Newspaper quality, Pulitzer Prizes, and newspaper circulation.

Introduction

The news media play an indispensable role in democracy, transmitting the information that voters require to control government. The potential for government manipulation of the press has been recognized for centuries and freedom of the press was enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, the First Amendment merely restrains government and does not address the organization of the news media most conducive to fulfilling its role in a democracy. Traditionally, the U.S. has relied on commercial news media, for-profit news organizations supported almost entirely through the market (advertising, subscriptions, and gifts from patrons). In recent decades, publicly traded corporations have acquired major commercial media in the U.S. Many journalists and journalism scholars question whether for-profit news organizations will provide the type of news citizens require as voters in a democracy [Croteau and Hoynes, 2001]. Cranberg, Bezanson, and Soloski [2001, p. 11] contend that:

"Stock-market pressures have exacerbated the emphasis on revenue,

margins, profits, and stock-price performance, forcing the companies

to emphasize the aspects of newspaper operation that directly

produce those results: lean staffing, low salaries, efficiency,

orientation to advertiser preferences, definition of market and

audience in terms of advertising-revenue yield, de-emphasis on mass

audiences, de-emphasis on circulation revenues, and increased

emphasis on advertising revenues."

Examples of the alleged clash between profit and journalism abound. Jay Harris resigned in 2001 as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News instead of imposing budget and staff cuts demanded by the Knight Ridder company. As one commentator noted, budget cuts such as this are demanded "not to meet payroll, not to pay debt service, not to purchase needed new equipment, but to meet Wall Street's relentless pressure" [Laventhol, 2001, p. 19]. Gannett reduced the news staff of the Asbury Park (NJ) Press by nearly 25 percent within a year of acquiring the paper [Roberts, Kunkel, and Layton, 2001, p. 8]. Rowse [2000, p. 32] notes of budget cuts, "It was all part of today's marching orders for the news business: spare nothing, even our most sacred public obligations, in order to fatten the bottom line."

Economics provides two possible reasons why the profit motive might conflict with the supply of quality news. The first is the low instrumental value of political information to voters, the theory of rational ignorance from public choice [Downs, 1957]. In an electorate of any size, any one citizen's vote has almost no chance of being decisive in an election, so the instrumental value of information on politics and current events is almost zero and less than the social value. Rational ignorance suggests for-profit media will supply less than the socially optimal quantity of news. (1) Yet the critics of for-profit news seem more concerned with the quality of the news supplied by commercial media than the quantity of news:

"But the main concern of the media giants is to make journalism

directly profitable, and there are a couple of proven ways to do

that. First, lay off as many reporters as possible. Second,

concentrate on stories that are inexpensive and easy to cover, like

celebrity lifestyle pieces, court cases, plane crashes, crime

stories, and shootouts" [McChesney, 1999, p. 54].

Consumers cannot easily observe the quality of news, which is a second challenge for the provision of quality news. News has the character of an experience good--where consumers do not observe quality before consuming the good--or a credence good--where the quality is not discernible even after consumption [Nelson, 1970]. Consumers cannot tell if a report has been confirmed from multiple sources, evaluate the reliability of unnamed sources, or know what stories have not been reported. The supply by the market of high quality experience or credence goods is difficult [Akerlof, 1970; Darby and Karni, 1973]. Yet repeat sales [Klein and Leffler, 1981] and reputation [Homer, 2002] can provide firms an incentive to supply high quality even when consumers cannot easily observe quality. Reputation generates brand name capital which depreciates if firms supply lower quality than expected. Stock price declines following product recalls [Jarrell and Peltzman, 1985] or plane crashes [Chalk, 1986; Mitchell and Maloney, 1989] provide evidence of reputation effects. Managers concerned with maintaining the price of their company's stock will ensure that their firm incurs the cost necessary to supply the expected quality.

News organizations may not supply news which meets journalists' definition of high quality if news consumers do not value the aspects of quality valued by journalists. Scientists, engineers, and artists often care greatly about attributes of products or art which matter little to consumers. Politics and current events fascinate many journalists who may assume that most people share these tastes. Indeed, journalists might even impose their preferences for news coverage over a format that would be more valuable to consumers. Al Neuhearth, former CEO of Gannett, one of the nation's largest newspaper groups, has criticized newspaper editors who "edited the newspaper for themselves rather than the general public" [Roberts, Kunkel, and Layton, 2001, p. 180]. Gannett has stressed shorter stories and other reader-friendly designs in its many daily papers and its national daily USA Today, based on research that people simply do not read longer stories and stories which jump from the front page to the inside of the paper [Pritchard, 1987]. Yet journalists roundly criticize Gannett and deride USA Today as McPaper. Journalists additionally exhibit considerable hubris regarding their definition of newsworthy against the audience's preferences [Fallows, 1996].

