Date of Award

5-1931

Degree Type

Bachelors Essay

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Maynard W. Brown

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to find out what effect the decrease of population in towns has had on the newspapers in them and to compare this effect with the other reasons advanced for the numerical decline of the country weekly.

The size of the town taken for this investigation was set between 5,000 and 1,000 population. The maximum was taken as 5, 000, in spite of the fact that the U.S. census considers over 2,500 population as urban, as being more rural from the viewpoint of newspapers. Towns under 1,000 population were omitted as no figures for these were compiled at the time.

Each state was handled separately. All the towns that had declined in population since 1920 were listed in two groups, those between 5,000 and 2,500 in one, and in the second class, those between 2,500 and 1,000. The name, number and circulation figures of the newspapers in each of these towns for 1910, 1920 and 1930, were then noted. The total number of weeklies in each state for each of the three periods were also compiled.

The results were based on these facts, by making a comparison of the papers in the three periods. This information was supplemented by the opinions of writers of various magazine articles and letters to the country weekly editors. In this thesis bi-weekly refers to papers issued twice a week.

Comments

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Journalism, Marquette University, in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science

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