Offered a free online subscription to their local newspaper, worth around $50, only 44 of 2,529 Pennsylvanians took it. That is an uptake of 1.7%, and the people who did sign up were mostly older and Democratic-leaning.
The field experiment was run by Daniel J. Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and independent researcher Tori Gorton. Their paper appeared online in the American Journal of Political Science on March 19, 2024.
Free papers, postcards and Facebook ads
The researchers worked with the polling firm Civiqs to find 5,059 people in the markets of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who did not already subscribe. Half were randomly assigned to treatment, half to control.
Between September 2020 and January 2021, the treatment group was offered a free 13-week online subscription, valued at $45.50 for the Post-Gazette and $52.00 for the Inquirer. At least 1,274 of them saw targeted Facebook ads, and 1,068 received postcards.
The sample was anything but disengaged. Some 92% had voted in both 2016 and 2018, and the group averaged 3.78 on a four-point political interest scale. Yet 31 people signed up through Facebook and 13 through the postcards.
Among those who did subscribe, the average age rose to 60, and they leaned markedly more Democratic than the full treated group.
Some readers would not take it even for free
Comments on the Facebook ads hinted at why. Many people reacted with laughing or angry emojis, and several dismissed the papers as fake news or left-wing. One reader returned the postcard with a handwritten note calling the Post-Gazette an awful newspaper.
The authors caution that these comments came from a selected group. But the pattern matched their wider data. Using their own Pennsylvania sample plus national surveys from the American National Election Study, they found that Democratic partisanship has become a stronger predictor of reading a local paper over time, as Republicans have left the market.
Little effect even when the news came to them
The few subscribers did not end up more knowledgeable or engaged than matched controls. They were no more trusting of the state government, no more interested in politics, and no different in their views of then-governor Tom Wolf. With so few subscribers, though, the authors note they can only rule out large effects.
So the team tried a second route. From April 5 to May 18, 2021, they promoted eight state news stories from the same two papers directly in the Facebook feeds of the treatment group, covering topics such as the state pension fund, COVID-19 vaccines, redistricting and Pittsburgh’s mayoral race.
That produced 31,087 impressions, reaching around 400 to 500 people per week in each market. Clicks were low: one vaccination story drew 140, but seven others drew fewer than 25.
A final survey of 885 people in May 2021 found almost no differences between groups. Trust in state government, political efficacy, approval of the governor and knowledge of vaccination rates all barely moved. The largest gap, a 4-point edge in saying a same-party governor matters more than a same-party president, was not statistically significant.
The authors describe a “demand-side dilemma” for local papers: the engaged citizens who once read them now prefer national, partisan content. In 1950, there were 124 weekly newspapers in circulation for every 100 American households. By 2020 the figure was 20.
Study Details:
- Title: Unsubscribed and undemanding: Partisanship and the minimal effects of a field experiment encouraging local news consumption
- Authors: Daniel J. Hopkins, Tori Gorton
- Journal: American Journal of Political Science
- Publication Date: March 19, 2024
- DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12845