Published in The 14th Annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, William Simons (ed.), Jefferson City, N.C.: McFarland Press.

By Brian Carroll

In 1947 Jackie Robinson cracked big league baseball’s color barrier. He was joined by Larry Doby,  Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Monte Irvin, and Satchel Paige. But what of the other 400 or so Negro league ballplayers who after integration had nowhere to play? [1] The bulk of sport history scholarship blames the integration of major league baseball for the demise of the Negro leagues. [2]   Because the black press was so stridently in favor of integration, crusading for it for more than quarter-century, [3] black newspapers have also been blamed for contributing to the Negro leagues’ doom, especially by Negro league team owners and officials. [4]

Championed by the black press, integration ultimately reduced the number of opportunities for black ballplayers, managers, and owners. Integration erased from the black community an important part of its culture, identity, and heritage. The black community would see little or no direct economic benefit from the integration of baseball, at least in the short term. Negro league teams for the most part had black owners, black officials, black scorekeepers, black announcers, black secretaries. [5] Black-owned printers published their programs and printed their tickets. Only the black press covered their games; for the mainstream press, the Negro leagues were invisible.

The purpose of this study is to analyze black press coverage of both the Negro leagues and major league baseball before and after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947. The amounts of coverage in the black press of both the Negro leagues and of major league baseball are quantified. In addition, this study employs a content analysis of columns and articles before integration, in 1945 and 1946, and after Robinson’s signing, the seasons of 1947 and 1948. The results are meant to contribute to an understanding of the role of the black press in achieving integration, as well as the newspapers’ conflicted relationship with Negro league baseball, itself a symbol for many of blacks’ disenfranchisement and subordination in American society.

Literature Review

The black press as a research subject is more than a century old. I. Garland Penn wrote the seminal history, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, in 1891. [6] Penn reviews African-American magazines and newspapers published between 1827 and 1891. Scant little has been done, however, on the black press’ coverage of and relationship with the Negro league baseball. In 1979 Bill Weaver provided one of the first analyses of black press treatment of Jackie Robinson as the first black in 20th-century professional baseball and found the newspapers to have been acutely perceptive and remarkably capable of assessing the importance of racial advances in the context of what the black community ultimately hoped to achieve. [7] Since Weaver focused on the period 1945-1947, this study builds on Weaver’s work by expanding the timeframe and by quantifying coverage of both the Negro leagues and major league baseball. Weaver also pointed out that the black press was criticized by some, including W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis, for too much coverage of Robinson. This study explores that criticism, as well.

Wiggins [8] and Carroll [9] analyzed the contributions of the Pittsburgh Courier and its sports editor, Wendell Smith. Wiggins charted Smith’s and the Courier’s tireless campaign, including their strategy and tactics, to open the big leagues to top black players, principally Jackie Robinson, but Wiggins’ analysis concludes with 1945 and Robinson’s initial signing by Branch Rickey. Carroll analyzed Smith’s 1961 crusade to extend desegregation into spring training in Florida and Arizona. This study fills a gap, chronologically and substantively, between Wiggins’ and Carroll’s examinations. As such, it focuses on the key period 1945-1948.

This study also complements work by Lamb and Bleske [10] , which compares perspectives of the black press and mainstream press regarding Robinson's first spring training with Brooklyn in 1946. The authors content analyzed coverage by twenty-eight newspapers of Jackie Robinson's first spring training with the Dodgers, comparing the black press with the white press. Their conclusion is that black weeklies provided more coverage, more positive coverage, and better emphasized the historical significance of Robinson’s presence and play. This study expands on Lamb’s and Bleske’s work, especially on the black weeklies, testing some of Lamb’s and Bleske’s findings in terms of amounts and direction of coverage.

As Andrew Brimmer noted, [11] newspapers in the mid-1940s were among the largest black-owned businesses along with insurance, banking, numbers games (which were forerunners to the lottery), and baseball. Little research has been done treating the Negro leagues as a whole, however, a reflection of the leagues’ second-market or derivative status. Considerable research has been published on the recollections, experiences, and perspectives of the black players, and on individual team histories.

Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White broke ground in 1970 by providing the first comprehensive history of the Negro leagues in more than six decades, since Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball was published in 1907. In Peterson’s work, however, the black press is little more than a footnote. Subsequent historians have paid more attention to the role of the black press, in particular Mark Ribowsky, who was very critical of black sportswriters’ fickle coverage of black baseball and their little apparent concern for what integration would do to the Negro leagues. Ribowsky’s A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884 to 1955 is a seminal work in scope and insight into the Negro leagues’ place in American culture. Because the book relies so heavily on the black papers, they are prominent in it, but coverage is not analyzed in any systematic way. Ribowsky’s broad categorizations of the black press as at times sympathetic to the Negro leagues and at others in opposition to them does, however, provide this study with a contextual framework.

Historians of the black press generally have turned a blind eye toward the careers of sportswriters. Considered by some to be the definitive history of the black press, The Black Press, U.S.A. has no mention of Wendell Smith and Chester Washington of the Pittsburgh Courier, nor of Joe Bostic of the Harlem People’s Voice, though it does mention the Courier’s contributions to the campaign to integrate baseball. [12] The volume only briefly comments on Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American, a legendary and prolific writer still regularly writing in his nineties. [13]

Though they have been almost completely ignored in popular accounts of the integration of baseball and in histories of the sport in general, sportswriters at black papers have received better treatment in academic scholarship, due mainly to a small circle of historians, which includes Lamb, Jim Reisler, Jules Tygiel, and Wiggins. In several books Tygiel comments on the sportswriters’ campaign against Jim Crow and for the integration of baseball, a crusade that began in the late 1920s. Tygiel’s Baseball’s Great Experiment gives a great deal of credit for Robinson’s big break to Smith, Bostic, and Lacy. These black sportswriters “informed the American people of the existence and injustice of Jim Crow athletics” while falling victim to it themselves, Tygiel wrote. [14] Because of his race, Smith, for example, was not allowed into the press box at Ebbets Field during Robinson’s historic 1947 season. [15]

Reisler’s book, Black writers/black baseball: An anthology of articles from black writers who covered the negro leagues, includes rich biographical information on Smith and Washington of the Courier, Lacy, Bostic, Frank Young of the Chicago Defender, and others. [16] Reisler has perhaps written most extensively on black sportswriters and included in his compilations some of the writers’ coverage of the Negro leagues.

This research stands on several important histories of individual Negro league teams, including Janet Bruce on the Kansas City Monarchs, Jim Bankes on the Pittsburgh Crawfords, [17] Jack Debono on the Indianapolis ABCs, [18] and James Overmyer’s on the Newark Eagles. [19] Each is admirable scholarship in the wake of more than a half-century of neglect. In addition to Ribowsky’s volume, Negro league histories have been written by John Holway, [20] Donn Rogosin, Rob Ruck, [21] Tygiel, and, a century ago, by Sol White, [22] each at least briefly commenting on the roles of the black press. The principal paper being examined here, the Pittsburgh Courier, is the subject of a rich history by Buni -- Robert L. Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier: Politics and Black Journalism. [23]

This research fills a gap in the quantifying of coverage by the black press of the Negro leagues and the major leagues, as well as in analyzing changes before and after integration in 1947. The lack of empirical evidence of changes in coverage prompted this exploratory study, as did the relatively spare amount of study of news weeklies as opposed to dailies. [24] Research has shown the value in attempting to measure bias in media coverage over time. Brodie, Brady and Altman provided a framework for this study by examining media coverage of managed care over an eight-year period. [25] Their findings showed changes in tone and bias, which were categorized into three broad eras – early years, middle, and later years. This study, too, looks at time periods in its attempt to detect and describe changes in coverage. The amounts of coverage and changes over time are examined, a methodology proven effective in content analysis. [26]

Based on previous research and the literature reviewed, two research questions are proposed:

RQ1: How did integration of major league baseball affect the amount of black press coverage devoted to the Negro league baseball? Because the black press worked with very limited resources, [27] it is believed that integration would require a shift coverage to the major leagues at the expense of Negro league coverage. By quantifying the amount of coverage devoted to each pro baseball organization before and after integration, the assumption can be empirically tested.

