who writes the news

September 11, 2006 6:59 PM

how many newspapers write their own national and world news?

there are thousands of daily newspapers around the country- im curious how many write their own national or world news or have reporters covering these stories.. i know the times does (its the only paper i read) but im sure the other major ones like la times, usa today, wash post, cs-monitor etc do as well. how about the rest? do most papers copy articles from reuters or AP? if so how do ap articles compare to nytimes articles in terms of reputation and depth of analysis?

posted by petsounds to media & arts (12 comments total)

Very very few. None in the US or Canada write as much of their own news as much as the NY Times does. While I'm not a regular reader of the LA Times or Washington Post, I'd be surprised if they wrote even half as much of their own news as the NY Times does. I haven't read USA Today recently but IIRC, they rely heavily on the wire services (as does just about every other paper).

I suspect that the major British papers probably write most of their own news (or, at least, much more than any North American paper other than the Times).
posted by winston at 7:39 PM on September 11, 2006

Almost every paper of standing will have reporters assigned to national news, even if the assignment doesn't involve leaving the office. Tragically few are doing their own world news, those that are typically use freelancers. The large papers will have their own foreign staff, however.

Every paper takes some amount of wire copy. It's not "copying" the articles -- those agencies exist to provide such material. (AP stands for associated press).

AP copy has a strange reputation. The wire reporters get access and good treatment because their copy goes everywhere, but they often follow a straight line, by which I mean they go where the news is -- they don't seek it out. I can't think of the last time the agencies uncovered a story (although they often break news of events).

Reputation-wise, they are very strong, and whether or not PA or AP has run a fact or not can often be the deciding line on its truth in the newsroom. Editors will happily follow the wire lead on a story.

Depth of analysis can also be good, if it's an analysis piece or feature. However, they're not often what are called "written" pieces (I know), in that what they file is not really designed to go straight into print. Wire copy is used in so many varied ways that an article has to be written so that it still makes sense if the last 50 paragraphs are just cut off, or only the first three paragraphs are used, or if just the quotes are taken and used somewhere else.

Reading an entire AP piece can be a strange experience sometimes, because you're looking at the raw ingredients of news. This sort of structure runs contrary to fancy writing or deep analysis, so you don't often see it.
posted by bonaldi at 7:46 PM on September 11, 2006

(Sorry, yes, my perspective was the British press. That said, I'd be surprised if the major US newspapers didn't assign staffers to cover national stories, even if it's just to the extent of making some calls to flesh out wire copy)
posted by bonaldi at 7:47 PM on September 11, 2006

I'll answer the first part and leave the second to someone else. The answer of course is it depends. If by National news, you mean having someone in New York or Washington, D.C., then yeah there is a lot of them. However, very few of the papers in US will actively have reporters covering all the national and international beats. It would just be too cost prohibitive to put all those resources against that problem. With that said however, different papers are going to look to different areas for the "reach" in their coverage. The LA Times for example would have a great incentive to have a Mexico City coorespondant and the San Francisco Chronicle would likely have interest in having a bureau in Asia.

Also, don't forget that some newspapers are owned as part of syndicates and pool their resources so that it appears that they have dedicated bureaus in other parts of the world.
posted by mmascolino at 7:48 PM on September 11, 2006

While I'm not a regular reader of the LA Times or Washington Post, I'd be surprised if they wrote even half as much of their own news as the NY Times does.

WRONG, at least regarding the Washington Post. Virtually every article in the paper is written internally.

The same is true of The Wall Street Journal.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:52 PM on September 11, 2006

WRONG

Agreed. The five big papers covered by Slate's Today's Papers feature -- the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today -- are so covered precisely because of the enormous amount of original reporting they do on national stories. (I'd say the Christian Science Monitor also qualifies for this top tier; they don't carry wires at all.) Additionally, there's another tier of major papers, such as the Chicago Tribune or the Boston Globe, which don't produce quite as much original reporting on national stories, but still come in way above the "half as much" mark that winston indicated.
posted by jjg at 9:27 PM on September 11, 2006

The LAT has pretty large national and international staff too.

