What Kind of Commodity Is News

Abstract

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.

US news media coverage of tobacco control issues

“…One approach is to make coverage more economically attractive to TV stations. According to McManus, 27 stories that appeal to audiences and are inexpensive to produce are the most likely to air. The more that health advocates can frame tobacco as a health topic, which is a popular topic among media consumers, and can lower the costs of producing TV news segments, the more likely it is that tobacco stories will be shown.…”

The Logic of Political Coverage on Twitter: Temporal Dynamics and Content

“…Different media allow for different modes of information production and consumption, which depend on the technology and the institutions producing and disseminating those media. The constraints of the technology underlying television broadcasts historically influenced the way political events were covered by journalists (Lang & Lang, ) and watched by audiences (Prior, ), whereas the realities of news as a commercial product shaped the coverage of politics (McManus, ). The advent of the Internet introduced different technological capabilities for the production and consumption of news in general, while laying siege to the financial basis of traditional media, advertising.…”

Market matters

“…McManus (1994) argued that commercial news organizations in the US trade within four markets concurrently: the market for audience, in which firms compete for readers and viewers; the stock market, because most firms trade stock of their corporations and desire higher valuations; the advertising market, as most firms compete for advertising revenue; and a market for sources, as the firms compete for information to disseminate from sources. According to market theory, if these four markets operate efficiently and consistently, news outlets should produce high-quality and immensely interesting news products because of success in the market for audience; successful news outlets should increase stock prices through the stock market and then make their product even stronger; entice numerous advertisers lured through large consumer numbers and a quality product; and a large amount of sources providing information because they desire the most thorough dissemination of their information (Barnouw, 1997;McManus, 1992McManus, , 1994Meyer, 1987). However, news organizations and news consumers would agree this desired outcome so far eludes both parties (Gans, 2004).…”