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Abstract This article presents a new institutionalism approach to news grounded in sociological and historical approaches to new institutionalism and argues that this approach to news production has several advantages. Among them are that it encourages analysts to see the news as an outcome of interaction between journalists and other political actors, that it allows for variance in news coverage around a general tendency toward homogeneity in the news, and, finally, that it encourages scholars to examine the full range of news outlets in the media universe rather than to concentrate their attention on the narrow world of mainstream elite media. This approach is compared and contrasted with that offered by Sparrow elsewhere in this issue, and future directions for research are offered. Keywords: journalismnew institutionalismpolitical communication Acknowledgments An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, January 2004, New Orleans, Louisiana. Thanks to my fellow panelists for their comments and suggestions.
Timothy E. Cook (Sat,) studied this question.