| This dissertation is a qualitative, single-case study of editors' news grading routines and priorities at a "common case" daily newspaper. It has three methodological components: (1) an ethnography, (2) focused interviews, and (3) content analyses. Two types of comparisons were made: Among the four categories of editors explicated in the literature and their news grading activity over time. Four research questions were asked: Can editors' differences in news grading priorities and routines at the common case newspaper be linked to different social advocacies? Which news selection model, reference institution, competition, or consensus, does page one content at the common case newspaper support? Does anyone outside the newsroom influence news grading? If so, do the results benefit an identifiable group?;An oligarchy of supervising and technical editors controlled content at the case study newspaper. The leader of this oligarchy felt she had the most discretion to make judgments about local news where reference institutions offered no cues about the rules of news relevancy, but social affiliations did. This finding suggests a departure from earlier media sociologies (Breed, 1955a, 1955b, & Stark, 1962) that found publishers managed content through various indirect mechanisms.;At the case study newspaper, the categorical differences among editors in work routines and priorities generally matched those found in the media sociology literature. To conclude that these differences represent social advocacies requires an assumption that the chain of transactions linking source to reporter and reporter to editor is beneficial at each step. For the reporter onward, these transactions are beneficial because they produce news. Whether they are beneficial for others is debatable.;Page one content during the fieldwork wasn't consistent with any of the models described in the media sociology literature. The investigator noted that this inconsistency with expected results was probably a local reality. Supervising editors relied upon their network of social affiliations to give them cues about what readers wanted or needed. This invariably linked them to local groups, but the outcome doesn't appear to be systematic. |
