In the public’s interest, or interesting to the public?

Who defines “news?”

Introduction

Most criticism of the news media can be roughly split between the two words that form the term. The smaller portion of academic and popular criticism falls under “media,” and deals with the technological, functional and organizational characteristics of the vehicle for communication. Marshall McLuhan’s admonition that “the medium is the message” certainly falls within this area (McLuhan 1964, p. 7), but so do important critiques of media ownership, the structural challenges of media organizations and criticisms about the effects on physical and mental health of reading, watching television or listening the radio.

However, both the emphasis of this paper and the bulk of news media criticism relate to the first word in the term – “news.” Paired with “media,” the term “news” is an expressive description of content, and it is the content of the message rather than the path it travels that is most often of interest to social and literary critics. Indeed, although he claimed that content was in the long run ineffectual, McLuhan railed at media scholars because, “it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium” (McLuhan 1964, p. 7).

McLuhan’s attempts notwithstanding, content remains the focus of media criticism. To fully comprehend the impact of news content, though, one must first look at the perspective from which the “news” is being “chosen.”

The underlying argument in much of today’s critical literature concerns who determines what information is worthy of the appellation “news.” Traditionally, American journalists have taken it upon themselves to be both definers and disseminators of news (DeWerth-Pallmeyer 1997). A variety of factors ranging from social upheaval to economic restructuring have, however, raised the issue of whether the news should more properly reflect the desires and tastes of the public that consumes it.

Few communications researchers have homed in on this argument, though many have mentioned it in passing. This paper will look at the ebb and flow of the discussion of whether journalism should be exercised “in the public’s interest” or in the manner that most interests the public. It will look first at the philosophical split between advocates of the journalist-centered approach and those who advocate an audience orientation. Part of this schism is embodied in the “public journalism” movement, which is discussed later in the paper. The paper will also look at the impact of the so-called “marketing concept” and at the economic factors that are driving some papers to an audience orientation. Finally, the paper will explore the role of academia in discussions of the audience’s effect on communication.

Tradition!

The rallying cry of Tevye, the orthodox Jewish dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof, is the nearly immediate response of many professional journalists when asked why their audience should not have control of newspaper, television or radio news content. Tradition, nevertheless, is merely a shorthand word for a complex set of emotions, beliefs and professional norms.

Herbert Gans (1979, pp 78-79) outlined four theories explaining how and why stories are selected by news organizations:

• Journalist-centered: The historically popular process of shaping the news by the professional judgment of journalists.

• Organizational: The routinization of news gathering influenced by the organizational requirements of their employers.

• Event-centered: The “mirror theory” that events in the world determine the news and that journalists just reflect those events back to the audience.

• Outside force determinism: The notion that one or more of several outside (and sometimes abstract) forces determine what the message will be and how it will be used. The variants include technological determinism, economic determinism, ideological determinism and news-sources determinism.

With the exception of the last of these, the application of the theories that Gans described required little “reference” to the audience by working journalists. His interviews with journalists, in fact, revealed surprisingly little knowledge about audiences:

Although they had a vague image of the audience, they paid little attention to it; instead, they filmed and wrote for their superiors and for themselves, assuming, as I suggested earlier, that what interested them would interest the audience (Gans 1979, p 230).

Many journalists are very outspoken about their perceived role as gatekeepers of the news, framing it as one of the basic premises of representative democracy and western-style freedom. Often they refer to Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book, Public Opinion. Lippmann argued that the average person is too busy and too uninterested to perform adequate research on the state of the world, so he or she relies more on stereotypes and the reports of experts, such as the press (Lippmann 1922).

Reuven Frank, the former president of NBC News, restated that view in a more colorful way:

This business of giving people what they want is a dope pusher’s argument. News is something people don’t know they’re interested in until they hear about it. The job of a journalist is to take what’s important and make it interesting (Hickey 1998, p. 34)

John Pauly ties this emotion to traditional views of American democracy, which the public often thinks of as “direct” even if it is actually more “representative.” This encourages critics and some members of the press to constantly worry about “engaging” the public. “Americans’ devotion to ceremonial democracy encourages even the most predatory groups to pay lip service to the common good”(Pauly 1991, p. 285).

