By Erin Geismar, Dan Ophardt, and Lauren Cook
The news industry is changing. The average age of newspaper readers keeps getting older, circulation numbers are stagnant and news companies are making major layoffs and even filing for bankruptcy, as the Tribune Co. did just this week. More and more, news consumers are seeing a new presentation in hopes of saving an old model – print news being designed to cover stories more like the Web. Traditional newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have turned to graphs, charts and shorter, less textual, articles to tell the story – plus an array of multimedia elements online. With the new model in mind, and especially with the Rupert Murdoch takeover of the WSJ – Murdoch is notorious for changing the landscape of the papers he buys to be more conservative in content but more liberal in the way the news is presented, which includes larger and more eye-catching headlines, fewer stories on the front page and more use of graphics and photos – we analyzed the front pages of both of these historic papers for their coverage of the financial crisis.
We chose to use the front pages only because it is most representative of the entire coverage of each paper, since the front page is the space used to convey the most important information to the widest audience of people. Our assumptions are based on the idea that front page coverage is indicative of the way the paper covered any issue as whole. We chose to use the financial crisis because it is a world-wide current issue but also because we wanted to compare the coverage of a general news paper and a primarily financial paper of generally equal caliber. Our assumption was that the WSJ would cover the issue more in depth though leaning conservative. We assumed the NYT would use mostly official sources and do less analyzing the market and more recounting the events. Because of Murdoch’s takeover of the WSJ and his goal to make the papers he owns more readable to a wider, younger audience, we also assumed that the WSJ would take the opportunity to expand its coverage to include more explanation and easy-to-understand breakdowns of the crisis, attracting a new audience.
We analyzed the front pages of both newspapers between the dates of Sept. 1 and Sept. 30, “Black September” to compare the number of stories on each front page, the number of sources and who they were and the types of articles. We also took into consideration the use of breakout elements like charts, graphs and short Q&As.
The New York Times, with a daily circulation of more than a million, is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the U.S. Thus, it serves an audience of broad needs, interests and backgrounds. Furthermore, its motto “All the news that’s fit to print” suggests this wide agenda. This characteristic was displayed through the content analysis of the Times coverage of the financial crisis in September 2008. The Times gave plenty of space to the straight news stories recounting the details of proposed bailouts and poor days for the stock market, but it also spent considerable time and resources on stories that connected the crisis to people throughout its readership. These included stories on the jobless rate, effects on soon-to-be retirees and recent retirees, effects on public schools, effects on smaller banks, and connections to the presidential campaigns.
In the 30 days of September, there were 58 financial crisis stories on the front page. These stories accounted for 34.5 percent of the total number of stories placed on the Times front page in the month. It’s difficult to think of another story that could have been given more than a third of the total front page stories over the course of an entire month.
With this much space dedicated to a subject the Times obviously felt was important, they found many ways to tell the story. They divided this space between straight news stories, analysis pieces and articles in which they broke down the bigger picture.
There was obviously plenty of news to report on the financial crisis. Senators and congressmen were in session constantly to try to come to terms on a bailout, while bankers were pleading the government for loans of their own. The Times had almost as many just-the-facts news stories as there were days in the month in September. It dedicated 26 stories, or 44 percent of all its financial crisis stories to simply recounting the facts of the events from the days before. In these stories, officials within the government were the most often quoted. Overall, 62 percent of the sources quoted by the Times in its financial crisis coverage within September were government officials. The most popular to quote were: chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd, D-Conn.; House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.; and President Bush.
The Times dedicated almost as many front page stories to analysis. With 23 analysis pieces, the genre took up 40 percent of the financial crisis stories for the month. The paper seemed to prefer to keep analysis out of the straight news stories, creating instead a noticeable model throughout the month. Wherever there was a straight news story about a proposed bailout or other happening in Washington, D.C. or Wall Street, there was usually an analysis in close proximity. This story would often talk about events of that day, in connection with many before it. Most of the analysts quoted by the Times were found among these stories. There were not nearly as many analysts quoted as officials— 35 percent of all the sources used by the Times in the coverage were analysts. These analysts were often professors at prestigious universities or consultants at research firms. The Times did not often use their quoted analysts for more than one story. The quotes and information from the analysts tended to be longer and more in depth than the short ones from the official sources.
The final type of financial crisis story the Times spent space on during September was the “breaking it down” story. The Times seemed to reach out to its broad audience by trying to connect what was happening in D.C. and Wall Street to many other issues, and spelling out its apparent and possible effects. Nine front page stories in September were of this type, accounting for 16% of all the stories within the financial crisis coverage. They generally either connected the dots as to what led to the crisis or spoke about its effects on different groups of people. One was even a question and answer piece answering questions about what average Americans should be worried about and doing with their money.
