The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on New Year's Eve 2007, leaving the Cincinnati Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in the market. The next year, fewer candidates ran for municipal oce in the suburbs most reliant on the Post, incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout fell. We exploit a di erence-in-di erences strategy { comparing changes in outcomes before and after the Post's closure in suburbs where the newspaper o ered more or less intensive coverage { and the fact that the Post's closing date was xed 30 years in advance to rule out some non-causal explanations for these results. Although our ndings are statistically imprecise, they demonstrate that newspapers { even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed { can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Discussion Papers in Economics. in its series Working Papers with number
1140.