A new study has found in essence that, where newspapers shut down, people have less information.
Indeed, when food is lacking, people go hungry. When water is scarce, people are going to be thirsty. It just stands to reason.
And we’ll admit, we’re a little biased here. We’ve seen a decade in which, where newspapers closed or declined, more and more people got what little news they digest from social media, from cable networks and even from late-night comedians.
It’s like eating crackers when a well-balanced meal is needed, and it has shown in the electorate’s lack of understanding of issues and ability to grasp concepts.
So it was with more than a little interest that we were curious about what else the research, published in the Journal of Communication, would indicate.
Its main point seems to be that the closures of newspapers over the last decade resulted in more political polarization. Yet, political polarization was occurring long before the period, which began in the depth of the Great Recession when some readers, in choosing where to cut back, ditched their newspaper subscriptions.
About 1,800 newspapers – the vast majority community weeklies – have folded since 2004, but the researchers compared voting data from 66 communities in which newspapers have closed in the past two decades to 77 areas where local newspapers continue to operate.
The research specifically pointed out that when newspapers closed, more people voted in straight tickets (candidates from one party).
In 1992, according to the research, 37 percent of states with U.S. Senate races elected a senator from a different party than the presidential candidate the state supported. But in 2016, for the first time in a century, no state did that.
Since it’s unclear whether many of the newspapers studied were in states where close senatorial elections went a specific way, we are wary of reading too much into the straight ticket angle.
But we support the thinking that voters, who might have turned to hometown newspapers for information on candidates for town, county and state or federal legislative races, now may associate local candidates in a specific party with national candidates in the same party. Indeed, researchers say the loss of local information was less important in voters’ choices than their automatically relating their local choice to a national party. And in many cases, the local candidate of one party couldn’t be more different from his or her national party and its message.
“We have the loss of engagement at the local level,” said Johanna Dunaway, a communications professor at Texas A&M University, who conducted the research with colleagues from Colorado State and Louisiana State universities.
Such loss also lends to strategy changes on the parts of national, state and even local politicians, the researchers said.
If the politicians are able to rely on the political party, and not the candidates, making the difference for a voter, the candidates in turn may feel more inclined in the future to think about what’s best for the party and not what’s best for the candidate’s district, or particular constituency.
The research also indicated that where newspapers closed, there was less voter participation in “off-year” elections when local offices are on the ballot. Of course, “off-year” elections and even mid-term elections never generate the interest that a presidential election year does. But we accept the premise because in many cases if voters don’t feel they have enough information about a local election – information they’re not going to get from national sources – they’re going to skip voting in it.
Another curious finding in the research was increased government spending in communities where “watchdog” journalists have disappeared. While we believe government spending always should be in the crosshairs of government and public “watchdogs,” the finding suggests a complicity that more government spending might be arranged if no one is watching.
That should be unsettling both to fans of government largesse and those who oppose an ever expanding government bureaucracy.
As we mentioned before, we’re biased, but we believe the loss of newspapers can make voters lazy. If voters read a newspaper and newspapers print unbiased information on candidates, the voters are likely to ingest – granted, either lightly or heavily – the information and make better choices at the ballot box.
Indeed, we believe that’s the difference newspapers make in many areas of news. Consumers can hear or see news on television, radio or online sources, but the other formats are in most cases not able to match newspapers for detail, color, accuracy and context. Where voting is concerned, and an already polarizing electorate exists, that frankly can be downright dangerous.