Print Media: The Grand Rapids Press The amount of election 2004 coverage in the Grand Rapids Press was increased this week compared to the previous two weeks. The GR Press ran twenty-seven stories plus the daily “On the Trail” feature. More than half the stories were run on Wednesday and Thursday and dealt with the final Presidential debate. There were several locally produced stories related to the election, including an article about the “staying power of incumbents”, the role of women at local political party headquarters, local professors rating the debate, and a local debate on gay marriage.
Local TV News Coverage The local TV news coverage of the 2004 election was greater than the preceding week. WZZM 13 ran the most coverage with almost fifty-one minutes of coverage. WOOD 8 ran approximately forty-three minutes of coverage. WXMI 17 aired only seven minutes although much of their coverage was preempted by the baseball playoffs. The majority of this increased air-time was dedicated to coverage of the third presidential debate.
Paid Political Ads The number of paid political ads this week were less than the previous week although still high compared to September’s totals. Of the ninety-three ads run, fifty-three were on WOOD 8, third-six on WZZM 13 and only 4 on WXMI. Thirty-one of the ads were from the Bush campaign, twenty-one from the Kerry campaign, three form the DNC, eleven from Let Voters Decide, three from the UAW. There were two new ads for this week, one opposed to proposition 1 which was run twelve times, and another ad for Judge Martman which ran five times.
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