44,000 news industry employees (including 34,00

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intro to mass communication newspapers
February 1, 2007
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The newspaper industry is hurting

• Fewer newspapers and readers now than during 20th
  C
• 2006 circulation 1950 circulation
• But US has twice as many households!
• Little intra-market competition
• 1923 502 multi-paper US cities
• 2004 20 multi-paper US cities
• 44,000 news industry employees (including 34,000
  journalists) lost jobs in past 5 years

3
Differentiation by market/type

• National dailies Wall Street Journal, Christian
  Science Monitor, USA Today
• Large metropolitan dailies New York Times, LA
  Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe
• Small-city, suburban, small-town dailies
  Billings Gazette, Alliance Review
• Weeklies, semi-weeklies

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Differentiation (ctd.)

• Ethnic press (including 35 Spanish-language
  dailies)
• Alternative and dissident press Village Voice,
  Boston Phoenix, Seattle Weekly

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Slow, steady readership declinesbut continuous
differentiation by age!
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Are newspapers still relevant in an electronic
age? Can they be?

• Still considered most reliable, trustworthy
• Still account for majority of advertising dollars
  in US

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Where young people get their news
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Can newspapers be saved?

• An exercise in three acts

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A not-too-unrealistic scenario

• The Billings Gazettelike most U.S. daily
  papersis suffering circulation and
  advertising-sales decreases
• Readership is down particularly severely among
  people aged 18-29 in the Billings area
• The Gazette has decided to hire a consulting
  group to do 3 tasks

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Task 1 Define the problem

• Determine whats wrong with the paper
• Specifically, why doesnt the current product
  appeal to 18-29-year-olds?
• Hint to really address this task, you may need
  to step back and consider these broader questions
• What should a newspaper be (or do)?
• What is (or should be) the purpose of
  news/journalism?

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Task 2 Solve the problem

• Recommend whatever changes you think will help
• Assume (for this exercise) that money is no
  object!

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Task 3 Communicate

• Recommend how to communicate about your
  (improved, revised, re-visioned) product to the
  target group
• And persuade them to read/buy the Gazette
• In other words, come up with a marketing
  communication plan
• how, where, when to reach your target
• what to say to your target

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But what is news?
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Criteria for newsworthiness

• Timeliness
• Proximity
• ProminenceThese are what journalists are
  trained to focus on and define as news

• Consequence
• Novelty
• Human interest

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Two other, less obvious ideas

• (1) News is deviance
• What is worthy of being covered?
• Only what deviates from the normal or the
  expected
• That is, not the default

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Other ideas

• (2) News is about conflict
• What becomes news?
• Tensions between people, politicians, nations,
  ethnic groups
• Not harmony or community

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News values

• News is information about events that are
  currently happening
• or have happened so recently we havent heard
  about them ye
• Industry is obsessed with being first with
  breaking news
• This, plus the pressure to make news new, often
  results in reporting of rumors and incomplete
  information

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News values (ctd.)

• News has to have an impact on its intended
  audience.
• It might be important because it will have some
  consequence on them or because it is useful.

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News values (ctd.)

• News has to grab the audiences attention
• so a professional will find (or create?) a news
  hook or news peg or angle
• to make important, timely information interesting
  to the audience as well

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What ethical pitfall might result from the
pressure for a news hook?
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The Tuned Out study

• Tuned Out Why Americans Under 40 Dont Follow
  the News by David T. Z. Mindich (2005)

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What young people say about news (and newspapers)

• Not enough political coverage
• Not global enough
• Disrespects youth
• Lacks information
• Doesnt provide emotional payoff offered by
  entertainment media
• Irrelevant

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Marketing communications recommendations by young
people

• Produce TV commercials about relevancy of
  newspapers
• Air them during soaps and on ESPN

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Product solutions recommended by young people

• Actually cover more issues of relevance to young
  people!
• Replace print newspapers with CD-ROM versions
• Develop separate editions targeting young readers
• Chicago Tribune produced RedEye
• Chicago Sun-Times launched RedStreak

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Mindichs comment

• These solutions fail to take into account that
  good news organizations already exist
• The REAL challenge
• Creating a society in which young people feel
  that reading quality journalism is worthwhile

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Mindichs big-picture recommendations

• Take back the airwaves
• Change expectations parents and teachers need to
  instill the idea that news (and awareness of
  news) matters
• E.g., add a civic participation section to the
  SAT why only math and English?
• make the news something that gives you social
  currency (cultural capital)

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Make quality journalism accessible journalism

• News personalities should reveal more of their
  personalities
• As do Jon Stewart, many of the FNC hosts, Bill
  Maher

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Suggestions by John Nichols

• Change how newspapers are owned
• Rather than chain/corporate owners, who focus on
  profitsand thus slash newsroom and reportorial
  staffsprovide incentives for local ownership
• Restore to newspapers their role as community
  creators

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Issues in the newspaper world
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Competing epistemologies

• What sorts of knowledge/information should
  newspapers make available?
• What types of stories are to be privileged?

