Community Newspapers Play Significant Role in Election

In the past few years, the perilous economic position of American newspapers has been widely chronicled in the popular press and by scholars.1 Often lost in this discussion is the plight of newspapers other than dominant major dailies-neighborhood and small-town newspapers, the alternative press, the ethnic press and so on. Those community newspapers are facing many of the same challenges as major dailies, such as a difficult advertising environment and increased competition from online-only media delivered to various digital devices. At the same time, community newspapers have different business models than many major metro papers and, as smaller and more nimble operations, the potential to more quickly adapt to new circumstances. Although their future is in no way guaranteed, it is likely that many community newspapers will find ways to survive. And, as major dailies wither across America, other sources of local news-including community newspapers-will become more important in both small towns and large cities. Already, there are signs that the narrow, local focus of community newspapers has protected them from the circulation losses that plague their larger counterparts.2To some extent, the local media environment in every city is unique. But, many large cities are facing similar declines in the viability of their major daily newspapers. Philadelphia is one such city, as the Inquirer and Daily News have teetered in or on the edge of bankruptcy for years since parting ways with Knight Ridder in 2006. Philadelphia also has a robust population of community newspapers-two city-wide alternative weeklies cover local affairs as well as local entertainment. Several papers target segments of the population by ethnicity; a dozen neighborhood papers are published at least once a week. In addition, the circulation of the free Metro is 120,000 every weekday, and the city even has a newspaper dedicated to covering just the public schools-the Notebook, which publishes 57,000 copies every other month. Given the decline of the city's major daily newspapers and the preponderance of community newspapers, Philadelphia offers an ideal venue to examine the role that both kinds of newspapers play in local politics.This article analyzes the content of Philadelphia's major dailies and a sample of its community newspapers in the context of the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral campaign. Prior studies of the effects of new technologies upon local media environments have primarily focused on the contents of major daily newspapers.3 Meanwhile, scholarly work that explores the weekly urban press- "community newspapers" by another name-illustrates the role that those papers play in knitting communities together.4 By assessing a broad sample of Philadelphia's many newspapers, this article melds those disparate bodies of literature together. Two straightforward questions drive the analysis: What kinds of mayoral campaign information did local newspapers provide? How did coverage of the mayoral campaign in community newspapers differ from the coverage in major dailies? The findings provide a glimpse into the local political content choices recently available in print to Philadelphia citizens.Literature ReviewResearch into the role that political information plays in the functioning of democracy is an enduring thread of communication scholarship.5 Such inquiries begin with the notion that information is necessary grist for effective democracy.6 Although there are conflicting perspectives of precisely how much information citizens need or require, there is. . . clear evidence that the amount of information one possesses shapes attitudes and behaviors, including such things as participation, voting behavior, tolerance and information processing strategies.7This article is concerned with three kinds of political information. First, mobilizing information is simple factual data about election times, registration deadlines and campaign events that are vital in alerting and organizing the electorate. …