Established in 1829, it is considered a trustworthy source of information. These outlets are Catholic Philly; Delaware County Daily Times; Main Line Times; Northeast Times; Passyunk Post; Philadelphia Weekly; Willow Grove Guide; Roxborough Review; South Philly Review; University City Review and Philly Free Press; West Philly Local. These findings are limited to database search results and to a subset of outlets in our study, most of them with education, income, and age indices above 100. The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public-benefit corporation that publishes a news website (Inquirer.com) and two daily newspapers (The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) that serve the Philadelphia metropolitan area of the United States. We conduct this content analysis for all outlets in our sample that are available in these databases (23 out of 38, or 61%). With the exception of magazine-style outlets attracting affluent audiences (e.g., Philadelphia Business Journal, Philadelphia Magazine, and Philadelphia Weekly), commercial, privately held outlets tend to show low ratios of COVID-19 to crime coverage. Indeed, a large corpus of research has noted the sensational aspects of crime coverage (Adams, 1978; Ehrlich, 1996; Knight, 1989; Wang, 2012), primarily intending to capture audience attention rather than to assess the impact on a given community. It was among the first instances of a newspaper turning its investigative artillery on itself. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER AND DAILY NEWS 1.3 Million read the Sunday Inquirer (630,390+ Daily) 384,813 read the Daily News Avg. A lot remains to be done and there are likely challenges ahead that we cant anticipate, Hughes says. The study was an article that reviewed studies. WTXF/Fox29 is one of two outlets in our study that give more attention to crime than to the pandemic (3.2). Policy interventions such as public funding and subsidies can enhance the capacity for Philadelphia news organizations to meet the critical information needs of marginalized communities. Though our findings are limited to a subset of news outlets that serve the greater Philadelphia area,7 and we cannot calculate income, education, and age indices for the citys major television affiliates due to lack of available data, these media system patterns support our finding, in answer to RQ1 concerning the relationship between news provision and audience socioeconomic status, that socioeconomic divides are potential sources of systemic news gaps. We are pro-democracy, he said. Additionally, Harcup and ONeill (2001) identify the magnitude of an event as a key news value, as with a pandemic that affects very many people in many ways. These socially and geographically oriented publications have small newsrooms, typically fewer than a dozen people, and in some cases only two or three people. 2015 data for Al Da; all other data reported during period 2017 to 2020. When it comes to fulfilling communities critical information needsa fundamental prerequisite for pluralistic democratic participationour findings show that less wealthy and younger audiences are underserved compared to wealthier residents. to spot and avoid cultural bias. Inquirer.com: Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes In Wildwood, the mayor and a commissioner won't resign despite indictments. Though it may lack the pandemics magnitude, crime news is popular with audiences (Delli Carpini et al., 2018). However, the Inquirer had yet to take actions regarding the recommendation to either host or participate in accountability conversations with community stakeholders to get input on their coverage more broadly. According to a note to employees from Publisher Lisa Hughes, 26 . under pressure to appear patriotic in the aftermath of the attacks. Trained staff and managers on how However, 2010 audience data from the Courier-Posts media kit for its website indicate including this outlet would not change our finding that news provision in the greater Philadelphia media system leans toward higher income audiences (CourierPostOnline.com, 2010); neither would excluding outlets such as the Delaware County Times that serve Philadelphias western suburbs (income index average of 112, education index average of 109, and age index average of 111 if these outlets and outlier Philadelphia Business Journal are excluded). COVIDs relevance for a broad swath of news topics creates many borderline cases of relevance that reduce search precision. As one manager at the Inquirer reflected, trying to transform a legacy news organization into an antiracist news organization was inherently challenging and uncomfortable work, and news leaders considering this road should buckle in.. have been shaped by assumptions about a presumed white audience. It gave The Inquirer a black eye. However, these outlets generally do not have the same journalistic resources in terms of staffing levels as Philadelphias dominant news sources. It said she had been romantically involved with him and that she had accepted his expensive gifts while she was covering politics. A healthy local news environment is one that meets the diverse critical information needs of different communities within a certain geographic area. Here's What It's Done in a Year, Net Neutrality: What You Need to Know Now, Where Does My Representative Stand on Net Neutrality, Where Does My Senator Stand on Net Neutrality, A Philadelphia Inquirer Headline Sparked Outrage and a Newsroom Audit. 