By Ed Smith Last year, the story in the newspaper world was all about layoffs. This year, it’s all about closings. In just the past few weeks, The Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have shut down. That left only one daily in those cities. Some who follow the industry closely say the next step will be cities left with no newspaper at all. San Francisco is shaping up as the most likely candidate as the Hearst Corporation tries to stem a tide of red ink that has seen it lose as much as $50 million a year to operate the San Francisco Chronicle.
But a big question remains: What difference does it make if a newspaper closes?
Two researchers from Princeton have at least a partial answer. A study released Friday by Sam Schulhofer-Wohly and Miguel Garridoz of the Woodrow Wilson School found that closing a newspaper can have a negative effect on participation in public life. The economists attempted to gauge what effect closing The Cincinnati Post had on the northern Kentucky suburbs, where it was widely circulated. They concluded that the closing of the paper at the end of 2007 “reduced the number of people voting in elections and the number of candidates for city council, city commission and school board in the Kentucky suburbs, and raised incumbent council and commission members' chances of keeping their jobs.”
The authors concede that, for a variety of reasons, their findings are not statistically significant. They plan a follow-up study with a larger sample. But what was striking is that closing even a small paper like the Post—its 27,000 circulation was far smaller than its rival Cincinnati Enquirer—appears to have an effect on the community.
Unfortunately, there will probably be many other opportunities in the next few years for academics to study what effect the closing of a newspaper has on community involvement in government.
Ed Smith is the managing editor of State Legislatures magazine at NCSL.
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