Media Audit

We conducted an audit of news stories on each of the six communities in our study covering a six-month period from January to June 2022. The objective was to identify and record all or nearly all the stories produced by the 14 media outlets that provide coverage for the six areas. We identified 469 stories in databases such as NewsBank and Newsday Recent and through Advanced Google Boolean site searches of the news organizations themselves, along with hard copies of the weekly newspapers.

Articles and/or broadcasts were each assessed and coded according to issue or topic: crime, education, environment, government, politics, etc. All data points, including the media outlets in which the pieces appeared, the story headlines, and their publication and/or broadcast dates, were recorded in one of four Excel spreadsheets. We narrowed down the original list of 469 stories based on the topics covered to 296. Results of our audit are found herein.