Journalism, Pauly said, is seen by many as the “literature of the republic.” Even if modern operational and societal constraints make the role of the journalist less lofty, “it is comforting, if not ennobling, for newsworkers to imagine themselves providing the information that readers require to do the work of democracy” (Pauly 1991, p. 286).

This attitude can also be seen in the old journalistic saw that the role of a newspaper is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Among the traditional roles journalists often place themselves in is the societal gadfly. Newsworkers are the Fourth Estate, a non-official branch of the people’s government that doesn’t really rule, but keeps a wary eye on the other three branches.

“Newspapers are often least popular when they are doing their best work,” explained Newsday editor Howard Schneider. The public relies on the press to uncover dysfunctions in society, even when such revelations are painful. Schneider points to a story by the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard that disclosed recruiting violations by the local university’s basketball team. They story raised the ire of university and community, but garnered praise from journalists and commentators around the country (Schneider and Peirce 1992).

It is this tradition that gives rise to statements such as those of John Consoli in Editor & Publisher that the movement to get readers more involved in newspapers has heinous overtones:

It’s true that newspapers need readers in order to survive. But to what lengths do newspapers go in letting readers censor content? Notice the word censor. This does not mean newspapers shouldn’t invite members of the public to serve on special content-input committees like some are doing. What it means is that newspapers should not stop doing what they are doing because a reader disagrees with the tone of a cartoon, column or news story and threatens to cancel his subscription. (Consoli 1994, p. 6)

The Audience Orientation

Consoli was reacting to a growing call for print editors and broadcast producers to be more responsive to the needs and desires of their readers, viewers and listeners.

There is strong research evidence that newspaper readership and community involvement go hand in hand. Davidson and Cotter (1997) reviewed several such studies, then conducted a large survey that showed a strong correlation between five measures of the psychological sense of community and two indices of newspaper readership.

To traditional journalists, such research is just evidence that they are doing a good job – that the people who believe in the value of community read the paper. But to others, such studies are a sign that journalists owe community members more respect.

Several studies showing disparity between what journalists consider important and what audience members consider important added fuel to the flames (Buckingham 1997, p. 351). Journalists shot back with their own “studies,” including the Charlotte Observer’s non-scientific survey that indicated journalists have higher ethical standards about news than do their readers (Cleghorn 1997).

The question of what role the audience should play in news selection induced philosophical agony in many journalists. As Indiana University professor Randal Beam (1996) observed, the occupational culture of journalism is shot through with a strong ethic of public service. However, this ethic rarely comes to grips with the task of identifying and meeting the wants and needs of individual readers. Journalists instead use their own judgment to meet what they perceive as the broad wants and needs of the public.

Seattle Times executive editor Michael Fancher, writing for the prestigious Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, said journalists cannot sit on the sidelines in this battle.

The time has come for newsrooms to stop being isolationist in the war to save newspapers. As newspapers struggle to keep readers and advertisers, publishers will point a finger at journalists and say, “We need you.” Those who don’t enlist and contribute to creating the battle plan will find their options limited and many choices made for them (Fancher, Criner and Lessersohn 1992, p. 1).

Fancher conceded that the thought of catering to the audience horrifies many journalists, as it is too similar to the mindset that “afflicted” television news and electoral politics, leaving them defined by a combination of happy talk and sound bites. But the risks of not involving the audience are greater than the threat, Fancher said.

The risk that so rattles journalists is that audiences will simply fade away, as they seem to have been doing for the past several decades. This has become an especially critical issue for daily newspapers. In 1977, 67% of Americans regularly read a weekday newspaper. Just 20 years later, in 1997, that figure had dropped to 51% (NAA 1998, p. 11).