Apart from the big five, few US papers have the resources for an international staff. In days of yore, regional papers like the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe had buros in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem etc, but they were mostly closed when the chains and their beancounters took over newspapers. Many papers still have buros in DC - or even just one person holding down the fort. (Wandering the halls of the National Press Building is fun: office after office labeled things like Bumfuck Bugle Call Herald, with one very serious looking guy inside.)

Many papers have a small national staff, with one or two reporters who parachute into big stories. At something big, like say, Waco, you'll have a crush of reporters from all over the country stumbling over each other, known as a gang bang.

And the AP does do investigative stuff, though it's not their forte. They won the 2000 Pulitzer for their expose of No Gun Ri.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:31 PM on September 11, 2006

As mmascolino mentions, the big newspaper groups have foreign bureaux, meaning that although, say, the Idaho Statesman doesn't have people out in Baghdad, McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) does, and that copy is as good as anything coming from the big papers' dedicated staff.

One advantage of wire agencies is that they can generally afford to spread staff around the world, whereas the big papers (and even broadcasters such as the BBC) are often more reliant on stringers who happen to be in the right place when a story breaks.
posted by holgate at 8:43 AM on September 12, 2006

What mmascolino said. For example, the Houston Chronicle has bureaus in Mexico and Colombia which provide stories not only for the Chron but for other Hearst papers.
posted by Robert Angelo at 9:01 AM on September 12, 2006

It's also worthwhile to note that many or most of the larger regional metro dailies have at least a Washington, D.C. correspondent, to cover legislative and regulatory news relating to the paper's local interests. Often, that reporter or reporters will be drafted to cover national news if it ends up having a federal government angle.

Furthermore, keep in mind that the AP's sharing agreements mean that the wire copy that is sent out nationwide is written and reported originally by local papers and broadcast outlets. Especially in remote locations or during very quickly-breaking news, a very significant amount of the nationwide coverage of a local story with widespread impact will be reported and written by staff writers, often at small newspapers.

And to second (or third) the sentiment, winston's sentiment is dead wrong, as it relates to the LA Times and the Washington Post. Both are well-known for the breadth and depth of their national and international reporting. In fact, there is simply no better source in the nation, in my opinion, for news of the nation's capital than the Washington Post. Good luck trying to find that caliber of reporting on Capitol Hill and the Presidency from any other non-specialized publication. In the case of the LA Times, however, it's also intersting to see that the Times' acquisition by the Tribune company has put the paper's reputation for in-depth reporting at risk. If I recall correctly, Tribune was even thinking of slashing the Washington bureaus of all of its scores of papers and combining them all into one tiny little omni-bureau.

The lack of commitment to national and international reporting is a worrying part of the larger trend of media consolidation leading to a lack of investment in newsgathering. Everyone, everywhere should be worried about the declining support for quality journalism. It's expensive stuff, and the monetary return on investment from good reporting is hard for number-crunchers to quantify. But a healthy democracy depends on a healthy free press.
posted by Eldritch at 11:28 AM on September 12, 2006

If I recall correctly, Tribune was even thinking of slashing the Washington bureaus of all of its scores of papers and combining them all into one tiny little omni-bureau.

Yes, that's true. They have reduced the staffs of all of them except for LA and Chicago, I think, and put them all in the same building. They are sort of doing that now with foreign bureaus -- closing the Baltimore Sun's and Newsday's and relying on Chicago and LA to create Tribune-wide bureaus.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had a proud foreign reporting tradition that had sort of been abandoned, has actually reinvigorated theirs recently (even before they were bought by John Tierny).
posted by Airhen at 1:36 PM on September 12, 2006

The St Petersburg Times, which has a ~400K circulation, has bureau reporters in Tallahassee and DC, and does quite a bit of it's own analysis. Just a very raw estimate based on reading the paper, I'd say their overall news well is 60% locally written, maybe as high as 70%. That's local and otherwise, of course, and yes, the wire coverage typically isn't the local stuff, but even so, they do a pretty decent job.
posted by baylink at 2:04 PM on September 12, 2006