Paula M. Poindexter

Blacks and Television: A Review of the Research Literature.

A review of more than thirty years of empirical literature on blacks and television provides support for a number of propositions pertaining to the portrayal of blacks, television as a source of information, viewing behavior and effects.

Revisiting the Civic Duty to Keep Informed in the New Media Environment

The present study revisits the relationship between the civic duty to keep informed and news media use in the new media environment, then discovers that the civic duty to keep informed functions as an intervening variable between education and news media use. Of particular theoretical interest is that the civic duty to keep informed was found to be a consequence of education and a determinant of use of new news media, specifically cable news and national news on the Internet, news media that did not exist when the civic duty to keep informed was first measured using a Guttman scale more than twenty years ago. The civic duty to keep informed was also found to have the same strong monotonic relationship to traditional sources of news, newspapers, and network television, as was found in numerous settings more than twenty years ago. Moreover, one new relationship emerged here that was not found in earlier years, a clear relationship between a civic duty to keep informed and use of local TV news. The demographic patterns found in the new media environment among citizens in this southwestern metropolitan area—strong monotonic, or near monotonic, links between the civic duty to keep informed and education, income, and age—replicate the patterns found in earlier years. For education and income, the patterns are very similar. For age, the pattern is even stronger than in previous years.

Watchdog or Good Neighbor? The Public’s Expectations of Local News

After an earlier study found the public’s dominant expectation of the press was to be a good neighbor and not a watchdog, the present study set out to determine what being a good neighbor meant for different segments of the public. The analysis revealed that being a good neighbor was strongly valued by women, African Americans, and Hispanics. Many in these groups wanted more coverage of education, health and medicine, science, and arts and culture. The segment of the public that expected the press to be a good neighbor was concerned about crime and social issues, and television was viewed as best able to address these concerns. This study fills a void in the empirical public journalism literature that has primarily focused on journalists’ opinions, the content of public journalism projects, and the impact of public journalism projects on the public. Unlike most of the previous literature, which has ignored the public’s opinions about journalistic practices associated with public journalism, the present study connects the public’s expectations of local news as a good neighbor with techniques that epitomize public journalism, that is, caring about the community, reporting on interesting people and groups, understanding the local community, and offering solutions.

Daily Newspaper Non-Readers: Why They Don't Read:

p Information on the daily newspaper non-reader is scarce. Only three major research efforts have been devoted exclusively t o the study of non-newspaper reading adults. Two studies, 10 years apart, examined non-readers by their demographic characteristics.1 The third study isolated socio-psychological c h a r acteristics as predictors of non-readership.2 Westley and Severin] in a 1961-62 statewide study of Wisconsin residents found non-readers typically had low educational achievement (less than high school) and low incomes (less than rS5.000). The largest percentages of nonreaders were among very young (20s) and the very old (70s and above). Nonreaders, Westley and Severin found, were more likely to live in rural areas and to have lived at their present residence for fewer than five years. Socially, non-readers were found to be isolated. Ten years later, in a partial replication of Westley-Severin, Penrose el a f . 4 studied North Carolina residents. They found the same demographic and socioeconomic factors related to non-reading. Schweitzers found non-readers less likely to be characterized by high community identification, geographic stability, home ownership, activeness in local voluntary organiiations and frequent contact

Local, Network TV News Shows Significant Gains

This study found that the use of local TV news and network TV news increased significantly in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, but readership of newspapers and news on the Internet did not. Five months after the attacks 41 percent of respondents said their news media use had increased.