While the industry studied questions of media fragmentation, literacy, reader time stress and rising subscription costs, questions about the relevancy of media content were unavoidable. Editor & Publisher likened its headline “Readers becoming editors” to the proverbial “Man bites dog” definition of an extremely notable story.

Buffeted by increased competition, recession and advertising and circulation losses, newspapers are continuing to push reader participation programs, which are part of an ongoing process to reverse the industry’s lackluster fortunes during the past couple of decades (Noack 1994, p 22).

The magazine quoted a number of newspaper editors on the subject. While they generally vowed not to surrender their editorial judgment, they agreed that readers have acquired a new degree of respect and importance.

John Christie, senior editor for training at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, attributed much of the readership problem to the trend to hire college-trained “professional” journalists. “Professionalizing the staff was a good thing. But we became less connected to everyday people and ended up writing for ourselves, prizes and sources,” he said (Noack 1994, p. 23).

Media market researcher Chris Urban said her studies showed that Americans still find using the media a valued experience and that news is still important to people. “So we’re not trying to reinvent what news is. But ... we don’t even listen to our readers, so we can’t blame them” for turning away (Shearer 1998, p. 5).

The Market Orientation

The economic pressures on the media offer at least one explanation for the increased attention now paid to the audience by publishers: the marketing concept.

“The marketing concept” is a familiar term in business literature, dating back at least 200 years to Adam Smith’s statement that “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only as far as it is necessary for promoting that of the consumer” (Tull and Kahle 1990, p. 7). Various modern business scholars have defined it as “a corporate state of mind,” “the external consumer orientation,” and the practice of an organization aiming “all its efforts at satisfying its customers – at a profit” (Houston 1986, pp. 82-83). In sum, it is synonymous with having a “customer orientation.”

The media business has two sets of customers – advertisers and the audience. Therefore, any media company that attempts to implement the marketing concept must address the needs of the audience.

Beam (1996) explored the manner in which the marketing concept has had a profound effect on U.S. daily newspapers. As newspapers struggled with declining numbers of subscribers, they enlisted market researchers to learn what readers wanted, then attempted to tailor the content of the newspapers to meet those desires.

The researcher juxtaposed this trend with complaints from editors that the implementation of the marketing concept was reducing their control over news content and corrupting their “professional” standards. The result was a study of 78 newspapers in which he explored the level of staff uncertainty about how to serve readers with the corporate commitment to a marketing orientation. He found that as uncertainty about a newspaper’s “environment” increased, the more likely publishers were to use readership research and to implement marketing tactics. Using a fictional newspaper, he described the process:

Traditionally, the “Daily Record “has relied upon professional journalistic judgment to guide content decision making. The Record’s newsroom may have established a structure for reporting about its community that was based on what its journalists believed readers needed to know. Their judgments in this regard may have resulted in an acceptable fit between the Daily Record and its environment. As the environment changed, however, uncertainty about the “goodness of fit” increased. In response, the Daily Record’s managers changed strategy to emphasize ascertaining what Daily Record readers said they wanted or needed in their newspaper and providing those wants and needs. This new strategy de-emphasized relying strictly on the professional judgments of Daily Record journalists to make content decisions. Thus, a change in the environment heightened perceived uncertainty, which in turn produced the shift toward a stronger marketing orientation.

Media scholar Jim Willis (1998) warns that the natural consequence of this process may be a metamorphosis from “mass media” to “class media.” Willis noted that as newspapers chase subscribers, they begin to pander to apathetic readers – the so-called marginal readers that marketing experts identify as top prospects for new subscriptions. But newspaper publishers cannot afford to cater to every reader’s whim, Willis said, so they may be better off tailoring their product to fewer-in-number, but more appreciative, higher-income readers who are also good prospects for advertisers.

