Newspapers, Pluralism, and Diversity in an Urban Context

Abstract

Focusing on concepts of pluralism and diversity, in this study we use a national sample of urban community newspapers to examine relations between community characteristics and media variables in the urban context. We draw on several measures designed to tap conflict versus consensus reporting styles as advanced by Tichenor and his colleagues (Donohue, Olien, & Tichenor, 1985; Donohue, Olien, Tichenor, & Demers, 1990; Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1980), but embed these measures in a larger set of newspaper goals and functions as described by newspaper editors, allowing us to ask if other goals and functions are affected by community pluralism. Results show that numerous measures of diversity in the census are correlated with perceptions by editors that power lies in local groups. In the actual test of Tichenor et al.'s conflict reporting styles (editors' goals), several ascriptive factors are important, but our sample size is too small to provide sufficient power for statistical significance. Subsequent analysis of all newspaper goals shows that overall diversity in the census data is correlated with only 1 dimension-the relative importance of advertising and theater as a newspaper goal or function. Of the individual measures, ascriptive diversity, particularly race, is positively related to the importance of civic journalism and activity. One could argue that status has been replaced by ethnic differences as the basis of conflict.