The Audience in the News

Dwight DeWerth-Pallmeyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136686702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In recent years, communication scholars have taken a renewed interest in analyzing the audience and its impact on the communication process. Similarly, news editors and producers have often turned toward a marketing orientation which seeks to give new readers and viewers what they want, or at least what they say they want. Yet, there has still been little written about just how the audience factors into the news which is produced. Seeking to fill that niche, this book argues that audience images are quite important in the construction of news, but not easily detected. That is because journalists are not principally interested in their audience; they are interested in the news. USE THIS PARAGRAPH ONLY FOR GENERAL CATALOGS... This volume argues that although journalistic images of the audience may be "incomplete, " they do exist and powerfully help shape the work of journalists in producing journalistic texts. Using a case study of news workers and news texts at two Chicago newsgathering organizations, the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV, this book:
* examines notions of audience and how they have been treated by academicians,
* presents a detailed description of the ways in which audience is embedded within the news construction process,
* presents a very representative set of journalistic news values,
* presents differing ideas of audience at three key levels of the news organizations -- reporters and news gatherers, editors and producers, and senior editors, producers, and news directors, and
* seeks to summarize and position this study within the larger body of mass communication research.

Chapter 1

The News Audience in Theory

In this society, the overwhelming majority of print, broadcast, and visual media fulfill their social responsibilities only when they reach audiences which are themselves willing to pay for the media product or which are attractive enough to advertisers that they will pay the bills. In either case, the marketing perspective underscores the fact that audience members’ preferences must be understood and taken into serious account as the media product is planned, developed, promoted, produced, and distributed. (Lavine & Wackman, 1988, p. 255)

A marketing perspective in modern news organizations presupposes that audience must be factored into the news production formula. Even for news workers and organizations that are not committed to a marketing orientation, audience is still a key consideration, albeit often tacitly factored into news judgments, technologies, and procedures. Perceptions of the audience are part of the overall construction of news.

In this book, I examine the impact notions of the audience have in constructing the news within news organizations. Specifically, I focus on the way different perceptions of audience are built into the news product as part of a product image and how those tacit and explicit understandings of the audience then help construct the news.

The argument I present in this book is that news workers are primarily concerned with creating the news product: stories, newscasts, or newspapers. Their objective is to make the best news they can. Though they do have real images of their audience, those images are varied and fragmented. Much of news workers’ understandings about their audience are bound up within product image and are, therefore, an example of tacit professional knowledge (Schön, 1983). Although such knowledge is often difficult to articulate, it is very real and does help shape the news product throughout the news organization.

Thus, we can best study the role the audience plays in the news construction process by looking at the news product itself and at journalists’ rhetoric about their product, for understandings about the audience are imbedded within the product image.

To address this issue, it is useful to place this research within the context of the sociology of journalism, or what Schudson (1989) referred to as the sociology of news production. From that perspective, one presumes that news is a product flowing out of the interactions among workers within news organizations. One important source of that social construction among news workers and news organizations are images of the audience. In this chapter, I examine audience imagery within news construction at three levels of analysis: the individual, the organizational, and the institutional. I conclude this chapter by outlining the method used in this study. In the next chapter, I continue by outlining the specific focus of this book: how perceptions of audience help shape the news product within the news organization.

AUDIENCE IMAGES

Notions of the audience are clearly imbedded in newsmaking and can be clarified by examining audience from different levels of analysis. On the individual level, a variety of mass communications researchers (Darnton 1990; Gaunt 1990; Schlesinger 1978) argued that journalists do not really know their audiences. Schlesinger (1978) argued that “total audience remains an abstraction, made real on occasion by letters or telephone calls, encounters of a random kind in public places, or perhaps more structured ones such as conversations with liftmen, barmen and taxi-drivers” (p. 107).