The Historical Perspective

While much of the discussion about a readership orientation or marketing concept is current, neither concept is new. Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the quest for reader respect and credibility is among the oldest goals of journalism. “If an irate reader thought a newspaper got it wrong during the first half of the 19^th century, he didn’t write a letter to the editor. He challenged the editor to a duel” (Hess 1998, p. 22).

Hess cited the story of one early American editor, above whose door was posted a sign noting which hours were reserved for taking subscriptions and which were reserved for facing challenges.

Another record of promotion of the “reader orientation” comes from what at first seems an unlikely source: the papers of yellow-journalism baron William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst is probably best known for his jingoistic bombast, such as his infamous cable to artist Frederic Remington. When he found none of the promised saber rattling or war preparations to illustrate after Hearst sent him to Cuba in 1898, Remington asked to return to the mainland. Hearst wired: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war” (Sutton 1995, p. 33).

Some of Hearst’s later messages, however, were templates for the modern discussion of reader orientation. Newspaper designer and consultant Tony Sutton collected 10 steps to reader satisfaction from a set of memos Hearst wrote to his editors in the 1920s:

1. A reader-friendly newspaper uses a writing style that makes complex stories easy to understand.

2. A reader-friendly newspaper edits stories simply, but not dumbly.

3. A reader-friendly newspaper writes headlines that are arresting.

4. A reader-friendly newspaper writes subheads that are explanatory, without convolution or confusion.

5. A reader–friendly newspaper uses intriguing photographs.

6. A reader-friendly newspaper writes detailed, informative captions.

7. A reader-friendly newspaper uses graphics that are useful and easy to understand.

8. A reader-friendly newspaper uses a layout that is organized to make things easy for the reader.

9. A reader-friendly newspaper is printed as well as possible.

10. A reader-friendly newspaper is response driven. (Sutton 1995, pp. 34-35)

Notably absent from Sutton’s list, however, is discussion of objectivity or public service.

Public Journalism

Abandonment of objectivity in the name of public service is what some commentators say distinguishes “public journalism,” one relatively new response to the audience imperative. Public journalism (also called civic journalism or communitarian journalism) is a movement within the media profession that “enjoins reporters and editors to participate in the improvement of civic life, which requires them to abandon their usual detached stance” (Stepp 1996, p. 38).

The movement is often traced to former Wichita Eagle editor Davis “Buzz” Merritt and New York University professor Jay Rosen, whose articles, books and speeches are a driving force in the effort to popularize the public journalism concept.

Merritt (1998) said he started on the path to public journalism after witnessing the “tragic” presidential campaign of 1988, in which he saw a triangle of politics, public and press desecrating the electoral process. He became convinced that it was journalism’s duty to do more than tell the news. After Merritt met the similarly minded Rosen at a conference, the pair began to advocate a “new paradigm” for journalism. They called for journalists to aggressively seek their agenda from the public, address those public issues with intensive reportorial “projects,” and to offer solutions to the problems raised by those reports.

The movement has been controversial within the professional and academic ranks of journalism, but has drawn the support of such noted researchers and editors as Jay Black, Cole Campbell, James Carey, Hodding Carter III, Clifford Christians, James Ettema, James Fallows, Theodore Glasser and Ed Lambeth (SJR 1997).

But the movement has also drawn severe critics, among them one of the early advocates of public journalism. Professor and former White House correspondent Chuck Stone took issue with the current practice of public journalism when he quit his position as readers’ advocate for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1997. Stone said too many editors and reporters have forgotten what their jobs are about as they scramble for the grants various organizations are offering to media willing to take on “civic” or “public” projects.

Public or civic journalism advocates in newspapers are so busy hustling grants from Pew and other foundations for projects that they have forgotten the journalism standards set by investigative giants of yesterday like Lincoln Steffans, Ida Tarbell, Elizabeth Cochrane, Jacob Riis, Pulitzer and Hearst. (Corrigon 1998, p. 1)

Columnist Max Frankel waded into the battle by telling New York Times Magazine readers not to be so concerned with whether journalism is cut to fit an audience, but whether it does good or evil, day in or day out. Frankel said that even though journalists seldom know much about the target of their writings, for practical reasons they “cut the cloth to suit their audience.” It is natural, he said, to have a different message for different audiences. “I conclude that many readers really favor bias, so long as its their own” (Frankel 1998).

