Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2000

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Reed College of Media

Department

Reed College of Media

Committee Chair

Ralph Hanson.

Abstract

This thesis, which focuses on the post-yellow journalism era in West Virginia, further develops the body of research done on the influence of chain ownership in newspapers.;Historically, strong political biases in news coverage were found in the yellow journalism, early 20th century period. And this study finds a conservative bias on the opinion-editorial pages in a traditionally Democratic state with few competing media markets and reliance upon newspapers for local news. This thesis finds ownership status and circulation size affects the balance and variety of feature items presented within the opinion editorial content. Thus, previous research suggesting chain ownership influence of presentation is affirmed. Layout and editorial bias however, is not clear from this limited study.

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