Princeton study shows the effects of newspapers on democracy

Written for Editors Weblog on March 18, 2009 at 10:22 AM

After the Cincinnati Post shut down on December 31, 2007, economists Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido ran a study on how voting patterns are directly affected by news coverage. The study found that political involvement in the northern Kentucky counties, where the Post dominated circulation, decreased since the paper stopped the presses at the end of 2007.

"This paper offers a case study of the consequences of closing a newspaper," wrote the economists in the discussion paper of the research project, "its absence appears to have made local elections less competitive along several dimensions: incumbent advantage, voter turnout and the number of candidates for office."

The study on the Cincinnati Post helps to prove what other editors have been saying about newspapers being essential to the existence of democracy. As the Tucson Citizen faces its closing this month, editor Jennifer Boice calls the situation a failure for democracy, "It's a loss because what we do makes the Star better, the Star makes us better, and because of that, the community gets better information." Media Activism says the same in relation to ethnic papers shutting down. Ethnic communities will be losing primary access to news and therefore democracy is hindered by the decrease in dissemination of information.

Source: Reflections of a Newsosaur