Palo Alto Daily News publishes a quality newspaper compared to the San Jose Mercury News.

Paul Kandell’s beginning journalism class analyzed the Daily News and Mercury News during the week of May 2 to 6. Students graded the newspapers by only reading the stories that each respective newspaper staff had written. Associated Press and Knight Ridder writeen stories were ignored. Students counted sources, core stories, and the average knowledge impact from each newspaper. The statistics gathered generated each newspapers’ overall score.

The Daily News received a score of a C- and the Mercury that of a C+ using the Grade the News system. In this writer’s opinion, the analysis stated the obvious: the Mercury News is a superior newspaper when juxtaposed against the Daily News. This result is to be expected but it was surprising how close the two ranked.

The Mercury is produced by a major city, San Jose. It is supported by both subscription and advertisement fees. It has greater resources, a large staff, better facilities, and more direct access to those individuals who make the news. The Mercury News has been recognized nationwide, and is referred to in movie commercials and quoted in national news broadcasts.

The Daily News, on the other hand, is a suburban newspaper with limited staffing and resources. It is a free newspaper and only locally distributed. As it is a local newspaper, it is unrecognizable by people who live outside the mid-Peninsula, and yet, these two newspapers were less than a full grade apart in our analysis.

Students who assessed the Daily News articles noticed that the same journalists had written multiple articles in one day. Since the Palo Alto Daily News receives less income, it is understandable that they have fewer economic resources to pay for a variety of top caliber writers. Paloaltodailynews.com states that the newspaper has a staff of only 21 people. Conversely, Mercurynews.com states that the newspaper has over 400 writers on its staff. This extreme difference in staff size explains why many Daily News journalists have to write numerous stories a day and often have to cover more than one story per issue.

Many students claimed that some stories in the Daily News appeared to have been rewritten press releases. It is understandable that when one has to write several stories, with limited resources and severe time constraints, the writer may need to use the releases as the foundation for their articles. It makes sense that if one journalist is goingin to have to write three stories, they are not going to have enough time to do additional research on the topic. This would also explain why many of the Daily News stories also did not have quotes. Over the course of an entire week, the Daily News printed 11% of their stories with sufficient sourcing, as compared to the Mercury News with a 40% score.

I also believe that the Daily News’ low score is due to the length of each article, also a result of its small staff. Most of the Daily articles were only three inches long. Conversely, the Mercury News had page-length articles. The additional time and resources at the Mercury provided reporters the opportunity to expand their ideas and list numerous sources for each story.

As a student, it was interesting to partake in th etest that each newspaper underwent. It made me think about the definition of truly good journalism, the time and resources necessary to have a successful newspaper, and how sourcing is the most important way to build trust with the reader.

However, the results of the investigation were predictable from the beginning, even before going through a long process of scrutinizing both newspapers everyday. What was unexpected was how closely the two newspapers compared. I was surprised to see how well the Daily News compared to the Mercury News, which has a staff 20 times larger than the Daily’s and all the resources of a major city newspaper.