The Audience and Academia

While there is as yet not consensus on what role the audience should have in defining “news,” communications scholars are increasingly focusing on readers, viewers and listeners as a key factor in the media.

Media researchers Pamela Shoemaker and Kay Mayfield reviewed more than 100 studies of influences on mass media content in an attempt to build new theory on the subject. They boiled those studies down to five “approaches.”

1. Content reflects social reality with little or no distortion.

2. Content is a function of media routines.

3. Content is influenced by journalists’ socialization and attitudes.

4. Content results from social and institutional forces acting on it.

5. Content is a function of ideological positions and a tool of the status quo. (Shoemaker and Mayfield 1987, p. 21)

In an attempt to consolidate those approaches into theory, Shoemaker and Mayfield conceded the audience exerts influence, but to a lesser degree than other power agents:

Audiences exert influence, according to our theory, only to the extent that they are part of the financial basis of the media vehicle, such as when audiences provide revenues directly or when audiences are necessary in order to get advertising revenue (Shoemaker and Mayfield 1987, p 30).

British social psychologist Sonia Livingston also did a review of media research in an effort to determine “what’s next” for audience research. She identified six “trajectories” of audience research by communications scholars:

1. Processes of producing and reproducing culture: Stuart Hall introduced encoding and decoding to integrate text and audience studies, moving audience research into cultural studies.

2. The active audience concept bridged the uses and gratification field and cultural studies. Both study selective responses of audiences. Allows for ritual use of media.

3. The resistant audiences concept from critical mass communications research shifted focus away from ideological and institutional determinants of media text and toward the study of the role of a possibly active, “disappearing” audience. Rebuttal to cultural imperialism and political economy.

4. The role of the reader became important through the development of the Birmingham School’s approach to cultural studies, the German reception-aesthetics theory and the American reader-response theory. Umberto Eco theorized a “model reader” implicit in text: Text and reader are mutually defining.

5. The marginalized audience came to the fore through feminist studies. It gave voice to those previously invisible to normative theory.

6. Analysis of the culture of everyday grew out of ethnographic research in the 1980s. It examines the rituals of culture and communications and also the practices by which meanings are reproduced in daily life. (Livingstone 1998, pp 238-239)

These “trajectories” tended to converge in the 1970s and 1980s as scholars moved toward studying the “how” and the “why” of media audiences. The trend for the future, Livingston said, is to address the audience in terms of broad questions and to use multilevel comparative analysis. This trend, she said, will create knowledge with utility that goes far beyond theory building.

Conclusion

If the classic three-legged model of communications – sender, message, receiver – is to maintain any credibility in media studies, the audience must obviously play a major role. The more puzzling question now before communications scholars and media professionals, however, is what to do when the audience demands control of the message content or even becomes the sender itself.

The sometimes-arrogant stance of American journalists as the ultimate arbiters of what constitutes “news” may have grown out of convenience. No one else was eager to take on the job, and there were always eager customers for the stories the journalists chose to tell.

Can this stance hold up in the new world the media now faces? Perhaps not. Increased literacy, a plethora of media choices and the “publish-it-yourself” prospect of the Internet change the old equations.

An informed debate on who defines the news is sorely needed in American journalism, if for no other reason than to give the developing new generation of news professionals a sense of direction and cohesion.

Communication scholars, who too often have been portrayed at odds with practicing journalists, have a rare chance to not only increase the general body of knowledge, but to contribute to the fractured professional field affiliated with them.

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Who defines “news”

Who defines “news?”

Introduction

Tradition!

Public Journalism