Selected Articles
Hale, M., (2007) Superficial Friends: A content analysis of newspaper coverage of nonprofits. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. (forthcoming, September 2007)
Hundreds of empirical studies indicate that the media can not only tell us what to think about, but can also tell us what to think (McCombs, 2004).
It is therefore likely that media coverage of nonprofits may have profound effects on the public’s perception of the voluntary sector. Unfortunately,
there is little empirical research about media coverage to nonprofits, and almost none that is framed by communication theories. This paper uses
two such theories, agenda setting and media framing, to explore how nonprofits are portrayed in the media. A content analysis of 1,034 randomly sampled
newspaper stories reveals that while nonprofit coverage is generally quite favorable, it is often episodic and not thematically framed. In addition, the results
indicate that on the comparatively rare occasions when newspaper stories focus on the nonprofit sector as a whole instead of individual nonprofit organizations,
the proportion of stories favorable toward nonprofits declines.
Hale, M., (2007) Does "local" mean anything? An analysis of local television news coverage of the 2004 elections in Philadelphia. Commonwealth 13 (45-78).
Capturing and analyzing local television news broadcasts is a difficult process. As a result, the majority of research on campaign coverage by local TV
stations centers on a single candidate race and a limited number of news broadcasts. This paper expands existing research by examining all prime time election
coverage aired by Philadelphia’s four network affiliates in the final 30 days of the 2004 campaign. The results show that these stations virtually abandoned
coverage of local and statewide races in favor the presidential election. While the majority of all coverage focused on campaign strategy instead of issues,
there is little evidence of direct bias favoring either Democrats or Republicans. Finally, while stations generally ignored all non-presidential elections,
they gave a fair amount of coverage to stories about the mechanics and processes of voting which may provide voters with valuable locally-based election information.
Franklin-Fowler, E., Goldstein, K., Hale, M & Kaplan, M. (2007) Does local news measure up? Stanford Law and Policy Review 18 (377)
For most of their news, whether on domestic political issues, health, or events in other countries, most Americans depend upon local
television news broadcasts. Understanding and cataloguing what is aired on local news is crucial for public policy makers debating
regulations on local news, for station owners, for journalists, as well as for social scientists trying to build measures of
exposure and gauge the effects of this important source of political information. Until recently, although there had been scattered case
studies of local news broadcasts in particular markets for short periods of time, there had been no systematic national
collection or archive of local television news broadcasts. This manuscript reports on the findings from an extensive systematic
study of local news content during the 2002 and 2004 elections – the most comprehensive and systematic collection of campaign
news coverage on local television stations ever gathered. We find that the public is bombarded with way more "information" about
campaigns from paid advertisements than they get from news; that the news they get is significantly more focused on strategy and
horserace than on issues and analysis; that local and state races are generally neglected in all years, but particularly ignored
in presidential election years.
Hale, M., Franklin-Fowler, E., Goldstein, K. (2007) Capturing multiple markets: A new method of analyzing local television news Electronic News, (forthcoming, November, 2007)
This paper highlights the gap between media consumption patterns and academic studies of various types of media. We focus on the importance of local news as the primary source of
information for most Americans, emphasizing the need for additional research on local TV news content across a variety of topics and on elections in particular. In addition,
we present a detailed methodology of a new capture, coding, and digital archiving process, which significantly advances current tools available to researchers, journalists,
educators, policy makers and the general public interested in local TV news content. Finally, the paper presents initial findings from an ongoing study of local TV coverage
as an example of how researchers can capture and analyze large amounts of local TV news data in multiple media markets at a comparatively low cost, thus overcoming a reliance
on single market studies with relatively small sample sizes.
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