RQ2: How did integration affect the nature of black press coverage of Negro league baseball? Italso is believed that black press interest in Jackie Robinson and freshly integrated big league play affected the nature of coverage of the Negro leagues, making it less comprehensive and perhaps less supportive. By quantifying the type of coverage before and after Robinson’s breakthrough, this belief can perhaps be tested. [28]

Method

Two weekly black newspapers – the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender were content analyzed from 1945 through the baseball season of 1948 as integration progressed from possibility to probability to, finally, reality. Since the focus of the research was to examine characteristics of black press coverage of the Negro leagues, a content analysis was chosen to measure them. It is a scientific research method that allows for “objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication.” [29]

The Pittsburgh Courier was selected for a couple of reasons. In the mid-1940s it was the nation’s largest black newspaper. [30] The national weekly had a peak circulation during the period of between 250,000 and 350,000, but since weeklies were passed from person to person, actual readership likely was much higher. The Courier also had Wendell Smith, its sports editor and an influential columnist in the black press. In addition, Pittsburgh was a hotbed of Negro league baseball as home to the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. The study also draws on the coverage of the Chicago Defender, the United States’ second-largest black news weekly during the period studied. [31] The Defender also had an eminent columnist in Fay Young and a lively Negro league baseball scene. The Chicago American Giants were one of the leagues’ most storied teams and Chicago annually played host to the East-West Classic, the Negro leagues’ all-star game.

Because baseball’s integration was primarily covered as a sports story but not exclusively so, the population was defined as encompassing news stories and columns on professional baseball appearing anywhere in the two newspapers. News stories are defined as “all non-advertising matter in a news product.” [32] News stories were for the papers examined here primarily staff-produced. Columns are opinion pieces written by a single editor, reporter, or writer appearing usually on editorial pages, op-ed pages, and, especially for the purposes of this study, in the sports pages. Many black press sportswriters beginning in the late 1920s had their own regular columns. [33] Stories were sampled from a period encompassing two seasons prior to and two seasons subsequent to Jackie Robinson’s signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

To prepare a population of black press articles, selected were issue dates from spring training through the league championship games for each of the four seasons were selected, a period covering March through October for the years 1945-1948. One of the March issue dates was randomly selected for each season as a starting point. For subsequent dates, alternating weekly issues were examined and analyzed for the remainder of that newspaper’s baseball season coverage. This method produced for the Pittsburgh Courier fifty-six issue dates (fourteen per year) and 487 individual articles, and for the Defender also fifty-six issue dates containing 375 articles. Lacy, Robinson, and Riffe studied sampling of newspaper weeklies and concluded that a researcher should either “randomly select fourteen issues from a year, or pick twelve issues, one from each month.” [34] Since this study looks only at baseball coverage, or the eight months of the baseball season March through October, fourteen issues were deemed sufficient sampling.

Negro leagues refers primarily but not exclusively to two groups of six black teams – the Negro National League, founded in 1920, and the Negro American League, founded in 1937. The Negro American League lasted longest, folding in 1960. [35] Other black baseball leagues were formed but were short-lived and financially unsuccessful. For the purposes of this study, integration refers to the signing of Jackie Robinson to a major league contract in April 1947, making him a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers and beginning the migration of top black players from the Negro leagues to the major leagues. Robinson played 1946 with the Dodgers’ farm team, the Montreal Royals, after becoming in August 1945 the first 20^th century black to sign with a major league organization. It is acknowledged that integration was far more complicated. It was a process, not a point on a timeline. The black press began crusading for integration in the 1920s and continued through the early 1960s, when desegregation in spring training and in the minor leagues still was being fought.          

Major independent variables included (1) sources attributed in the story; (2) story prominence within the issue; (3) inclusion of photography; (4) amount of coverage per issue devoted to each league; and (5) tone of coverage (positive or negative). The dependent variable was the type of coverage (= boosteristic, very supportive, supportive, and neutral).

Using Scott’s pi, the rate of agreement ranged across variables from 100 percent for manifest content issues, such as issue domination and use of graphics, to a low of seventy-two percent for sources attributed/cited, also a manifest content issue. Disagreements over sources attributed centered on Courier columns by Jackie Robinson, with one coder attributing them to a major league source (Robinson) and another determining that no sources were attributed since the columns were entirely in first person. This disagreement was reconciled, with Robinson categorized as a major league source, and a second intercoder reliability test generated a Scott’s pi of eighty-seven percent. Scott’s pi yielded an intercoder reliability for direction of treatment of eighty-one percent.

