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According to Peverill Squire and Christina Fastnow, "voters tend to learn about office-holders from the media...newspapers are the major source of news about state politics. "

The purpose of this blog is to present my analyses of Star Tribune's news coverage of the governor's race. I will be reading literature on the news coverage of gubernatorial candidates and elections and applying that reading to the articles within the Star Tribune in order to analyze. I will be analyzing the content, location, tone, length, sources, and all other aspects of the articles.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Correct Placement and Catchy Headlines Capture Attention


After reading the article in today’s paper, I was a bit confused. The article was titled “Casino, tax hike in Dayton’s new plan,” but had very little information about a casino. Apparently, the headline was just to capture the reader’s attention. Although slightly misleading, the headline was very successful because I, like many others, read the entire article thinking there would be more information about the casino.

The placement (left column of the front page) and headline of the article were both used to draw in more readers. The article was fairly long and continued onto A7 with more information about Dayton’s new plan to close the budget deficit.

“He acknowledged that his new plan − ­which counts on $300 million from a new Mall of America casino and $2.8 billion in new tax collections − comes up nearly $1 billion short.”

With the article, there was also a facts box containing “Highlights of new state revenue he’s proposing” and “Highlights of the cuts he proposed.” The article was put together well and allowed the reader to get the information quickly from the facts box or to get the more detailed version in the article itself. 

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