The Jeremiad Over Journalism

newspapers goal to become a more serious, and in this sense more hard news, outlet over time. 577 If
one turns to the results of USA Today‘s use of issue frames between 1988 and 20008, these
developments can seemingly be explained in terms of conscious management decisions. USA
Today, the national American newspaper, which was started in 1982, initially emphasized news that
was ―shorter and brighter,‖ news which had ―good photos and informative graphics‖ in full color
and news written for the American public instead of fellow editors. The USA Today did as noted,
however, make an editorial shift towards a ―harder approach to news‖ in the early 1990. 578 As we
saw on Table 46 and 48 there is declining tendency among The New York Times and Los Angeles
Times‘ hard news coverage, while the USA Today on the other hand have increased their share of
hard news stories since 1988.
70
68
66
64
62
60
58
56
54
Table 50 – Percentage of hard news leads in USA Today between 1988 and 2008.
As noted in the previous section, the difference in the use of hard news is interesting given the
variation in commercial pressure between the three Danish news outlets. Additionally, the
difference is also notable given the variation in publishing ideals between Politiken and Ekstra
Bladet where the latter took a bottom-up approach to newspaper writing, focusing on ordinary
people, while Politiken‘s style was characterized more by top-down focusing more on ―high brow‖
577 Prichard, The Making of Mcpaper. Page 275-277.
578 Ibid. Page 274.
Hard news USA Today
1988 2000 2008
215
N (1988) = 20
N (2000) = 22
N (2008) = 22
USA Today