To combine several coding units, an index was developed: Carroll’s Scorecard for Baseball Coverage by the Black Press. Developing an index is often more valuable than simply measuring or counting since indices take more factors into account. [36] Studies of editorial bias have tended to rely on measurements of space devoted to one or more issues, as Holsti observed. [37] A coding system, which assigns weights to the following factors, was employed:

Carroll’s Scorecard for Baseball Coverage by the Black Press Before and After Integration

Scoring the coverage:

Boosteristic – Nine or all ten points out of possible 10.

Very Supportive – Seven or eight points out of possible 10.

Supportive – Six points.

Neutral – Five points or fewer.

For the scorecard, primacy in the article was worth two points to reward substance of coverage. Photography appearing with an article was assigned one point because articles appearing with one or more photos have higher readership. Graphics were not assigned points, however, because in more than ninety percent of the cases in which graphics appear in the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender articles studied here, they were box scores.

Positive treatment also was assigned two points because it was possible to meet all other criteria but still be treated/covered negatively. For the variable, “direction: positive or negative treatment,” an article, editorial, or column was deemed “positive” toward subject matter (Negro leagues or major leagues) if it included any one of the following:

·     encouragement of attendance at games of subject league

·     criticism of attendance at “other” league

·     praise of subject league members, officials, players, and/or owners

·     criticism of rival league members, officials, players, and/or owners

·     reference to or description of value to community/nation of subject league or the importance of its success/continued success

·     reference to or description of threat to community/nation of rival league or of its success/continued success

·     celebration of some aspect of subject league, its teams, players, representatives or former players and representatives (as opposed to direct praise); example: celebratory account of East-West all-star game and its festivities

The range of possible values included “extremely positive,” an aggregate of three or more of the above. One or two of these attributes equated to the article being described as “somewhat positive.” An article, editorial, or column was deemed “negative” toward subject matter (Negro leagues or major leagues) if it included any one of the following:

·     encouragement of attendance at games of rival league

·     criticism of attendance at subject league

·     praise of rival league members, officials, players, and/or owners

·     criticism of subject league members, officials, players, and/or owners

·     reference to or description of value to community/nation of rival league

·     reference to or description of threat to community/nation of subject league

·     celebration of some aspect of rival league, its teams, players, representatives or former players and representatives (as opposed to direct praise)

The range of possible values included “extremely negative,” an aggregate of three or more of the above. One or two of these attributes meant that the article was deemed “somewhat negative.” “Neutral” describes articles in which position-taking on issues was avoided and/or in which merely a general record of event was reported.

The rationale for terminology used in variable fourteen – extremely positive, positive, etc. – comes from van Driel and Richardson. [38] Extremely positive, for instance, according to van Driel and Richardson, “means that the paragraph defends and supports the group, and/or allegations of opponents are rejected; there is no sign of suspicion or rejection of the group.” [39]

Results

RQ1: How did integration of major league baseball affect the amount of black press

coverage devoted to the Negro league baseball?

The data indicate that the amount of coverage devoted to the Negro leagues declines as 1947 approaches and continues to decline for the two seasons after Robinson’s signing, at least in terms of domination of issues by total number of column inches (see Table 1). Inversely,

[Table One displayed here]

coverage of the major leagues increases over the period, at least in the sample collected for this study, increases. When combining the two weeklies, the number of issues dominated by the Negro leagues drops from twenty-four in 1945 to ten issues for each of the 1947 and 1948 seasons, while the major leagues go from four issues dominated in 1945 (including three in the Courier) to quadruple the total in both 1947 and 1948. The totals for the Courier indicate a direct inverse relationship in coverage before and after integration, at least in terms of issues dominated. The Negro leagues dominated eleven Courier issues in 1945 to three for the major leagues, the opposite of 1948, when it is the major leagues dominating eleven issues.

Breaking it down to individual article level, the numbers of photos appearing with stories also change during the period studied. Only one major league story ran with a photo in 1945, that of Jackie Robinson’s signing by Brooklyn in October (see Table 2). By 1947, the total was thirty-five stories, or almost double the number of Negro league stories running with at least one photo that

[Table Two displayed here]

same season. These disparities occurred despite a much larger well of stories for the Negro leagues versus for the major leagues, especially in 1945 and 1946. For the period covered, there were more than twice as many Negro league stories than major league stories (578-267). The coverage also shows an overall yearly increase in the number of baseball stories and columns appearing with at least one photo, regardless of league covered.

