Confessions of a Washington, D.C. News Junkie

METHODOLOGY

I collected copies of the Express and the Examiner on September 18, 19, 20, 24 and 28, representing one per weekday, spread out over two weeks. The findings I present are averages of all five of these days.

Based on an initial set of assumptions and questions, I chose metrics to measure. These metrics were chosen because they seemed reasonably unbiased and easy to measure. I make no claims about this being an actual scientific study, and I am not submitting it to anyone for peer review so I made a list of things that made sense to me, consulted my spouse and called it a day.

• I counted the total number of pages, and the number of full page ads or classifieds.

• I categorized all the content on each page as one of the following: ads, classifieds, national news, international news, local news, sports, entertainment, fun (games, comics, horoscopes, etc.), special features (items not featured daily or not fitting into any of the other categories, such as health, housing or education), and opinion.
  • The special features in the Examiner initially included the “Crime and Punishment” and “Yeas and Nays” pages but those were all later changed to be counted as part of either the local or national metric, depending on which geography each story covered. The Examiner also includes pages like Body and Mind that include health and fitness news, as well as an advice column; while those pages are regularly featured, I included them as special features throughout the analysis. The Express includes a fitness feature once a week so that topic was included as a special feature in that publication, and other items didn’t consistently fit neatly into any other category.

• I added up the “hard” news (world, nation, local) and the “soft” news (entertainment, sports, and special features) but these calculations were mostly redundant.

• I calculated the amount of space devoted to each category by measuring space used up on each page for each category, then dividing the total for each category by the total amount of space available within each day’s edition. These measurements are not exact given blank space between columns, but they account for at least 97% of each publication’s content. There were a couple editions of the Express that included extra inserts (e.g., a rental guide) and those special inserts were not included in the calculations.

• I looked at the topics covered in the individual stories and I determined where there was overlap between the two publications on any given day. I only included national, local, world, entertainment and sports news in this analysis. I did not compare content across days. Stories marked as overlapping were not always identical in their coverage; they may have covered the same topic from different angles. For instance, on one day, both publications included stories about a poll in Virginia. It was counted as the same topic because it was the same poll even though they highlighted different findings. However, two stories about the latest polling in the presidential race would not have counted as the same topic if they discussed different polls. It should be noted that this analysis focused merely on the overlap between the topics, and not on the length of the stories; in several instances, the Express would only include a paragraph or two on a topic while the Examiner offered a half page of coverage, and this was true for all news categories.

• I noted the length of stories. Short stories were a paragraph or two, as decided by the editors and where they placed paragraph breaks. Long stories were at least three paragraphs.

Not shown in this analysis is that the Examiner did include one or two reporting (not opinion) pieces that reflected a partisan bias. For instance, one particularly long article was an expose on Obama, “The Obama You Don’t Know,” separated into chapters with titles such as “The Myth of Obama as State Senate Reformer” and “Obama Brings Chicago Politics to Washington.” Clearly that’s a partisan piece. On a similar note, there were some articles highlighting issues such as labor disputes. I did not find the actual reporting of those articles to have a partisan tilt, and so I do not take issue with those articles, but I point it out because their inclusion seemed to reflect the interests of a conservative readership. However, I suspect that I am more sensitive to the inclusion of those articles than the average reader.

At this point, I would like to address an important topic not related to methodology. Some people will probably wonder why I took the time to geek out over something as trivial as which free newspaper to read. I did this for few reasons. First and foremost because I am a HUGE GEEK. Also because I believe decisions based on unbiased data tend to be more sound than those based on political leanings. While I lean strongly to the left in many of my political preferences, I don’t like to take a position without being able to defend it. In this case, I found myself reading the Express because I suspected the Examiner would be too biased in a direction I wouldn’t like…and when I thought about it, I realized that wasn’t a good justification. I wanted to give both a closer look and figure out if my own biases were the real problem. They were. I am glad I did this and now know which source I should turn to when I want certain features. Plus, the geek in me had a lot of fun.