An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Ottalee Schiffel
State University of New York - Geneseo

Kenneth A. Smith
Willamette University

Justin Marlowe
University of Kansas

Abstract: We address the general question of how citizens become informed about the performance of governmental entities. Specifically, we focus on the role of newspapers because researchers have expressed concerns regarding the capacity and desire of the news media to communicate governments’ performance to citizens. A model of organizational performance reporting is developed. The model is applied to the newspaper articles reporting Governing Magazine’s “Grading the States” results released in 1999, 2001 and 2005. We hypothesize that more new articles are published when: 1) a states’ grade is extreme, 2) the grade change is large, and 3) the grade is low. We also hypothesize the existence of an article will influence the grade in the following time period. Results support the first two hypotheses. Opposite results for the third hypothesis indicate that high grades were reported more than low grades. Finally, we provide suggestions for for improving the communication channels.

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