Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Press I: The Effect of Newspapers

The Thicket, the National Council of State Legislatures blog, has a great piece on "The Effect of Closing a Newspaper," by Ed Smith. Here's an excerpt:

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.”


We need to keep as many newspapers going as we can.

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