Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2009 Sep 2;4(9):e6856. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006856.
Medical news that appears on newspaper front pages is intended to reach a wide audience, but how this type of medical news is prepared and distributed has not been systematically researched. We thus quantified the level of visibility achieved by front-page medical stories in the United States and analyzed their news sources.
Using the online resource Newseum, we investigated front-page newspaper coverage of four prominent medical stories, and a high-profile non-medical news story as a control, reported in the US in 2007. Two characteristics were quantified by two raters: which newspaper titles carried each target front-page story (interrater agreement, >96%; kappa, >0.92) and the news sources of each target story (interrater agreement, >94%; kappa, >0.91). National rankings of the top 200 US newspapers by audited circulation were used to quantify the extent of coverage as the proportion of the total circulation of ranked newspapers in Newseum.
In total, 1630 front pages were searched. Each medical story appeared on the front pages of 85 to 117 (67.5%-78.7%) ranked newspaper titles that had a cumulative daily circulation of 23.1 to 33.4 million, or 61.8% to 88.4% of all newspapers. In contrast, the non-medical story achieved front-page coverage in 152 (99.3%) newspaper titles with a total circulation of 41.0 million, or 99.8% of all newspapers. Front-page medical stories varied in their sources, but the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and the Associated Press together supplied 61.7% of the total coverage of target front-page medical stories.
Front-page coverage of medical news from different sources is more accurately revealed by analysis of circulation counts rather than of newspaper titles. Journals wishing to widen knowledge of research news and organizations with important health announcements should target at least the four dominant media organizations identified in this study.
出现在报纸头版的医学新闻旨在面向更广泛的受众，但此类医学新闻的编写和传播方式尚未得到系统研究。因此，我们对美国头版医学报道的可见度进行了量化分析，并对其新闻来源进行了分析。
我们使用在线资源 Newseum，调查了 2007 年在美国报道的四项突出的医学新闻故事和一项作为对照的高知名度非医学新闻故事的头版报纸报道。两名评估员通过以下两个特征进行量化：哪些报纸刊登了每个目标头版故事（评估员间的一致性，>96%；kappa 值，>0.92）以及每个目标故事的新闻来源（评估员间的一致性，>94%；kappa 值，>0.91）。使用按发行量审核排名的美国前 200 名报纸的全国排名来量化报道的程度，即排名报纸在 Newseum 中的总发行量的比例。
共搜索了 1630 个头版。每个医学故事都出现在 85 到 117 种（67.5%到 78.7%）排名报纸的头版上，这些报纸的总发行量为 2310 万到 3340 万份，占所有报纸的 61.8%到 88.4%。相比之下，非医学故事则在 152 种（99.3%）报纸上获得了头版报道，总发行量为 4100 万份，占所有报纸的 99.8%。头版医学报道的来源各不相同，但《华盛顿邮报》、《洛杉矶时报》、《纽约时报》和美联社共同提供了目标头版医学报道总量的 61.7%。
通过分析发行量而不是报纸名称，更能准确揭示来自不同来源的医学新闻的头版报道情况。希望扩大研究新闻知识的期刊和有重要健康公告的组织应该至少瞄准本研究中确定的这四个主要媒体组织。
