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This study examines how market orientation affects the use of web analytics in newsrooms. The researcher conducted 57 in-depth interviews with journalists working full time in United States-based news organizations. These organizations varied by market orientation: strongly market oriented, somewhat strongly market oriented, somewhat weakly market oriented, and weakly market oriented. Using market theory for news production as a framework, this study found that prior research correctly identified how newsrooms utilize analytics, but did not necessarily illustrate the nuances in how organizations utilized analytics differently depending on market orientation. Finally, the piece extends and discusses the utility of market theory for news production.

Recently, substantial attention has been paid to the spread of highly partisan and often factually incorrect information (i.e., so-called “fake news”) on social media. In this study, we attempt to extend current knowledge on this topic by exploring the degree to which individual levels of ideological extremity, social trust, and trust in the news media are associated with the dissemination of countermedia content, or web-based, ideologically extreme information that uses false, biased, misleading, and hyper-partisan claims to counter the knowledge produced by the mainstream news media. To investigate these possible associations, we used a combination of self-report survey data and trace data collected from Facebook and Twitter. The results suggested that sharing countermedia content on Facebook is positively associated with ideological extremity and negatively associated with trust in the mainstream news media. On Twitter, we found evidence that countermedia content sharing is negatively associated with social trust.

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This study utilizes ethnography to examine whether a digitally native news nonprofit, The St. Louis Beacon, practices a new form of public journalism, a movement within the journalism industry that diminished and eventually died in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Using McManus’ market theory for news production as a lens, the data showed that the Beacon practiced a slightly different form of public journalism. Therefore, because of that concept’s negative perception within the industry, this study dubs this new form of public service journalism. Public service journalism still primarily focuses on engagement, but does so without the negative connotations of public journalism and also while allowing the journalists to retain news judgment.