Covering the world at three prestige United States newspapers: How newspaper environments influence international news decisions

In 1989 U.S. newspapers had unprecedented opportunities to present and explain such global events as a pro-democracy movement in China, the razing of the Berlin Wall in Germany, the crumbling of the old regime in the Soviet Union and the invasion of Panama by U.S. military forces.; This study examines how and why three prestige papers did this job differently.; Using a participant observation method, data were collected in field study and in-depth interviews with international news decision makers in the newsrooms of the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Miami Herald. The study adopted a systems approach of looking at the newspapers holistically. Therefore, investigation centered on four levels of each newspaper environment: extramedia, organizational, media routines, and individual.; Case studies showed that the strongest factor in news decisions varied by newspaper: editorial leadership for the Tribune, competition for local news for the Globe, and ethnicity as represented in a regional battle for Hispanic readers at the Herald.; Content analysis of the newspapers' A-sections supported qualitative conclusions that the Chicago Tribune had the strongest organizational culture for international news. The Tribune outperformed the other papers on most proportion and prominence measures of news stories, including story length and quantity of staff-produced copy.; All three newspapers concentrated their coverage on politics, diplomacy/military and crime/judicial topics, as well as issues or events requiring little explanation or interpretation. Furthermore, a greater proportion of conflict stories and hard news came from the Third World.; Combining qualitative and quantitative methods created an interesting methodological discovery: journalists assess their newspaper's performance across time, not daily.; The study supported the importance of organizational concepts to the development of strong cultures for international news. These include career ladder to management, power in organizations, and newspaper image.