Tuesday, December 09, 2014

What's a Dog Story Worth?


What's a dog story worth?

A study in last month’s Political Science & Politics set out to answer that question.

The authors of the study — appropriately titled “What’s a Dog Story Worth?”— compiled a list of dog-related national news articles that appeared in The New York Times over a 12-year period. Then they calculated the rate at which these stories were subsequently picked up and reprinted by regional papers, compared to items of similar prominence and length but devoid of dogs.

What the study found is that 2.6 dog-related stories were picked up every one with no dog in it. “Thus,” the authors wrote, “we conclude that dogs are an important factor in news decisions."

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