Pulitzer Prizes are a measure of quality as judged by journalists which consumers can easily observe and thus, provide an opportunity to determine whether news consumers value what journalists consider high quality journalism. This paper tests whether papers which have recently won Pulitzers have higher circulations, ceteris paribus. These prestigious awards are highly publicized and provide an easily observed signal of quality. (2)

Several papers have examined the supply of quality journalism by the news media using event studies. McChesney [1987] found that Watergate coverage did not raise the stock price of the Washington Post company, while Anderson [2002] found that revelation of Janet Cooke's fabricated "Jimmy's World" stories in the Washington Post (which had won a Pulitzer Prize) lowered the value of the Post's stock. Anderson and Sutter [2003] find that the mistaken calls by television networks of the 2000 Presidential vote in Florida on election night reduced the stock prices of the parent companies of the television network. Market forces seem to punish news organizations whose quality of journalism is perceived to fall, but whether high quality reporting builds brand name capital remains an open question.

The authors examine the determinants of Daily and Sunday circulation in 1997 for a cross-section of U.S. newspapers. Papers which had recently won a Pulitzer Prize (within the preceding decade) have significantly higher circulation, even when controlling for the economic and demographic characteristics and media competition of the metropolitan area. The effect is quantitatively large as well. Daily circulation is about 55 percent higher and Sunday circulation is 45 percent higher for papers which won a Pulitzer. Multiple prizes also increase circulation, with the first prize increasing Daily circulation by 17 percent and Sunday circulation by 16 percent, although the marginal impact of a prize on circulation declines. To examine whether the resources available to large market papers explain both the winning of Pulitzers and circulation, a model is re-estimated using a restricted sample of the 80 largest circulation papers. Pulitzer Prizes remain significant determinants of circulation even among the largest papers, although the magnitude of the effect is diminished. Nonetheless, the first Pulitzer won by a large circulation paper still increases Daily circulation by 11 percent and Sunday circulation by 12 percent. The results suggest that consumers do value quality and that news organizations could find establishing and maintaining a reputation for high quality profitable over time, as Kovach and Rosenstiel [2001] suggest.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the data set and offers definitions and sources for the variables used in this study. The following section contains the econometric results. The last section offers a brief conclusion.

Variable Definitions and Variable Sources

This paper examines the determinants of Daily and Sunday circulation of a sample of major American newspapers to determine if quality matters to readers. The sample includes leading newspapers in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and only includes papers with at least 10 percent of newspaper circulation in the MSA to restrict attention only to papers which attract readership from across a metro area. The determinants of circulation for smaller suburban papers might differ substantially from the determinants of circulation for larger papers. The data set includes 361 papers from 277 MSAs. One MSA (New York) had five papers in the data set, 11 had three papers, 58 had two papers, and the remainder had one each. Most of the multiple papers are from distinct cities within an MSA, like the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press in the Minneapolis MSA, and the Greensboro News Record, High Point Enterprise, and Winston-Salem Journal in the Greensboro, NC, MSA. The dependent variable is the natural logarithm of circulation of each paper within its home MSA in 1997, for both Daily and Sunday editions. The source for circulation is the Audit Bureau of Circulation, as reported in SRDS Circulation '98.

Pulitzer Prizes is the measure of newspaper quality. The Pulitzer Prizes were created in 1917 from the estate of Joseph Pulitzer and are administered by the School of Journalism at Columbia University. There are 14 prizes awarded in journalism each year in a variety of categories. The awards in each category are selected by a panel of judges consisting of editors, publishers, writers, and educators. The authors use prizes awarded between 1987-97 as a measure of quality. (3) Of the 361 papers in the data set, 48 won at least one Pulitzer during this period, with the most awards going to the New York Times (18), the Washington Post (14), and the Philadelphia Inquirer (11). The empirical work uses two specifications for our PULITZER variable: a binary variable which equals one for papers which won one or more Pulitzers during the period, and an integer variable equal to the number of prizes won during the period.

