public health news: physical activity coverage in Australian newspapers, 1986‐2006

This research examined trends in physical activity reporting by Australian newspapers, and described these trends compared to coverage of obesity and tobacco. The Factiva database was searched for articles published in major Australian metropolitan newspapers (1986-2006) that mentioned physical activity, obesity or tobacco smoking. Standardised frequencies compared the three health issues, and trends in reporting were estimated by using standard multiple regression models to fit linear splines with fixed knots at years 1991, 1996 and 2001 to the standardised data. Physical activity received the least coverage 1986-2006, appearing in 4,988 articles, compared with 15,410 and 63,738 articles for obesity and tobacco respectively. Between 1996 and 2000, there were significant increases in the rate of coverage of physical activity (beta=0.21; p<0.01), obesity (beta=0.13; p<0.01) and tobacco (beta=0.24; p<0.0001). From 2001 to 2006 the rate of physical activity coverage was relatively steady, while the obesity coverage rate increased dramatically (beta=0.34; p<0.0001), and tobacco coverage rate slowed (beta=-0.33; p<0.0001). This study demonstrates that physical activity reporting in the media has increased, but received less attention than obesity and tobacco. Physical activity advocates face the challenge of highlighting the newsworthiness of physical activity and raising the issue higher on the public agenda.

The Minimization of Public Health Risks in Newspapers after Hurricane Katrina

During natural disasters, mass media facilitate the timely provision of accurate information about health risks to the public. This study informs our understanding of such public health discourse, utilizing a content-analysis of 235 newspaper articles in four major metropolitan newspapers published in the five weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005. These data reveal that a small and diminishing number of articles included public health information over time, detailed the hurricane impact on affected communities, and used reliable health sources. The implications for future research from a public health and media relations perspective are discussed.