Darnton (1990) recalled his days working on The New York Times and described the view of audience his staff used. Reporters were all to conceive of their audience as a 12-year-old girl. Darnton wrote that he came to question the use of this imaginary figure. He would ask himself, “What does a 12-year-old girl know about slum clearance in the South Bronx?” He said he later came to the conclusion that the 12-year-old girl really only existed in the folklore of 43^rd Street. He concluded that his real audience consisted of other reporters in the Times newsroom. Others have argued that same point. They say that the journalist really doesn’t concern himself or herself with the real readers of the paper. For example, in their study of Madison, Wisconsin, newspaper reporters, Flegel and Chaffee (1971) concluded that the reporters’ perceptions of their readers’ viewpoints had a low correlation with the viewpoints represented in their stories.

Still, journalists clearly do have some working sense of their audience, whether accurate or not. In White’s (1950) “Gate Keeper” study, the newspaper editor he studied offered this description of his audience:

Our readers are looked upon as people with average intelligence and with a variety of interests and abilities … I see them as human and with some common interests. I believe they are all entitled to news that pleases them … and news that informs them. (p. 390)

In their study, Pool and Shulman (1959) concluded that audience has a clear impact on the journalistic product: “The audience, or at least those audience about whom the communicator thinks … play more than a passive role in communication” (p. 145). The authors’ study concluded that “good news” stories tended to elicit views of the audience as supportive, while “bad news” stories led journalists to perceive of their audience as critics. When the student journalists who were studied had perceptions of a supportive audience, their “good news” stories were more accurate, and when they had perceptions of a critical audience, their “bad news” stories were more accurate.

In a factor analysis to determine which elements were influential in helping individual journalists judge what was newsworthy, Weaver and Wilhoit (1986) found journalists’ impressions of audience research and their news sources to be a key factor. More recently, in a survey of editors from 540 newspapers in the United States, Chang and Kraus (1990) found that editors nationwide have strong perceptions of readers’ interest in different news categories that are almost opposite of the editors’ own stated interests.

Gans (1979), on the other hand, argued that journalists see the audience as something like themselves and therefore view themselves as audience representative: “Most journalists take the congruence of their own and the audience’s feelings for granted. In the process they become representatives of the audience, reacting for it vis-á-vis their sources” (p. 237).

Accurate or not, individual journalists do have perceptions of their audience that help shape their work. Notions of the audience are also built into the workings of news organizations. Those who study news construction from the organizational level of analysis see that notions of the audience are imbedded within organizational routines and practices. Just as analysts approaching news from the organizational level have argued that the news product is a social construction, they might further argue that audiences, too, can be a social construction. As such, “audience” is used by journalists to convince their editors of a story’s merit and used by organizations to sell to advertisers. From this perspective, working images of the audience are shaped to meet organizational needs. Those same audience images become imbedded in organizational practice.

In Making News, Tuchman (1978) argued that news organizations assume that audiences are interested in whatever they cover: “Today’s news media place reporters at legitimated institutions where stories supposedly appealing to contemporary news consumers may be expected to be found” (p. 21).

While Tuchman might argue that audiences are assumed to be interested so as to meet the needs of the news organization, modern journalism practitioners argue that news organizations must do a better job of catering to audience tastes. Stone (1987), for example, contended that the modern editor must be concerned that each inch of journalism copy do its job of attracting and maintaining an audience. Indeed, the modern thrust of many news organizations seems to be a desire to grab their audiences and cater to them. In this sense, the audience is treated as a market to be captured. Obvious examples are the stylistic standards employed by Gannett Company newspapers and modern “infotainment” shows which consistently use sensationalistic tactics to attract their audience. The papers modeled after USA Today use flashy graphics, short copy, and so forth. Contemporary infotainment shows use a variety of “teases” to grab their viewers. Given the decline in newspaper readership and network viewership figures in the past decade, the current organizational perspective on the audience most commonly views the audience as a market to be captured to meet the revenue goals of the news organization.