A story on the major leagues was more likely to appear with a photo and was typically longer than were articles about the Negro leagues. For all baseball coverage, articles ranged in

[Table Three displayed here]

size from one column inch to forty-three column inches (Robinson’s signing in 1946), with a mean length of 7.2 inches and a standard deviation of five inches. Major league stories had a mean length of 8.3 inches, sixty-four percent longer than the mean length of Negro league articles.

            Major league stories also were much more likely to carry a byline, indicating on-site reporting and allocation of very limited human resources. Black press staffs were notoriously small. [40] The increase in overall number of stories is a tribute to their productivity. In 1945, six Negro league stories carried bylines to four for the major leagues. In 1947, with Robinson playing a full season in Brooklyn, the ratio swung in favor of the major leagues by a margin of twenty-four to two.

            The focus of columnists Wendell Smith of the Courier and Fay Young of the Defender, too, discernibly shifted before and after the color barrier’s breaking. When the writers’ columns are combined, eleven of them focused in 1945 on the Negro leagues, while five centered on the major leagues. By 1947, twenty columns written by one of the two centered on the major leagues versus just six on the Negro leagues, indicating, too, more attention on baseball in general with the coming of integration. The ratio held steady in 1948 at twenty-one columns by either Smith or Young on the major leagues to just five with the Negro leagues as their theme.

            There is evidence the newspapers were attempting to keep up with both leagues, at least in terms of straight sports coverage. After a combined 105 game summary stories in 1945, all of them Negro league since integration was a year away, the papers printed 121 Negro league game summaries in 1946, 97 in 1947, and seventy-one in 1948, all while coverage of major league games was on the rise. The number of game summaries climbed from zero at the beginning of the period studied to thirty-four at the period’s end, a period during which only a handful of big league teams integrated.

Analyzing the use of sources showed that for articles in which the major leagues were the primary topic, sources were far more likely to be quoted or attributed than in Negro league coverage, and that those sources were almost always affiliated with the major leagues. About half of all major league stories in the sample attributed or quoted league sources, compared to seven percent of Negro league stories. For all stories, the two papers cited sources only about one-fourth the time, however, indicating that a heavy amount of coverage sent into the newspapers by the teams themselves.

RQ2: How did integration of major league baseball affect the nature of black press coverage

devoted to the Negro league baseball?

Before Robinson came on the scene, there is evidence that as it campaigned for integration the black press was highly critical of the major leagues. About sixty-nine percent of the sample major league coverage for the 1945 season was either somewhat negative or extremely negative. In 1946, with

[Table Four displayed here]

Robinson, Campanella, Newcombe, and Roy Partlow playing in the Dodger farm system, the tone of coverage reversed dramatically – sixty-four percent positive, zero percent negative. That ratio held roughly steady through the 1947 and 1948 seasons, as well. Coverage of the Negro leagues, however, largely was positive throughout the period studied, with a negative tone detected in no more than five percent of stories for any one season. The amount of decidedly positive coverage, however, did diminish over the four-year period. An intercoder reliability score on this measure of eighty-one percent is an indication of how difficult it is to determine tone and bias.

Applying Carroll’s Scorecard, the mean coverage scores were six for each league, which, according to the Scorecard rating system, is described as “supportive.” The distribution of

[Figures One and Two displayed here]

scores, however, reveals higher scores for major league coverage than for Negro league coverage, especially in 1947. About twenty percent of major league coverage that season scored a nine or a ten, which is described as “boosteristic” in this study, while only ten percent Negro league coverage reached those levels during the 1947 season. In 1948, the percentages dropped to fifteen percent for the major leagues and zero for the black leagues. This, too, is almost directly inversely related to coverage in the beginning of the period, 1945, when thirteen percent of Negro league coverage in the sample achieved scores of nine or ten compared to none for the major leagues. T-tests of both indices – NL Score and ML Score – indicated statistical significance at .000.