The study includes a large number of variables which have been demonstrated to be determinants of newspaper circulation or provide alternative sources of news as controls. The many controls are to assure the robustness of the results regarding newspaper quality and circulation and also estimate parsimonious models of circulation based on elimination of individually and jointly insignificant variables. One variable not included is price. Newspaper subscription prices are relatively low and exhibit little variation cross-sectionally, in part because newspapers receive a majority of their revenues from advertising. In addition, Thompson [1989] found that price was not a significant determinant of demand. The other independent variables are as follows (unless otherwise stated, the source for a variable is the 1990 Census):

POPULATION is the natural logarithm of the estimated 1997 population of the paper's MSA. A larger population should increase circulation [SRDS Circulation '98].

INCOME is the natural logarithm of median household income. A positive sign for INCOME indicates that news is a normal good, which seems most probable. However, wealthier households have a higher value of time, so newspapers might suffer from cost disease [Baumol, 1967], offsetting the income effect on circulation.

CABLE is the percentage of households in the MSA's television market subscribing to cable television. Cable provides national and local news channels and public affairs programming, which can substitute for daily newspapers, so a negative sign for this variable is expected [Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook, 1998].

NETWORKS is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the television market to which the MSA belongs has an affiliate of each of the three over-the-air networks (ABC, CBS, .NBC). This variable measures the availability of both news and entertainment programming from the major networks, which could compete with newspapers for the audience's time, so a negative sign for this variable is expected [Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook, 1998].

TV STATIONS is the number of over the air televisions stations in the market to which the MSA belongs. Television stations compete for the audience's attention, so a negative sign for this variable is expected [Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook, 1998].

PAPERS is the number of daily (or Sunday) papers published in the MSA. According to the umbrella theory of competition [Lacy and Simon, 1993], even small suburban dailies can provide competition for a major metropolitan paper. Competition should reduce the circulation of a paper, so a negative sign for this variable is expected [SRDS Circulation '98].

COLLEGE is the percentage of MSA residents over age 25 who hold a degree from a four-year college. Education is generally correlated with greater interest in news and public affairs, so a positive sign for this variable is expected.

ENGLISH is a measure of language proficiency. It equals one minus the fraction of the population age five and older listed in the Census category that does not speak English well. Almost all of the papers in the data set are published in English. Residents with poor English skills face a higher cost of reading these papers, which also may not feature extensive coverage of minority communities, so a positive sign for this variable is expected.

MALE is the percentage of men in the population and is included as a control.

SAMEMSA is the percentage of residents over age five that lived in the same MSA in 1985 as in 1990. Newspapers in the U.S. typically offer extensive coverage of local news, which may be of less interest to individuals who have recently moved into the area and who may instead consume a product with more national or international news. A positive sign for this variable is expected.

OVER25 is the percentage of adults in the population and is included as a control.

WHITE describes the racial composition of the population and is included as a control.

TURNOUT is the total number of votes cast in the 1996 Presidential election divided by the MSA's estimated 1997 population. This variable measures interest in politics, so a positive sign is expected [Scammon, McGillivray, and Cook, 1998].

CLINTON is the percentage of the major party (Republican and Democrat) votes in the MSA received by Bill Clinton in the 1996 Presidential election. Goff and Tollison [1990] contend that liberals may have greater demand for news and find evidence consistent with this hypothesis when examining state newspaper circulation. Sutter [2002] finds that total newspaper circulation is higher in MSAs with a higher 1996 Democratic vote share. This variable is included as a control [Scammon, McGillivray, and Cook, 1998].

Table 1 provides summary statistics for the variables used in this study. The population of MSAs in the sample range from 57,000 to 18.3 million. The average Daily circulation is 90,300, with a range from 5,200 to 968,000 (Los Angeles Times), while average Sunday circulation is 114,000, with a range of 5,200 to 1,340,000. The newspapers in the sample face substantial media competition, with an average of 9.08 for TV STATIONS, 67.7 percent for CABLE subscribers, 3.42 for Daily papers, and 2.69 for Sunday papers.

Results

Table 2 presents analysis of Daily and Sunday circulation of the sample of newspapers using a binary Pulitzer Prize variable. All of the results presented in this paper report White's heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors. Quality matters for circulation, as the Pulitzer Prize dummy variable is significant at better than the 1 percent level for both Daily and Sunday circulation in the full specifications. The quantitative impact of quality is also significant. Papers which received a Pulitzer Prize had 55 percent higher Daily circulation and 43 percent higher Sunday circulation. As expected, population is positive and highly significant. (4) The other consistent, significant determinant of circulation is PAPERS, which is negative and significant at better than the 1 percent level. Most of the other control variables are insignificant in the full specification, with only ENGLISH attaining significance at conventional levels for Daily circulation. As expected, language proficiency increases circulation. Overall, the specification performs well and the model explains a slightly higher portion of Sunday circulation.

