In 2003-04, Bay Area newspapers chose more trivial stories than before but still beat local newscasts, according to Grade the News

Newspapers used to scorn the "flash and trash" story selection of local television news. But a yearlong analysis of the Bay Area's top three papers by a Stanford University research project shows a decline in the significance of their story choices from a 2003 survey as they followed local stations in responding to the allure of sensational stories, such as the Scott Peterson murder trial.

Television news still scored lower overall than newspapers on seven yardsticks of basic news quality developed by Grade the News, a news-ethics project affiliated with the university's Graduate Program in Journalism.

"Many Bay Area TV news directors claim to buck the stereotype of local news as overreliant on the visual and emotional, including violence, fires and minor accidents," project director John McManus said. "Yet when it comes to picking stories that matter, a measure we call 'newsworthiness,' the best any local station rated was a C."

This sample period, from mid-2003 to mid-2004, offered a plenitude of news—two statewide elections, foreign interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, profound changes in federal programs, a state budget crisis and a new governor who is both a populist and a conservative. But Grade the News often found that in its content analysis of more than 2,500 stories, dramatic items affecting few people directly made their way to the top of the news.

Newsworthiness fell at least half a grade for each of three newspapers—the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times—from last year's analysis (www.stanford.edu/group/gradethenews/feat/recentgrades/2003a.htm). No paper scored better than a B on that measure; the year before they all earned a B+. With large and randomly selected samples, the difference is unlikely to be due to chance alone. The measure was enough to pull all three newspapers' overall scores down half a grade, to B+ from A.

Boosted by the magnetism of Arnold Schwarzenegger, TV stations did raise the quality of their political coverage during the gubernatorial recall campaign.

Two San Francisco stations—KGO Channel 7, the ABC station, and KPIX Channel 5, the CBS station—boosted their overall quality to C+ from C.

Seven yardsticks derived from the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists contribute to the overall grade assigned each news provider's work. They are newsworthiness, context, explanation, local relevance, civic contribution, enterprise and fairness.

Grade the News' report card is an effort to hold Bay Area newsrooms accountable to their readers and viewers. Grade the News researchers sampled all eight daily news providers once every 13 days, and used the results to compute a set of grades for each newsroom. Called a systematic sample with a random start, the approach generates a statistically representative data set.

Researchers analyzed the top stories of the day—those on the newspapers' front and local news front pages and those selected for evening newscasts during prime viewing hours.

"We believe this careful, empirical approach is a valuable new tool in distinguishing between public-interest and narrowly market-driven journalism," McManus said. "The idea is to help news consumers make informed choices, to change the marketplace by rewarding quality and discouraging schlock."

Grade the News is an independent report on the quality of news in the Bay Area that is affiliated with the Graduate Program in Journalism at Stanford University. The URL is www.gradethenews.org. To see a Flash animated version of the "report card," click on www.stanford.edu/group/gradethenews/feat/recentgrades/flash.htm.

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