Approximately 4,000 newspapers publish online editions, and of these, around 1,300 are small community non-dailies, while fewer than 70 are considered major metro dailies. (1) Yet most studies of online news content and production have focused on daily papers, particularly on larger dailies. (2) Smaller online operations deserve focus because they are understudied, because there is greater variability in rate of online adoption among small papers, and because many online news sites lack interactivity. (3) Greater audience-journalist connectivity could have an especially high impact in smaller, less pluralistic communities. (4)
Research Questions
RQ1:
Why have some ...