Table 2 also presents parsimonious specifications, omitting some of the insignificant control variables. The parsimonious specifications serve as a robustness check for the main result concerning the impact of Pulitzer Prizes and provide further insight on the determinants of circulation. The parsimonious specifications presented were chosen based on Adjusted [R.sup.2), the Akaike Information Criterion, and the Schwarz Criterion. All of the variables dropped from specifications were always jointly insignificant. The parsimonious specifications confirm the significant effect of Pulitzer Prizes on circulation, with the quantitative impact virtually identical to the full specifications. POPULATION and PAPERS remain highly significant in the parsimonious specifications, and several other control variables attain significance at the 10 percent level or better. SAMEMSA, COLLEGE, ENGLISH, OVER25, and WHITE increase Daily circulation, while INCOME, ENGLISH, and OVER25 are positive determinants and MALE a negative determinant of Sunday circulation.

Table 3 presents analysis of Daily circulation employing an integer Pulitzer Prize variable equal to the number of prizes won by each paper between 1987-97. Column (a) presents a full specification, including the Pulitzer integer variable, while column (b) adds a quadratic Pulitzer variable to allow for a possible declining marginal effect of Pulitzer on circulation. Column (c) presents a parsimonious specification with a quadratic term buy excludes individually and jointly significant variables. Winning additional Pulitzers increases Daily circulation. In specification, (a) PULITZER is significant at the .5 percent level and each Pulitzer Prize increases circulation by about 5 percent. In specification, (b) PULITZER increases circulation, [PULITZER.sup.2] decreases circulation, and both variables are significant at the 1 percent level. The quantitative impact is substantial as well. The first Pulitzer increases circulation by 17 percent in (b). The marginal impact of a Pulitzer on circulation declines and is maximized at about 10 Pulitzers during the previous decade (although only three papers in the data set won this many prizes). Again, POPULATION and PAPERS are significant (at the 1 percent level) determinants of circulation, with POPULATION positive and PAPERS negative. The only other significant control variable in the full specifications is ENGLISH, which increases circulation. In the parsimonious specification (c), the PULITZER and [PULITZER.sup.2] variables remain significant at the 1 percent level, with positive and negative signs and similar point estimates as in the full specification (the first Pulitzer a paper wins increases circulation by 19 percent). POPULATION and PAPERS remain significant at the 1 percent level as well. ENGLISH and OVER25 attain significance at the 1 percent level in (c), while SAMEMSA now attains significance at the 10 percent level and circulation is higher when the population is less mobile. (5)

Table 4 examines the effect of the number of Pulitzer Prizes won on Sunday circulation. Column (a) presents a full specification with the integer Pulitzer variable, while (b) adds a quadratic term, and (c) presents a parsimonious specification with the quadratic term. The pattern of significance for the Pulitzer variable is similar to Table 3. PULITZER is positive and significant at the 5 percent level in (a) and positive and significant at better than the 1 percent level when the quadratic term is included, while [PULITZER.sup.2] is negative and significant at the 1 percent level. Additional Pulitzer Prizes increase circulation--the first Pulitzer increases Sunday circulation by 16 percent--but the marginal effect on circulation again declines and becomes zero at about 10 prizes. Among the control variables, POPULATION is positive and highly significant in each specification and PAPERS is negative and highly significant in each specification. In the full specifications, only ENGLISH, OVER25, and TV STATIONS attain significance among the control variables. ENGLISH and OVER25 are positive and significant at the 10 percent level, while TV STATIONS is negative and significant at the 10 percent level in specification (b). In the parsimonious specification (c), these remain the only significant variables. However, OVER25 is now significant at the 1 percent level, while ENGLISH becomes positive and significant at the 5 percent level. (6)

