This article proposes the first model to show bow markets-not just for consumers, but also for advertisers, investors and sources -shape commercial news production. B y applying to news what we know of bow markets work with other commodities, the model clarifies the logic of news selection in an era of increasing economic rationalism in print and broadcast journalism. Most importantly, the article also explores how news fails to meet the minimum conditions economists have established as necessary for markets to benefit society.

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U.S. news organizations, both print and broadcast, are moving from practices in which “professional” journalists define what is newsworthy toward letting the market decide. The trend has generated much debate, but little from a theoretical perspective. This article seeks to provide some conceptual tools for thinking about how news will fare as a market-driven product. The analysis concludes that those who argue that market forces will improve journalism have not carefully examined the nature of news with market theory—microeconomics. In fact, microeconomic theory suggests that commodities like news are likely to engender opportunism on the part of news organizations.

An economic model is tested against a journalistic model at the first stage of news production in three local television newsrooms, one each in a medium, large and very large market. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected to measure effort the station exerted to learn of newsworthy events. The economic model of inexpensive, passive discovery is generally supported over the journalistic model of active surveillance.

In this article, I explore how the rapid commercialism and commodification of Turkish premier league football has affected the activities of a particular fan group, Çarşı, for the club Beşiktaş, one of Turkey's oldest teams. I look at how elements of the commodification of football have been harnessed and mediated by Çarşı to make ethical and political statements and convey an anarcho-socialist message. These processes, I argue, are driven by the possibilities opened up by rapid social and technological development. The shift to searching for identity among the forums and video websites of the internet, rather than on the terraces of Beşiktaş, is profoundly altering how fans construct their allegiance to the fan group and the club. This process, it will be shown, is not so much liberating supporters from the requirements of fandom as it is generating new conventions and processes to which Çarşı members must adhere.