Overall, the New York Times did what would be expected of it. Although it is not a finance newspaper, it may have looked like one in September. The crisis called for enormous coverage because it was a major national and international issue. However, “the Gray Lady” covered the crisis broadly and made it accessible to more groups than typical finance papers may have.
With a circulation of just more than two million, the business-centered Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published forty-six articles covering the economic crisis on its front pages throughout the month of “Black September.”
Through analyzing the coverage by the Wall Street Journal, it proved to be predictably more conservative than the New York Times in angle but relatively the same in general coverage. In the front pages from Sept. 1 to Sept. 30 about 23 percent of the stories focused on the economic crisis. Categorizing each article into one of the following three categories; “recounting the facts,” “analyzing,” and “breaking it down,” showed that out of the forty-six articles, sixteen of them fell into the “analyzing” category, twenty-four of them fell into the “recounting the facts” category and six fell into the “breaking it down category.” This meant that the highest percent of their coverage was just recounting the facts of what happened at a meeting on Capitol Hill, Wall Street or from press conferences. Most of those articles were a play-by-play recount of a congressional hearing or some sort of meeting with the crucial economic characters like Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, but there were no private interviews done by reporters in these situations.
We also counted each source stated in the articles and placed them into one of the following three categories; “officials,” “analysts,” and “anonymous,” defining “officials” as anyone connected to the industry. We found that out of two hundred and seventy-six sources within the forty-six articles, one hundred and ten of them were “officials,” seventy-seven of them were “analysts,” and eighty-nine of them were “anonymous.” This means that the highest percentage of their sources, 40 percent, were from officials. However, most of these officials were quoted indirectly. The quotes from Paulson and Bernanke were all from a press conference they gave or in a Congressional hearing. The most surprising findings from analyzing the WSJ’s sources were their use of anonymous sources. There was an overwhelming amount of “a person close to the matter,” and “someone who can speak to the issue” sources cited. Overall though, their pie chart percentages were pretty even, 40 percent, 32 percent and 28 percent.
In conclusion of the analysis of the Wall Street Journal, in comparison with the New York Times, the WSJ had fewer articles on its front page, instead linking to articles within the paper from the front page in its Business & Finance column, and it used less graphics, charts and pictures. Instead of reporting on the implications of the financial crisis on our country and the effects it is having on our citizens, it covered the financial sector and the events in Washington.
Though statistically, the coverage between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal proved similar, the content and general tone of the articles seemed drastically different. Creating Wordles of the front page stories of each paper on Sept. 30 – the day the Dow dropped more than 700 points – was helpful in deciphering the coverage by word choice and was possibly the most indicative of where the difference in coverage by the two papers really lies. The most prominent words in WSJ articles were: Citigroup, Wachovia’s, financial, government, banks, and Wachovia. The New York Times’ Wordle clearly focused on the government and the public featuring words like Government, republicans and House, most prominently. This visually portrays the analysis that the Wall Street Journal stuck to it’s reporting on the financial markets and institutions on Wall Street and never really ventured out of that realm. The New York Times branched out more in its coverage – addressing a wider array of issues pertaining to a wider audience – but seemed to be placing blame or at least emphasis on the Republican party.
In summary we felt that the coverage of the crisis by each paper was, for the most part, what was expected: The NYT dealt with more public interest issues and the WSJ focused on the market and its inner workings. While not surprising findings, we did find it a surprisingly wasted opportunity for Murdoch to reach an audience that normally wouldn’t pick up the WSJ and find relatable content. In times of crises, newspapers have the opportunity to help and inform a wider range of people but the WSJ stuck to its business-only format. In general, WSJ stories were harder to read than NYT stories, they were long and detailed but got bogged down with play-by-plays of private meetings and closed-door sessions and neglected to really analyze the actual issues at hand. Though by the numbers the analysis would prove coverage by both papers was similar, in context the tone of each paper felt quite different, shown best by the Wordles. The NYT focused on the politics of the situation, seemingly even blaming Republicans when the bailout issue arose, but also expanded their coverage to include different levels of interest in the situation. The WSJ was meticulous in coverage of Wall Street events but did little to expand coverage to Main Street. While the coverage was most likely adequate and appropriate for the WSJ’s main readership, in all, the NYT did a better job of informing and interesting the general public in a time when we believed the main focus of newspapers should have been to inform that larger mass rather than just appease the usual readership.