The analysis assumes that causality runs from Pulitzer Prizes to circulation but alternatively, papers with large circulations might be more likely to win Pulitzers. The authors have attempted to mitigate reverse causality by using Pulitzers awarded between 1987-97 and circulation in 1997, so 1997 circulation cannot cause the winning of Pulitzers 10 years earlier. However, circulation is highly correlated from year to year so resources available in 1987 might have produced both Pulitzers over the next decade and circulation in 1997. Ranking papers by circulation certainly reveals that small papers might lack the resources to win Pulitzers. Papers in the top quintile of circulation in 1997 won 91 percent of the Pulitzers over the sample period. (7)

Consequently, the circulation model was re-estimated using only papers with Daily circulation in excess of 100,000 in 1997. These papers have the resources which should allow them to pursue Pulitzer prizes if they wish. Thus, including only these 80 largest papers restricts attention to papers with significant resources. Table 5 presents estimates of a parsimonious specification for Daily and Sunday circulation for these papers. Only results for the quadratic Pulitzer specification are presented, but the results are similar for the binary Pulitzer specification. Winning Pulitzer Prizes increases circulation for the largest papers, with the PULITZER variable positive and significant at the 1 percent level and the [PULITZER.sup.2] variable negative and significant at the 5 percent level. The first Pulitzer increases Daily circulation for the largest papers by 11 percent and Sunday circulation by 12 percent. Note that these estimates are slightly smaller than for the parsimonious specifications for the full data set, which suggests that in the full data set, a portion of the circulation effect of prizes is perhaps actually resources. However, the results still indicate a quantitatively significant effect of prizes on circulation.

Finally, note that the two measures of political preferences, TURNOUT and CLINTON, fail to attain significance in any of the specifications reported. The insignificance of CLINTON stands in contrast to the results of Goff and Tollison [1990] and Sutter [2002] that Democratic vote share increases total newspaper circulation in states and MSAs, respectively. Their results suggest that liberals have a greater demand for news, which might lead news organizations to supply biased, liberal news in an effort to cater to their audience's preferences. This paper considers the circulation of individual papers instead of total circulation. The lack of an impact of CLINTON on the circulation of leading metropolitan papers suggests that it is smaller, suburban papers which drive the apparent relationship between circulation and political preferences.

Conclusion

Many journalists and communications scholars question whether a profit-maximizing, commercial media can supply news of the quality needed by citizens in a democracy. Consumers have difficulty evaluating the quality of the news, so asymmetric information provides one potential reason why news organizations may fail to supply high quality news. Alternatively, consumers may not value the product dimensions which represent high quality news to journalists. For-profit news organizations cannot be expected to provide types of news which consumers do not value.

This paper has investigated the relationship between news quality and newspaper circulation using a very prominent measure of quality, Pulitzer Prizes. These prestigious awards provide a readily observable measure of newspaper quality as judged by journalists. Papers which have recently won Pulitzers have higher Daily and Sunday circulation, even when controlling for the economic, demographic, and media characteristics of the newspaper markets. The effect of Pulitzers on circulation is not merely highly statistically significant but also quantitatively large, with Daily circulation 55 percent higher for papers which have recently won prizes, and is robust across different specifications of the Pulitzer Prize variable and circulation. The magnitude of the effect is reduced, but still significant, even among a restricted sample of the largest circulation papers in the country.

While many scholars are skeptical about the ability of commercial news organizations to supply quality journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel [2001] suggest that, in the long run, news organizations with high standards attract audiences and profit. They note the long standing conflict between hard news and information and soft, entertaining, titillating news and conclude that, "history over a longer term suggests that the organizations that tip toward the information end of the spectrum tend to prevail over those that tip toward the entertainment end" [p. 153]. The results of this study indicate that quality does matter for circulation, at least quality as measured by Pulitzer Prizes. If quality produces a larger audience, owners of media companies can rationally invest in quality journalism. Of course, it has not been established that the extra revenue due to the circulation boost from winning Pulitzers exceeds the cost required to produce Pulitzer quality journalism. However, the impact on circulation is quantitatively significant, suggesting that quality may well pay. TABLE 1 Summary Statistics Variable Mean Std. Dev. Minimum Maximum Daily 90300 129000 5200 968000 Sunday 114000 178000 5200 1340000 PULITZER (binary) .133 .340 0 1 PULITZER (integer) .385 1.63 0 18 POPULATION 1098000 2641000 57700 18300000 CABLE .677 .0802 .455 .915 TV STATIONS 9.08 4.77 1 25 NETWORKS .831 .373 0 1 MALE .487 .0119 .466 .596 WHITE .842 .109 .316 .989 OVER25 .625 .0536 .434 .788 COLLEGE .198 .0707 .0949 .440 INCOME 28300 4930 16700 46900 ENGLISH .956 .0672 .505 .995 SAMEMSA .799 .0831 .456 .979 CLINTON .519 .0936 .208 .801 TURNOUT .373 .0627 .145 .658 PAPERS (Daily) 3.42 4.81 1 30 PAPERS (Sunday) 2.69 3.83 0 26 Table 2 Binary Pulitzer Prize Variable and Daily Circulation

