Chicago's Media: Failing the Community

What has happened to Chicago-area national and local media outlets over the last year or two isn’t pretty. The bottom line: there are fewer traditional print news outlets than there used to be. And, at the print and broadcast news outlets that remain, there are fewer reporters to cover Chicago stories.

In the last year alone, the Chicago bureaus of all three major newsmagazines —Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report — have closed. The Chicago bureaus of the major television news networks aren’t in much better shape, with steep cuts over the last year in the bureaus of ABC News, CNN, CBS News, and NBC News, whose “Dateline” program has lost two of its three Chicago-based staffers.

The Chicago area’s major daily newspapers — the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald — have felt budget pressures and each has dealt with the budgetary pain differently. The Sun-Times has held on to editorial staff and considered a variety of other cost-saving schemes — including implementing a distribution agreement with its archrival the Tribune.(1) The Tribune, meanwhile, has offered buyouts to several dozen editorial employees during May and June 2007, primarily in features but also in metro, sports, photography and online. According to Chicago’s Community Media Workshop estimates, the Tribune’s editorial staff has fallen by between 30 and 35 reporters, editors and photographers over the last year, or almost exactly 5 percent. And in August 2007, the suburban Daily Herald began laying off an unspecified number of staff, just weeks after a July 19, 2007 memo that announced salary cuts of 5 percent—at least temporarily—and a 10 percent reduction in non-payroll expenditures. These mark the first staff reductions in the Herald’s history.

Chicago’s alternative press is also facing cut-backs.(2) The Chicago Reader, the city's free alternative newspaper since 1971 is trimming the size of its staff, including an effort to get the drivers who deliver its 135,000 copies each week to leave the payroll and become independent contractors. Reader Publisher Mike Crystal said in September 2007 that some of the paper's recent moves, such as outsourcing production work to Atlanta, are tied to the paper's July sale to Florida-based Creative Loafing.

Studies show that in the United States people get most of their news from local television news programs regardless of age and income.(3) Local television news historically has an important place in the United States. As of the Federal Radio Act of 1927, the federal government has argued that the right to own a license to a broadcasting station hinges on the station’s operating in the public interest.(4)

But there are concerns about the quality of local news in Chicago and other markets across the country. Various organizations study television news content and find its quality lacking.(5) When considering the public interest performance of broadcast media outlets owners, it is fair to consider their local news offerings. Local TV news is a healthy business and remains local TV’s key performer.

On June 12, 2007, the University of Wisconsin-Madison NewsLab released a study which provides evidence of Chicago television broadcasters’ failure to provide programming that meets the needs of the communities of license.(6) The NewsLab Study tracked and analyzed election news coverage from September 7, 2006 to November 6, 2006 and non-election government news coverage from January 1, 2007 to March 31, 2007. The NewsLab Study focused on early and late-evening local newscasts on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates.

The results of the NewsLab Study demonstrate that Chicagoland’s English-language, commercial broadcasters are failing to provide viewers with local news election coverage:

• From September 7, 2006 to October 6, 2006, during a typical 30 minute newscast, the Chicago market aired, on average, 29 seconds of election coverage.
• From October 7, 2006 to November 6, 2006, during a typical 30 minute newscast, the Chicago market aired, on average, 2 minutes and 2 seconds of election coverage compared to 3 minutes and 57 seconds of political advertising.
• From September 6, 2006 to November 6, 2006, of 611 election stories analyzed in the Chicago market, on average, 73% were strategy frame and horse race frame coverage.
• From January 1, 2007 to March 31, 2007, during a typical 30 minute newscast, the Chicago market aired, on average, 56 seconds of election coverage.

The NewsLab Study provides evidence of the Chicago television broadcasters’ failure to exercise their editorial discretion in good faith and are failing in their obligation to fulfill the public interest.(7) The study provides significant evidence that despite news coverage, local election news coverage is minimal and not meaningful.

In July 2007, the Media Management Center at Northwestern University published an in-depth study of Chicago's local TV news experience. While designed to help station managers build their audience, the report offers some important insight on how well these TV stations are serving the public.

The Media Management Center study presents evidence that Chicago stations’ local TV newscasts are not adequately serving the public interest:

• Stories are short and run just over a minute on average (69 seconds).
• For every one woman who is heard in a story, there are two men.
• For every non-White person who is heard in a story, there are three White people.
• People who are White, male and official dominate news about politics – other topics vary in balance. Few of the politics stories include sound bites by ordinary people.
• Much of the news happens in and around Chicago, but while stories are geographically local, most news stories have no direct effect on the lives of people in the viewing area. Chicago local television news lacks personal relevance and actionability. Topics such as crime and politics tend not to have information that viewers can act on.
• Only a small portion of news stories include actionable information and they occupy less prominent positions in the lineup.
• On average, close to 50% of the stories cover planned events (such as a press conference, or hospital opening). Over a quarter are feeds from other sources, and about 14% cover spontaneous events (such as house fires).
• Less than 10% of the stories are initiated by the station(8) and less than 20% of enterprise stories appear in the first block of the program. Enterprise stories are also more likely to appear during the sweeps periods.
• Enterprise reporting covers mostly health and consumer issues.
• Less than half of every local news program is devoted to news stories (about 45%). Sports and weather take up between 9-10% of the time each, on average, and commercials take up almost 30% of the time. 5% of each newscast is devoted to promoting the newscast itself.
• Crime leads the news – it’s in the first block, and stories get proportionately the most time of any story topics. Nearly one in five stories on local Chicago TV news is about crime.
• More than one-third of all news stories are about crimes, fires and accidents, while politics accounts for 15%. Health, science and environment stories comprise 11% of all stories, and weather stories 10%.