The Local Contours of Campaign Coverage

Abstract

Research on presidential campaign coverage has mostly focused on national news sources. This article examines the more local contours of campaign coverage. News coverage of the nominating campaign in 16 top-circulating state newspapers is analyzed throughout one 10-week period in a campaign and found to vary considerably both in overall amounts and the amounts provided to individual candidates. A multivariate model that includes multiple layers of influence is estimated, and candidate coverage amounts are found to vary systematically in state newspapers depending on candidates' state-level reactions to the campaign environment, constraints at work in individual news organizations, and the shared professional norms of journalists about what makes a campaign story newsworthy. The results suggest that, depending on where they live, some citizens are provided a great deal of information about the campaign and others are provided much less. The implications of these findings for researchers studying the nature of campaign news coverage and its effects on learning are explored.