'LOCAL (PEOPLE) MEAN THE WORLD TO US': AUSTRALIA'S REGIONAL NEWSPAPERS AND THE 'CLOSER TO READERS' ASSUMPTION.

The intersections between journalism and democracy are explored in this paper through an analysis of the `voices' through which the news is `told' by specific segments of the Australian print media. We argue that evidence of the extent to which a newspaper fulfils its roles to democracy and society is partially found in the range of sources quoted in the news stories it publishes, and in the prominence and dominance it gives to various types of sources in those stories. Our goal was to quantify the validity of the widely held assumption that, in Australia, regional newspapers are closer than metropolitan newspapers to their readers. This suggestion guided our content analysis of the types of news story sources quoted or paraphrased in the general news published in four regional newspapers and one metropolitan newspaper in one Australian state. The assumption of closeness to readers for Australian regional newspapers did not hold up well in this test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]