How Editors and Readers Rank and Rate the Importance of Eighteen Traditional Standards of Newspaper Excellence

Abstract

This survey explores whether readers and editors agree on what makes a good newspaper. The results show that readers and editors of newspapers agree on the importance of many traditional journalistic standards, such as integrity, impartiality, editorial independence, strong local news coverage, accuracy, and good writing. However, readers do not value professional staffing goals and enterprise reporting as highly as do editors, particularly editors at larger newspapers. Other results of this study more finely distinguish differences between editors and readers at newspapers of different circulation sizes.

Language Development, Knowledge and Use Among Journalists of European Minority Language Media

“…In mainstream media research, however, one can find numerous studies on the field of journalistic language, writing and skills, going from journalism textbooks to rigorous papers and articles (Courtin and Maier, 2001;Gladney, 1996;Grunwald, 2005;Hines and Hilliard, 1995;Matheson, 2003;Steyn and De Beer, 2004). Other enquiries use journalistic language as an independent variable to measure a dependent concept often not directly related to language such as credibility, legitimacy, sensationalism, and so on.…”

Temática y mala praxis en los informativos de televisión en Euskadi

“…Gladney (1996: 329331) menciona más de dos decenas de estudios sobre diarios en Estados Unidos que pretendían captar valores periodísticos, preferencias de las audiencias en lo que respecta a cómo deben actuar los periódicos, cuáles debían ser las funciones de los medios, etc. En la presente investigación, sin em bargo, no se trata de analizar las opiniones de las personas involucradas sino los pro pios contenidos informativos, tratando de detectar casos de diferentes indicadores de mala praxis.…”

What Makes Journalism “Excellent”? Criteria Identified by Judges in Two Leading Awards Programs

“…For instance, Kovach & Rosenstiel (2001) refer to the comprehensiveness of the news and to reporting as a "discipline of verification," and Gladney's "content standards" include "strong local coverage" and "comprehensive coverage" (Gladney, 1996). Similarly, originality is explicitly emphasized in all the reviewed awards guidelines and receives fair to strong emphasis from our respondents.…”

“…This field, which has often been tied to a study of the link between quality journalism and business success (Meyer, 2004;Overholser, 2004), seems similar to the idea of research into standards of excellence, but the relationship between "quality" and "excellence" is murky. Gladney, for example, uses "excellence" to describe his research into how editors and readers rank journalistic standards (Gladney, 1990(Gladney, , 1996, but those standards are very similar to the "quality" criteria employed by Bogart, who himself appears to use the two terms interchangeably (Bogart, 2004). In any case, Gladney's research-consisting in the main of mail surveys of newspaper editors in the United States-produced seminal rankings of nine "content standards" for excellence in newspapers (including news interpretation, lack of sensationalism, strong local coverage, visual appeal, accuracy, strong editorial page, comprehensive coverage, and good writing) and nine "organizational standards" (including integrity, staff enterprise, editorial independence and courage, and decency) (Gladney, 1990).…”