Listening to News Audiences: The Impact of Community Structure and Economic Factors

Goodbye politics, hello lifestyle Changing news topics in tabloid, quality and local newspaper websites in the U.K. and Sweden from 2002 to 2012

“…On the other hand, other researchers argue that the situation might become even worse -in particular, that digitalization change how journalists perform their news judgment and 'the cheap, easy and popular story often wins out over expensive, difficult, and less popular ones' (Bird 2009: 44). An important dimension to accommodate change in news content is the ability to track, in real-time, how the news consumers chose to click through the news site, allowing editors to cater to audience preferences, and thus accelerating the commercialization process (Currah 2009;MacGregor 2007;Nerone & Barnhurst, 2001;McKenzie et al 2011). Although some research has been done on the production aspects suggesting some adjusting to reader preferences (Gynnild 2008;Author;Thurman & Myllylahti 2009), remarkably few studies focus on how the actual news content changes over a longer period of time.…”

Negotiating Professional News Judgment and “Clicks”

“…This has also been pointed out within journalism studies by MacGregor (2007: 280), who asserts that the computer server "…for the first time in journalism history allows journalists to observe, almost directly, the audience, as they access website content." (see also Currah 2009;McKenzie et al 2011;O'Neill & Harcup 2009). This is drastically different from how user preferences used to be represented.…”

Web analytics, social media, and the journalistic doxa : the impact of audience feedback on the evolving gatekeeping process

“…For the longest time, journalists ignored, if not rejected, feedback from the audience (Beam, 1995;Gans, 1979;Schlesinger, 1978). This apparently no longer holds true, as news editors increasingly find it no longer possible to disregard the audience (Anderson, 2011b;Lowrey & Woo, 2010;MacGregor, 2007;McKenzie, et al, 2011). In many different ways, the audience is successfully wrestling for power.…”

“…In the online world, information about the audience is precious, and news organizations have realized this. Surveys of editors and news managers found that a big majority of newsrooms in the US have been using web analytics software, including Omniture (Lowrey & Woo, 2010;McKenzie, et al, 2011;Tandoc & Jenner, 2013). Collecting information about the audience is not new.…”

“…Most online newsrooms already monitor web metrics (Lowrey & Woo, 2010; McKenzie, Lowrey, Hays, Chung, & Woo, 2011;Tandoc & Jenner, 2013). If we conceive of web metrics as forms of detailed and immediate feedback from the audience-communicating audience preferences, among other things-then, with web metrics being almost omnipresent in newsrooms, the influence of the audience on news construction should also dramatically increase.…”