Some 23,652 pages later, from 20 newspapers collected from over 24 days and 3 months, the results are in!
 

A total of 6123 articles were measured (1403 were analyzed last year). Of these, 1608 (26.3%) were considered to be fully about religion, rather than just including a mention. On average, 255 stories mentioning or dealing mainly with religion were published each day in the 20 newspapers studied. (Quebec results will be delayed due to incomplete data.) There were no newspapers found that did not include multiple stories involving religion. The newspaper with the largest average number of stories published during the study period was the National Post with 29.2 stories per issue, followed by the Toronto Star, with 27.7 per issue. It should be noted, however, that these papers are large in size in comparison to some of the others in the study (average of 78 pages for the Post and 113 for the Star). If one considers only stories that were fully about religion, those papers which employ a religion writer, or have religion pages soon float to the top: Toronto Star averages 7.46 stories per issue, followed by the Ottawa Citizen at 7.21, the Globe at 6.67, the Vancouver Sun at 6.61 and the National Post at 6.56.

Stories including religion are most ‘photogenic’ in the Toronto Sun, where 40.50% of total space given to all stories is made up of photographs.  The least is the Brandon Sun, with 10.82%.

Because not all the same newspapers studied last year were included this year, it is difficult to compare the 1998 findings with those for 1999. But there are some areas which can be considered.  You may use the links at the side or below to find out:
 

Who is getting covered?

Who is doing the writing?

Where are the stories coming from?

A day in the life... 24 February 1999