Valuable Journalism

Abstract

This paper aims at building a conceptual bridge called Valuable Journalism between quality journalism and users' experience of quality. To that end a questionnaire was designed, built on previous data and triangulated with the results of three simultaneously organized qualitative audience studies. The distinct dimensions of valuable journalism, as well as their interrelatedness and internal consistency, were then tested with explorative and confirmative factor analyses. The findings suggest how the resulting four dimensions-urgency, public connection, understanding the region and audience responsiveness-and 13 news subjects may provide a good starting point for journalists and news organizations who want to focus more on what users and audiences actually experience as valuable journalism.

“We Would Never Have Made That Story”: How Public-Powered Stories Challenge Local Journalists’ Ideas of Newsworthiness

“…Shifting our attention to audiences' preferences, the values we distinguished are consistent with earlier research on local and/or participatory journalism. Our findings confirm that local audiences appreciate a constructive approach (Costera Meijer 2010) and a wider variety of topics, including local history and nature (Costera Meijer and Bijleveld 2016;Schmidt and Lawrence 2018). From a journalists' perspective, the problem with the history items is that they are-almost by definition-seldom about "something new" (and thus rarely meet the news values of recency, novelty or surprise).…”

“…Audiences would appreciate a wider selection of news topics and a constructive approach, in particular to local and regional news (e.g., Costera Meijer 2010;Rosenstiel et al 2007). Dutch local audiences would especially like to see more attention to nature and living environment and to local history (Costera Meijer and Bijleveld 2016).…”

What Does the Audience Experience as Valuable Local Journalism?

“…Our findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that audiences appreciate a wider selection of news topics, a more engaging presentation and a constructive approach and tone of voice, in particular in relation to local and regional news (Aldridge, 2007;Heider et al, 2005;Poindexter et al, 2006;Rosenstiel et al, 2007). What counts as local, community or regional journalism may be clear from a production perspective; from a consumer angle it depends on people's feelings of connection to a particular space -for some a neighbourhood, for others a province (Costera Meijer and Bijleveld, 2016;Lowrey et al, 2008). In this chapter the term 'local journalism' will be used to refer to the kind of journalism people experience as covering important topics and events in the region they feel close to because they live or work there.…”

Monitoring the infection rate: Explaining the meaning of metrics in pandemic news experiences

“…A key finding was preoccupation with numbers, as people told us metrics constituted the most valuable information they could get from pandemic news. In this article we delve deeper into what this means, applying theories from data studies on everyday engagement with metrics (Kennedy and Hill, 2018; Radinsky and Tabak, 2022), and from journalism studies on expectations to journalism’s societal role (Costera Meijer and Bijleveld, 2016; Nielsen, 2017). We answer the following research questions: Why did monitoring of infection metrics appear meaningful to news users?…”