Dependent Variable:

Dependent Variable: Log of

Log of Daily Circulation Sunday Circulation PULITZER .439 *** .436 *** .357 *** .361 ***

(4.94) (4.98) (3.29) (3.38) POPULATION .793 *** .799 *** .895 *** .894 ***

(16.4) (18.8) (18.2) (20.30) INCOME .271 -- .225 .345 *

(1.06) -- (0.92) (1.81) CABLE .454 .437 .422 .402

(1.32) (1.32) (1.14) (1.12) NETWORKS .0881 .0866 .0714 .0787

(1.36) (1.39) (1.13) (1.24) TV STATIONS -.00851 -.00776 -.00889 -.00913

(1.27) (1.23) (1.36) (1.42) PAPERS -.241 *** -.246 *** -.347 *** -.342 ***

(8.30) (9.07) (9.74) (9.90) COLLEGE .438 .945 * .556 --

(0.54) (1.86) (0.64) -- ENGLISH 1.08 * * 1.19 * ** .814 0.949 * *

(2.00) (2.66) (1.52) (2.06) MALE -3.65 -- -2.63 -4.29 *

(1.10) -- (0.83) (2.21) SAMEMSA .508 .901 *** .350 --

(1.01) (2.99) (0.74) -- OVER25 1.20 1.78 * ** 1.62 1.22 *

(1.28) (2.92) (1.64) (1.88) WHITE .0451 .452 * * .129 --

(0.16) (1.97) (0.51) -- TURNOUT .0221 -- -.0393 --

(0.03) -- (0.05) -- CLINTON -.128 -.278 -.0961 --

(0.41) (0.88) (0.30) -- CONSTANT -2.55 -2.15 -3.50 * -3.35 *

(1.24) (3.61) (1.77) (1.80) Adjusted [R.sup.2] .816 .817 .826 .828 Akaike Criterion 1.27 1.25 1.31 1.28 Schwarz Criterion 1.45 1.37 1.48 1.40 Note: The number of observations was 361 for Daily and 347 for Sunday. Absolute t-statistics based on White's heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors in parenthesis. *, **, *** indicate significance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent levels, respectively. TABLE 3 Pulitzer Prizes and Daily Circulation

(a) (b) (c) PULITZER .0529 * ** .176 * ** .180 * **

(2.41) (4.72) (4.78) PULITZER (2) -- -.00926 *** -.00914 ***

-- -4.31 (4.30) POPULATION .839 * ** .812 * ** .846 * **

(18.5) (17.5) (21.2) INCOME .257 .273 --

(0.99) (1.06) -- CABLE .371 .414 --

(1.08) (1.22) -- NETWORKS .0853 .0921 .0777

(1.31) (1.41) (1.23) TV STATIONS -.00989 -.110 -.00953

(1.44) (1.62) (1.46) PAPERS -.252 * ** -.247 * ** -.254 * **

(8.60) (8.45) (9.00) COLLEGE .488 .411 --

(0.60) (0.51) -- ENGLISH 1.14 * * 1.11 * * 1.56 * **

(2.17) (2.10) (3.95) MALE -2.79 3.00 --

(0.86) (0.92) -- SAMEMSA .547 .536 .521 *

(1.09) (1.07) (1.85) OVER25 1.45 1.41 1.55 * **

(1.57) (1.57) (3.79) WHITE .0268 .0224 .137

(0.10) (0.08) (0.66) TURNOUT .138 .144 --

(0.17) (0.17) -- CLINTON -0.149 -.153 .0806

(0.49) (0.50) (0.30) CONSTANT -3.58 * -3.25 -2.66 * **

(1.75) (1.60) (3.64) Adjusted [R.sup.2] .807 .812 .810 Akaike Criterion 1.32 1.30 1.29 Schwarz Criterion 1.49 1.48 1.42 Note: The number of observations is 361. TABLE 4 Pulitzer Prizes and Sunday Circulation

