Readiness to change: Newspaper coverage of tobacco farming and diversification

Diversification, like tobacco use prevention and cessation, is an important public health concern. The multilevel patterns of tobacco dependency sugge st the need for public health approaches to the "tobacco problem." To under stand how newspaper and wire service journalists cover issues involving div ersification among tobacco farmers, the authors performed a content analysi s of a subset of 100 articles on diversification and tobacco farming. Proch aska and DiClemente's stages of change model was applied to the "problem be havior" of tobacco farming. Among news accounts relating to tobacco farmers or tobacco farming, print media accounts gave relatively little attention to the issue of diversification. Farmers in the sample of news accounts wer e generally cognizant of pressures to diversify away from reliance on tobac co cultivation but were frustrated due to obstacles to diversification such as limited diversification options and relative absence of infrastructure supports. Community leaders and policy-relevant sources generally supported diversification.