Table 4. check details Slant of Opinion Articles, by Article Type, Topic, and Sourcea DISCUSSION This study provides the first description of SLT-related coverage in major newspapers and select news wires throughout the country. Articles reported on a variety of SLT topics perceived as being ��newsworthy�� enough to gain coverage, issues that may in turn work to define ways in which SLT may be viewed and thought about, for example, as a health risk, as a smoking alternative, as a business, as growing in use, as a product in need of various forms of regulation, and as a traditional product or new type of tobacco product. Our content analysis found that news articles frequently portrayed SLT as a harmful or potentially harmful product, with almost half of general SLT news articles referring to known or possible risks.

Articles frequently referred to the risk most commonly associated with SLT in scientific literature (i.e., oral cancer), and often brought this risk to life by sharing ��human interest�� stories of individuals who had suffered from it, including well-known baseball figures and private citizens turned antitobacco advocates. Repeated references to SLT health risks may be important not only for public education but also for building public support toward policy efforts to regulate SLT. Previous studies have found that news articles relating to tobacco policy issues have tended to lack tobacco risk information, thus leaving out the fundamental rationale for such policies (Lima & Siegel, 1999; Long et al., 2006).

While this study similarly found that references to SLT health risks were largely missing in articles related to some policy issues such as SLT taxes and bans, they were found in the majority focusing on new SLT products, product regulation, and/or harm-reduction issues. This is significant as such information may shape how the public and policy makers think and ��weigh in�� on future policies regarding these issues, issues that remain at debate within the tobacco control community. This study also found that new SLT products (e.g., snus, dissolvable tobacco) generated considerable news coverage over the period examined, timely press given their launch in the last several years. Differences were observed between business news articles, which discussed these more ��simply�� in terms of their growth and profit potential, and more general news stories, which discussed broader perspectives including those related to health and policy.

It was also observed that while general news articles describing these new products discussed health risks as well as SLT��s potential role in tobacco harm reduction, health risks between snus, dissolvable SLT, and other SLT types or SLT in general Entinostat were not always differentiated. This is important and potentially problematic since different forms of SLT (e.g.