The prevalence of news: domestic, foreign, and hybrid

From the 17th through the 19th century, as Wilke (1987) demonstrated in his historical study of foreign news in German, French, English, and American newspapers, there was steady growth in the amount of foreign news coverage. Today, with the increasing globalization of news organizations (Chalaby, 2005) and the greater political and economic interdependence among nations, one could assume that the role of foreign news has increased in importance. As Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the global village seems to have been realized, information from abroad should be more signi!cant and relevant to audiences than ever before. In addition, the recent and rapid dissemination of new technologies enables broadcasters to gather, produce, and distribute without delay news from all over the world. Some studies, however, conclude that there is a shrinking foreign news hole (see, for example, Moisy, 1997; Norris, 1995; Ri#e, Aust, Jones, Shoemaker, & Sundar, 1994)