An Interested Reader: MeasuringOwnership Control at the New York Times.

Several studies have asserted that patterns of media ownership affect media coverage and the quality of political information, but it is difficult to measure the influence media owners have over their institutions. Owners, editors and reporters deny that owners intervene in news decisions. And scholarly studies have generally failed to find evidence of intervention, despite substantial conformity in newsrooms (Gans 1979). This paper seeks to look inside one media institution to determine the influence of ownership there The late owner and publisher of the New York Times Arthur Hays Sulzberger routinely wrote memos to his top editor, Turner Catledge, offering suggestions, instructions, complaints and orders. These memos are collected in Catledge’s private papers. This paper examines the publisher’s memos and the responses of his subordinates from 1952 to Sulzberger’s death in 1968. The memos indicate the frequency and pervasiveness of the publisher’s interventions; they reveal the publisher’s interests and political preferences; they highlight the pressures the publisher imposed on his subordinates. Next, the paper addresses the responses of editors and reporters. Did the editor humor the publisher but bury his advice? Or did he pass on the owner’s preferences as his own (making the publisher’s presence real but invisible)? Finally the paper measures the owner’s impact on news coverage: were the publisher’s private preferences reflected in the news pages? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]