The shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in August 2014 served as a pivotal case that pushed excessive use of police force against minority groups to the national spotlight. Guided by the scholarship on protest coverage, this article investigates the interplay between advocacy and journalistic framing in the coverage of the Ferguson protests by national and local news. A content analysis of five newspapers during the first cycle of protests identified how journalistic frames of presentation derived from the ‘protest paradigm’ literature related to the content frames pushed forward by the Black Lives Matter movement. Results reveal that initial stories were predominantly episodic and focused on violence to the detriment of demands and grievances. However, episodic stories were also critical of the police response and the use of military-grade weapons to contain the demonstrations. As the weeks progressed, journalists gave space to the ideas of protestors in a more thematic way, especially on issues related to race beyond the topic of police brutality. Taken together, findings suggest small but significant progress as time continued during the first month of demonstrations after Brown’s shooting. Results presented here challenge the paradigmatic nature of protest coverage but reinforce that more space should be given to contextual narratives behind social movements’ actions in addition to coverage that is critical of police and protestor tactics.

This study analyzes the electronic newspaper's market structure. The market is characterized by low barriers to entry. Based on the information versus advertising and local versus long-distance distinctions, four submarkets are identified. Within each, competition of different natures (intermedia and intramedia) dominates, yet all four markets fall into the monopolistic competitive market structure, whereas firms compete with one another by product differentiation. Under intermedia competition, we suggest electronic newspapers differentiate themselves from traditional media by developing Internet-related features. Under intramedia competition, content matters more.

Previous research suggests that the print newspaper's local nature and the Internet's boundary-transcending capacity enable online newspapers to operate in local and long-distance markets. A census of online newspapers in 4 states was conducted via email to examine the existence of and differences between the 2 markets. Results show that the long-distance market is a substantial sub-market that constitutes about one third of the online readership, while the local market still outweighs the long-distance market in terms of usage and online newspapers' targeting intention.

As American newspapers face declining readership, quality concerns, and changing technology and public tastes, newspaper decision-making style remains relatively unexamined. This study re-examines national survey data on U.S. editors charged with choosing, justifying, editing, and publishing the news. In a search for values that underlie decision-making styles, the study uncovers five style predictors: gender, experience, social values, journalistic values, and organizational values. Audience-related values were not significant predictors.

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