(a) (b) (c) PULITZER .0575 * * .168 * ** .169 * **

(2.53) (4.17) (4.23) PULITZER (2) -- -.00824 *** -.00810 ***

-- (3.48) (3.56) POPULATION .931 * ** .904 * ** .915 * **

(20.8) (19.4) (20.9) INCOME .207 .221 .269

(0.84) (0.90) (1.42) CABLE .330 .379 --

(0.40) (1.05) -- NETWORKS .697 .773 .575

(1.10) (1.21) (0.93) TV STATIONS -.0106 -.0118 * -.0123 *

(1.57) (1.78) (1.87) SUNPAPERS -.362 * ** -.355 * ** -.349 * **

(9.92) (9.80) (9.79) COLLEGE .548 .464 --

(0.63) (0.54) -- ENGLISH .904 * .862 1.05 * *

(1.71) (1.64) (2.38) MALE -2.01 -2.10 --

(0.64) (0.67) -- SAMEMSA .368 .363 --

(0.78) (0.78) -- OVER25 1.85 * 1.81 * 1.81 * **

(1.95) (1.96) (3.99) WHITE .132 .125 .197

(0.52) (0.49) (0.98) CLINTON -.105 -.117 --

(0.34) (0.38) -- TURNOUT .0157 .569 --

(0.02) (0.08) -- CONSTANT -4.21 * * -3.95 * * -5.24 * **

(2.17) (2.06) (3.16) Adjusted [R.sup.2] .824 .827 .828 Akaike Criterion 1.32 1.30 1.28 Schwarz Criterion 1.50 1.49 1.40 Note: The number of observations is 347. TABLE 5 Pulitzers and Circulation for Large Papers

Daily Sunday PULITZER .108 * ** .122 * **

(4.16) (3.63) PULITZER (2) -.00398 ** -.00437 **

(2.53) (2.32) POPULATION .512 * ** .552 * **

(15.2) (9.74) NETWORKS -.145 * --

(1.77) -- TV STATIONS -.0294 *** -.0387 ***

(3.91) (3.90) ENGLISH 1.23 * .997

(1.72) (0.83) MALE 13.6 * ** 12.9 **

(2.72) (2.20) SAMEMSA .850 .870

(1.36) (1.18) CONSTANT -3.17 -3.00

(1.00) (0.85) Adjusted [R.sup.2] .754 .614 Akaike Criterion .300 1.06 Schwarz Criterion .568 1.30 Note: The number of observations is 80 for Daily and 79 for Sunday.

Footnotes

(1) Note that even though each person may acquire only a small amount of information, the overall amount of information generated might be sufficient [Martinelli, 2003].

(2) Voters also use easily observable information about the performance of the economy at large in evaluating the performance of politicians [Grief and McGarrity, 19981.

(3) The categories for journalism are Public Service, Breaking News Reporting, Investigative Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, Beat Reporting, National Reporting, International Reporting, Feature Writing, Commentary, Criticism, Editorial Writing, Editorial Cartooning, Breaking News Photography, and Feature Photography. The list of awards was obtained from the website of the Pulitzer Prize board at www.pulitzer.org.

(4) The coefficient on POPULATION for Daily is significantly less than 1.0, which indicates that a circulation per capita specification would be inappropriate. All of the specifications presented here were also estimated with the circulation of the papers instead of logged circulation. In no case did the Pulitzer variables ever fail to attain significance.

(5) The authors further explored whether all Pulitzer Prizes had an equal effect on circulation, or whether readers considered some Pulitzers more indicative of quality than others. One variable was created for the reporting categories (Public Service, General News, Investigative, Explanatory, Specialized, National, International, and Feature Writing), a second variable was created for the remaining categories, and the model was re-estimated. Both Pulitzer variables significantly increased circulation and a Wald test failed to reject the null hypothesis of equal coefficients for the variables.

(6) The models reported in this paper were also estimated with dummy variables corresponding to Census regions. The regional dummies were not jointly significant and the significance of the Pulitzer Prize variables were not affected, so the results are not reported here.

(7) The authors estimated a probit model of whether a paper won at least one Pulitzer as a function of circulation and the other control variables in the model. Circulation (either Daily or Sunday) was a positive and significant determinant of winning Pulitzers.

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BRIAN LOGAN AND DANIEL SUTTER

University of Oklahoma--U.S.A. The authors would like to thank Bill Anderson, Kevin Grier, Joe McGarrity, Bob Reed, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier drafts.