Discussion

            This study has sought to measure in meaningful ways black press coverage of both the Negro leagues and major leagues during a period in tremendous transition, 1945-1948. The issue is important in understanding of role of the black press in achieving integration, and of its often conflicted relationship with Negro league baseball, as well. The data show the shift in coverage to major league baseball and away from the Negro leagues during the period studied, which is not surprising. The seeming speed and totality of the shift, however, is a surprise. The downward trend in amount of coverage of Negro league games, events, and people intersects in 1946 with the upward trend for the major leagues, reversing in a period of four years the majority-minority status of the two leagues.

It was a qualitative shift, as well, with the columns of Courier sports editor Wendell Smith and Defender sports editor Fay Young, for example, mirroring the overall shift in coverage. Smith’s redeployment is not surprising. A champion of integration and tireless crusader for it, he was an advocate of Robinson’s since the player’s college days. He accompanied Robinson to spring training in 1946 and 1947 and, during Robinson’s first year in Brooklyn, on many of the Dodgers’ road games reporting and filing columns from Dodger stops in St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati. The data also show a sharp increase in the number of columns Smith and Young devoted to baseball in general and, specifically, the major leagues, and trend toward increasingly positive coverage, as well.

The data highlight the conflicted relationship of the black press and baseball. The two were intertwined to varying degrees throughout the existence of the black leagues. Since before the founding of the Negro National League by Rube Foster in 1920, “black newspapers performed the duties of a league governing body.” [41] When the NNL needed arbitration to settle disputes between its often-contentious owners, it looked at one point to W. Rollo Wilson, a sportswriter for the Courier, even briefly naming Wilson league commissioner. [42] Only the black papers carried game results and statistics, albeit incompletely. They served as a kind of “public message board for opposing managers to announce challenges.” [43] The Freeman, Indianapolis’ black newspaper from 1884-1927, like other papers, frequently gave space to black baseball’s luminaries, including players, managers, and owners. Cum Posey, owner of perennial league champion the Homestead Grays and the secretary of the Negro National League, frequently wrote first-person columns in the sports pages of the Courier, a newspaper in which Posey was a stockholder.

The black press and the Negro leagues were brothers in the fight for equal opportunity in baseball for more than a quarter-century. The partnership dated back to the League of Colored Base Ball Players, a precursor to the Negro leagues, which was organized in 1886 by Walter S. Brown, formerly a correspondent covering Pittsburgh for the Cleveland Gazette, a prominent weekly black paper. [44] This brotherhood produced for most of organized black baseball’s history a close working relationship. When the shared goals began being realized, however, the bonds loosened. With integration, the black community’s the need for the Negro leagues was suddenly a diminishing one. Even the name – Negro League – was a reminder of separate, second-class status.

The Baltimore Afro-American’s Sam Lacy said he knew integration would spell the Negro leagues’ doom, but that after Jackie, “the Negro leagues was a symbol I couldn’t live with anymore.” [45] The coverage during the period studied reflected this position. With Robinson, Doby, Paige, and others driving up attendance, black papers ran longer stories on major league action (see Table 3) and more often included photography (see Table 2). It was not uncommon for the Courier to feature Dodger games with six or more photos on an interior sports page during Robinson’s first two seasons. During the 1947 season, the Defender featured breaking major league stories on its front page on six occasions. This paper provides evidence of dramatic quantitative and qualitative shifts in coverage by the black press of Negro league baseball, often in general proportion to changes in coverage of the newly integrated major leagues.

In the mid-1940s, the black press played a pivotal role in shaping modern African-American identity. The black news weeklies also gave voice for a distinctly black perspective on central events in the African-American community, events that spanned antebellum America to the integration of baseball to the civil rights movement. Black press coverage of baseball shows more specifically how the black newspapers covered American social issues and concerns, from immigration to economic development to race relations. To return to the mid-1940s is to see the black press flourishing. Even in its heyday, however, black newspapers served largely out of the public eye of mainstream, white America. As such, they often provided different perspectives on news for readers.

Table 1: Number of issues dominated by league in terms of column inches of coverage

(significant with chi-square < 001, d.f. of 6)

Table 2: Number of stories by league by year appearing with at least one photo

Table 3: Comparison of story lengths by league for entire period studied, 1945-1948

Table 4: Direction of treatment per league by  percent of stories, 1945-1948

(Significant with chi-squares < .001; d.f.s of 16 for 1945, 12 for 1946, 10 for 1947 and 8 for 1948.)