Attitudes twards the media

[John T. Fishel]

If I were developing this project - I'm not, Marc is - I most likely would not use survey methodology to get at the newsies. This is a rather more limited group than the military and the more influential ones are even fewer. Therefore, I would address them in a series of selected in-depth interviews. This approach would, I think, cut the cost and the time as well as get satisfactory answers.

[marct]

Hi John,

If I were developing this project - I'm not, Marc is - I most likely would not use survey methodology to get at the newsies. This is a rather more limited group than the military and the more influential ones are even fewer. Therefore, I would address them in a series of selected in-depth interviews. This approach would, I think, cut the cost and the time as well as get satisfactory answers.

I think I'm going to defer to Cori on this particular issue. Right now, from what I understand, she is doing exactly the types of interviews you are suggesting for a forthcoming book. In general, you're quite right about the time / cost trade-off of interviews over survey data, but we may be dealing with a special case here with the media due simply to their time constraints <shrug>.

Marc