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The ongoing tension

• Is objectivity the ideal all newspapers should
  strive for?
• Or does this ideal prevent important issues
  from being raised
• and critical voices from being heard ?

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20th-century objective journalism

• The dominant trend
• Led by New York Times
• Adolph Ochs buys Times in 1896
• Positions it to be direct opposite of Hearsts
  yellow journalism
• Defined by devotion in-depth news coverage, not
  sensationalistic stories
• Re-visions newspaper as almost pure information
  source
• Not an entertainment source!

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The legacy of the Times

• Most 20th and 21st century papers
• Separate news/fact reporting from opinion
• Or create the illusion of doing so!
• Use inverted-pyramid reporting style

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Inverted pyramid
Most important, newsworthy, or dramatic Informatio
nanswer who, what, when, where, why, how
Key quotes, supporting evidence, and details
Supporting facts and Explanationsmore quotes
Supporting quotes and alternative explanations
Least important details
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Critiques offered over the past half-century or
so

• All stories look/feel the same
• Inverted pyramid discourages reading past the
  opening paragraphs
• Cant explain complex issues in depth
• Little emphasis on why? in the pyramid
• Creates illusion that there really are objective
  explanations
• Creates illusion that stories have only 2 sides
• or that there are only 2 opinions to possibly hold

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Discourages criticizing/analyzing the status quo

• Michael Schudson (scholar media critic)
• Objectivity in journalism, regarded as an
  antidote to bias, came to be looked upon as the
  most insidious bias of all.
• For objective reporting reproduced a vision of
  social reality which refused to examine the basic
  structures of power and privilege.

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One response interpretive journalism

• Tries to explain issues
• Tries to provide context for issues
• Found originally on radio and in newsmagazines
• Now a regular part (but just a part!) of most
  newspapers, too

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Another response literary/new journalism

• 1960s ? present
• In-depth feature stories
• Uses technique of fiction/novels
• focus on character and narrative
• Authors voice/presence visible often part of
  story
• Big names
• Tom Wolfe
• Truman Capote
• Joan Didion

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Where is objectivity not the goal?

• Editorial pages
• Op-ed columns
• What is op-ed short for?

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And yet even on the front page

• Editors make choices!
• What goes on the front page?
• What goes above the fold?
• What is covered inside the paper (and thus seen
  less)?

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An alternative standard

• Rather than objectivity
• Perhaps more worthy of pursuit (and more
  realistic) is fairness
• How would we distinguish fairness from
  objectivity?

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An eternal critique news quality

• In an age of entertainment, what kind of content
  do we find in our papers?
• What kind of culture develops on a diet of soft
  news rather than hard news?
• What happens to journalistic integrity when front
  pages are given over to reports of starlets
  affairs, sports heroes retirements, and
  full-color photos of plane wrecks?

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The eternal conflict

• Public information (re)source vs. business

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The internal structure

• Business
• Advertising
• Circulation
• Promotion

• Editorial
• Reporting
• Writing
• Editing

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The Chinese wall

• Employees on the business side are NOT supposed
  to have interactions with those on the editorial
  side
• Why not?
• What could happen if the wall is breached?
• Where is the wall breached on a daily (hourly?)
  basis?

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What does it mean when

• Our fourth estatea pillar of democracy
  enshrined as such in the Constitution
• Is at the same time beholden to, and must answer
  to
• Readers
• Competitive media
• Advertisers?

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What might this mean for the product we consume?

• A product whose content is 60 advertising!

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In short

• Why would a newspaper be any less driven by
• Sales pressure
• Advertiser pressure
• Operating-cost pressure
• Profit pressure
• than any other business?
• And what does THAT do the content we receive?

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conflict-oriented journalism vs.
consensus-oriented journalism

• In conflict-oriented journalism (typical of
  dailies)
• front-page news is often defined primarily as
  events, issues or experiences that deviate from
  social norms
• As opposed to consensus-oriented journalism
  (typical of local weeklies, which build community)

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An even stronger view

• David Domke (2004)
• Primary orientation of journalism (especially
  newspapers) is to focus on conflict
• Whos fighting or disagreeing?
• Where is there a challenge or struggle?

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This raises some questions

• What does this predict for coverage of
  agreement/unity?
• Is news deviation?
• Is news that which was not intended for you to
  see?