30,402 talking about this. A key need identified in our original audit was the importance of increasing the representation of BIPOC journalists in leadership roles and on key desks which lacked representation. Weve released a progress report on the Inquirers efforts to date, drawing on conversations Ive had with more than 40 staff members. The disclosure of her relationship with a source while at The Philadelphia Inquirer ended her journalism career and prompted the paper to develop an ethics code. Assessing coverage in relationship to forms of ownership (RQ4), we find that commercial outlets are associated with lower ratios of critical versus noncritical information needs coverage than noncommercial outlets, with an average ratio of 6.8 for commercial (stock market-traded and privately held) outlets versus an average ratio of 15.9 for noncommercial (public and nonprofit) outlets (4 vs. 8.9, excluding outliers Philadelphia Magazine and Jewish Exponent; p < .001, chi square tests using COVID and crime item totals, either including or excluding outliers). (2006), recall measures the degree to which a search string includes all relevant stories; precision measures the degree to which a search string includes only relevant stories. A study does not show that COVID-19 mask wearing raises risk of stillbirths, other health problems, News from CNN and ESPN, plus other media tidbits and links for your weekend review, To build trust in the age of AI, journalists need new standards and disclosures, Physical Sciences Reporter, C&EN - Washington, DC (20036), Advertising Sales Manager - Spokane, WA (99201), Visiting Faculty in Mass Communication, Journalism & Digital Media Production - Florence, AL (35630), NY Daily News Sr. Hollywood Gossip and Celebrity Columnist - Los Angeles, CA (90006), NY Daily News Hollywood Gossip and Celebrity News Reporter - Los Angeles, CA (90006), Latino Communities News Editor - Bilingual - Hybrid - Meriden, CT (06450), Executive Director - Nashville, TN (37201). Large, commercial news organizations such as newspapers and TV affiliates continue to be dominant providers of news coverage in U.S. metropolitan areas (Pew Research Center, 2010). Additionally, we assess the degree to which COVID items in our subsamples are either locally produced or locally focused and find that such items comprise the majority of items for most outlets, with the exception of WCAU/NBC10 (12% of COVID items being locally focused or produced); Philadelphia Tribune (22%); WPVI/ABC6 (31%); Metro (48%). Both areas of news coverage were highly newsworthy during the time period analyzed: As of early 2022, the pandemic had sickened more than 277,000 people and killed more than 4,000 in Philadelphia County (New York Times, 2022); in 2021, the city of Philadelphia saw a record 557 homicides (Palmer & Orso, 2021). The Times, in fact, said initially that her work had comported with the highest ethical standards. RQ2: To what extent are socioeconomically and demographically differentiated audiences served by digital-only news outlets in Philadelphias media system? 26 Philadelphia Inquirer employees accept buyout package - Philadelphia Moreover, those that rely on paywalls bar access for those who are unable or unwilling to pay (Knobel, 2018; Pickard, 2020). While some noted the Inquirer was swapping out staff as fast as we can, others suggested change may be limited so long as the top level stays exactly the same. While several staffers shared this sentiment, the masthead has seen considerable change since the start of 2020, and white men are now in the minority. As economic stability and outlook worsen for local news outlets for the foreseeable future, nonmarket means of support will likely become even more crucial in the years ahead. She could just tell a story with such seeming effortlessness and was a very fast writer, Rita Mullin, editorial director of Discovery Publishing, said in a phone interview. Philadelphia Business Journals income index is a clear outlier (332); when this outlet is excluded, Philadelphias media system has an average income index of 113. As ad-industry executives gathered for the event, activist groups flew a banner that read Musk Is Bad For Business: #StopToxicTwitter., for your rights to connect and communicate, The Philadelphia Inquirer Is Working to Transform Its Newsroom. Eric Mitchell Obituary (2021) - Media, PA - The Philadelphia Inquirer However, research on news values indicates that journalists may not deem pandemics and crimes as equally newsworthy (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & ONeill, 2001, 2017). The point was to avoid even the appearance of a conflict, Mr. Foreman, author of The Ethical Journalist, a college text first published in 2009, said in a phone interview. Laura Foreman, Reporter Whose Romance Became a Scandal, Dies at 76 Forgot? Correlations between raw percentages of COVID items and age indices are largely unchanged from correlations using ratios (0.865, p = .001) but weaker for crime items and age indices (-0.17, p = .65). Given the structural nature of both the journalism crisis and the citys historic inequalities, news gaps may persist, which may call for more significant policy interventions and experimentations with new models of media ownership and governance.