Market‐driven journalism: Creating special sections to meet reader interests

Abstract

A major shift has occurred since the 1970s in the way newspapers do business, largely due to the impact of marketing research on newsroom decisions. Research used to identify and meet the needs of the newspaper‐reading public has become a way of doing business in an increasingly competitive media climate. This national survey of executive and managing editors randomly selected from the Editor and Publisher Yearbook tracks the trend in the USA of creating special sections to meet readers’ interests as identified through marketing and focus group research. It also found that the newsroom staff was responsible for the production of these sections. Previous research has focused on the evolution of marketing practices in newsrooms. This research statistically documented these practices as a national trend.

Print Media Representations of Science Fairs

“…Perhaps this may be understood in terms of journalistic tendencies often associated with for-profit media-including those involving print journalism. Apparently, particularly in the last few decades, media companies have increasingly been orienting their journalistic practices to align with professional market research findings about the preferences of their readership (e.g., Attaway-Fink, 2004;Beam, 1995;Hackett & Uzelman, 2003;Picard, 2004). This is intended to enable a media firm to maximize its readership, thus maintaining or augmenting its profit.…”

The Business Value of Consumer Participation through Social Media

“…Furthermore, consumer input may well be of limited value in radical innovations as the expressed needs and preferences represent just the tip of the iceberg (Füller & Matzler, 2007). Nevertheless, companies engaging active commentators and keeping an eye on debaters' interaction will gain valuable knowledge about consumer needs on a continuing basis and at a relatively low cost when compared with information from consumer surveys and focus group interviews (Attaway-Fink, 2004).…”

Do the Contents of Foreign News on Television Match Viewers’ Interests? A 12-Nation Study of Topics and Countries of Interest

“…On the one hand, media organizations have the incentive to provide the products that news consumers would be interested in. Scholars concerned with the phenomena of market-driven journalism (e.g., McManus, 1994) or consumer-driven journalism (Shoemaker, Danielian, & Brendlinger, 1991) have noted that news outlets more strongly driven by commercial considerations tend to provide more soft news and more sensationalized coverage of public affairs (e.g., Attaway-Fink, 2005; Beam, 2003; Vettehen, Nuijten, & Beentjes, 2006). On the other hand, market-driven journalism is considered as a problem precisely because many believe that there are and should be discrepancies between judgments of journalists and news consumers (Tsfati, Meyers, & Peri, 2006).…”