Commuter Tabs Give A Good Range Of News, But Lack Local Focus

By: Joe Strupp Readers who spend a good 20 minutes a day with one of the newer free tabloid dailies are more likely to get a "basic outline of news about a broad range of subjects" than if they spent the same amount of time reading section fronts of a broadsheet, according to a new study of both newspaper formats.

But, surprisingly, only 22% of tabloid stories involved local news, compared to 53% of broadsheet section-front articles. Just 17% of tabloid stories included original reporting, while 72% were wire copy.

The same review, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), found that traditional broadsheets give more sourcing, depth, and impact of a story than their smaller competitors.

"At a time when the finances of the industry appear challenged by declining circulation and shrinking advertising, this might hint at something about the newspaper of the future," the survey's report, released Monday, stated. "Combining the broader news summary of the tabloids with the depth of the broadsheet on the key stories of the day may point to a way for newsrooms with fewer reporters to continue to cover the waterfront -- and in a way that may serve readers better than simply covering fewer things or making every story a little shorter."

The review included a study of seven daily papers -- three commuter tabloids, one home-delivered tabloid, and three traditional broadsheets -- in three cities, Boston, Washington and Dallas. The Boston papers included the broadsheet Boston Globe and the commuter tabloid free Boston Metro; the Washington papers were the broadsheet Washington Post, the free Post-owned tabloid Washington Express, and the home-delivered Washington Examiner; and the Dallas papers included the broadsheet Dallas Morning News and the free tabloid Dallas Quick.

The results made clear that the Washington Examiner was "something of a hybrid" because it emphasized local news and offered more original, longer stories. The results broke out the Examiner's statistics separate from the others.

Those who conducted the review sampled copies of each paper during 10 random days between April 2004 and August 2005. They looked at story subjects, story lengths, use of sources, use of opinion, and depth of subject. The survey focused on all of the tabloid stories but only those on the section fronts of the broadsheets in an effort to provide a similar amount of comparable news.

Among the findings:

* While 72% of material in the tabs was wire copy, the broadsheets offered original reporting in 93% of section-front pieces.

* A majority of broadsheet stories, 64%, had at least four or more sources, compared to just 10% of tabloid stories. Most tab articles, 32%, offered just a single source, with 24% having no named sources.

* Most tabloid stories, 57%, offered no analysis of what events might mean or what may happen next, compared to 75% of broadsheet stories.

* The most prominent subject matter in both tabloids and broadsheets was sports, which accounted for 17 of the tab articles and 18% in the broadsheet section-fronts. The next most-popular subjects in each were business for the broadsheets, which accounted for 15% of stories on section-fronts, and celebrity or entertainment news, at 15%, for the tabs.

When looking at the age demographics, a subject key to both papers as broadsheets continue to lose younger readers and the free tabs were generated, in part, to attract them, not much difference is seen. Both formats provide principal newsmakers from roughly the same age groups, with middle age subjects -- from 36 to 60 years old - comprising the majority of both. They account for 19% in the tabs and 18% in the broadsheets. Only eight percent of the tabloid stories and nine percent of the broadsheets made a clear distinction about a story's impact on youth.

"They are supposedly aimed at the youth, but they don't do all that much to focus on the youth," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "I think that is because they make heavy use of wire copy."

In a more obvious finding, broadsheet stories ran longer, with more than half of section-front articles, 56.8%, between 500 and 1,000 words, while most tab stories, 53%, were between 101 and 250 words, and 15.1% were 100 words or less.

Rosenstiel said the findings indicate a combined product that utilizes summaries and shorter stories, but allows for some in-depth reporting and original content may be the way of the future. "That is something to be learned from them," he said of the free tabs. "The experiment and trying new things is worthwhile. But I wish they would experiment by assigning some reporters to these things."