Why the New York Times?
In order to determine whether there exist general trends in news coverage of the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, we first have to define a data set to be analyzed. For the purposes of this research, the New York Times’ coverage is sufficient for a few reasons:
1. It’s best to focus on one source over time, since consulting multiple news sources over a half century might yield varied results. Granted, it would be preferable to accumulate all media reports of space exploration (print, broadcast, and otherwise) for analysis, but such an undertaking would be prohibitively time consuming and potentially expensive. (This is also why this analysis is concerned only with headlines rather than stories or photos.)
2. Since the New York Times has been a trusted national source of news for nearly two centuries, it is an established and reputable source.
3. Throughout the last half century, the Times’ science and space reporters tend to have long tenures of employment or contribution to the paper. Just as it is ideal to consult content from one publication over time, it is similarly preferable to consult content that is generated by the same person or people over time.
Apollo 17, the last manned moonshot, sits on its launch pad the night before launch in December, 1972.
Variable Assignment Process
First, all headlines on the day preceding missions, mission days, and the day following missions were accumulated into one file. The headlines were found using ProQuest’s newspaper archives, which include New York Times articles dating back to the 1850s. For newer (post 2004) articles, headlines were collected from the New York Times’ website.
As the headlines were collected, special note was made regarding its location in the printed form of the New York Times. Special attention was paid to those stories listed on A1 of the morning local edition of the paper or page 1 on the evening or national editions.
Finally, a special coding system was applied to each of the 2,801 headlines collected. In all, headlines were evaluated according to eight “categories”:
- Human Name
0 (null) = No human name evident in the headline
1 = An active astronaut’s name is evident in the headline
2 = A different name (president, celebrity, or mission control personnel) is evident in the headline - Mission Name
0 (null) = No reference to the mission (Apollo) or spacecraft (Shuttle)
1 = Reference, by name, to either the Apollo mission or the space shuttle aloft
2 = Passing reference (no mission number or craft name) to the program or mission - Foreign Reaction
0 (null) = No reference to foreign powers in headline
1 = Competitive or negative foreign interaction in headline
2 = Cooperative, friendly, or positive foreign interaction in headline - Tone/Theme
0 (null) = No tone or theme
1 = Positive tone/theme
2 = Negative tone/theme
3 = Mention of skepticism or doubt
4 = Routine (as media scheduling, astronaut biographies, and the like)
5 = Scientific/Technical theme - Story Setting
0 (null) = No setting (usually with TV schedules and other “housekeeping” pieces)
1 = Set in space (updates from astronauts off the ground)
2 = Set on the ground (from mission control, capsule retrieval ships, and others associated with the mission on the ground)
3 = Tangential setting (stories that cover a mission’s effect on people around the world) - Scheduling Issues
0 (null) = Story does not mention future events
1 = Media scheduling (usually with early television coverage announcements)
2 = Weather scheduling (usually with launch delays later in the analysis period)
3 = Technical/Routine Scheduling (reference to future mission events that require technical or scientific explanation) - Presence of a Quote
0 (null) = No quote used in headline
1 = Quote used in headline - Human/Mission Pride
0 (null) = No mention of pride or text that humanizes astronauts
1 = Language that “humanizes” or praises individual astronauts
2 = Languages that implies pride in the mission’s goals or results
You will understand the significance of each of these variables in the coming pages. For now, though, just know that the content analysis relies on 28 different variable assignments in eight categories.