That view of audience as market serving the news industry is also evidenced at the institutional level of analysis. Hackett (1984) summarized the institutional view this way:

Instead, we would analyze the various types of systematic orientations and relationships which unavoidably structure news accounts. These factors may indeed include partisan favoritism or political prejudices. But they also include criteria of newsworthiness, the technological characteristics of each news medium, the logistics of news production, budgetary constraints, legal inhibitions, the availability of information from sources, the need to tell stories intelligibly and entertainingly to an intended audience, the need to package news in a way which is compatible with the commercial imperative of selling audiences to advertisers and the forms of appearance of social and political events. All these factors and others shape the media’s functioning as an ideological institution. (p. 269)

Thus, when journalistic audiences are examined from an institutional perspective, one considers regulatory and political factors, technological capabilities, economic pressures, and so forth, in relation to the news environment. Each factor, in turn, helps shape a unique image of the audience.

The seminal analysis of media systems authored by Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm, in Four Theories of the Press (1956), suggested that the shape of the media was inextricably bound to the social controls in the society. They suggested that four types of press systems had developed in modern societies: authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet–Communist. Each theory also envisioned audience in a different way. For example, the authoritarian system envisioned knowledge as coming from a wise few. The audience was viewed as ignorant and so was given only the information that would be appropriate for them. The libertarian model grew out of the period of the enlightenment and therefore viewed the audience as, indeed, enlightened. Journalism was to work on behalf of the people, and to act as a watchdog against government. The social responsibility model suggested that the press had an obligation to provide the public with a forum that voiced a variety of competing ideas. As evidenced in early FCC policy, audience was viewed as an active democracy, requiring certain information. Last, the Soviet–Communist model portrayed the press as the servant of the state. The audience was viewed as “evolving” and maturing into a classless society.

Recent analyses suggest that modern journalists tend to embrace libertarian ideals (Akhavan-Majid & Wolf, 1991; Wuliger, 1991). Miller (1992) suggested that the same is true of news audiences: “There is overwhelming evidence people value the watch-dog role of the media. They definitely want us to keep an eye on public officials, to tell them when things are going wrong.” Yet, arguing from an institutional point of view, Akhavan-Majid and Wolf (1991) said that American journalism actually consists of an elite-power group and so bypasses the audience. Hallin (1992), too, saw the press as political “insiders, too close to the powerful institutions whose actions need to be discussed” (p. 20).

The regulatory environment within U.S. broadcasting also shapes the broadcast journalism product and poses particular pictures of the audience. For example, in their analysis of broadcast policy, Webster and Phalen (1994) suggested that three, sometimes conflicting, models of audience have been represented. The first they called the Effects Model, Audience as Victim. This policy was perhaps best represented in former FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s “Vast Wasteland” speech (1961). His message suggested that the audience must be protected from harmful media content or provided with healthier content. The second was called the Marketplace Model, Audience as Consumer. This policy was perhaps best voiced by the FCC chairman during the Reagan administration, Mark Fowler. The audience in this view was treated as active and knowledgeable, and the best media content, it was thought, would survive because it best catered to that audience. The third was called the Commodity Model, Audience as Coin of Exchange. This was the view evidenced in the 1979 FCC document on the deregulation of radio. In this legal scenario, audience was treated as an “object” for advertisers. The best media content was that which attracted a sizable audience that could be sold to advertisers.

Modern assumptions about the technologies available to news practitioners also convey assumptions about the news production process and the way in which the audience retrieves the news. One modern portrayal of the news audience from those who focus on the changing technological picture of news production is the audience as “technocrats” with a host of technological tools at their disposal to help them design the news for themselves. Generally, however, these images of the audience are a bit inflated because actual usage of these news products is less than expected by media visionaries. A second theory casts the audience as passive. Neuman (1991) contrasted the technocrat image of the audience with a passive, slow-moving audience. Although the technology for vast changes in the use of the media is possible, Neuman contended that those changes will be slow in coming because people are relatively passive when it comes to making changes in their private use of the media and because of economic constraints on the media themselves. His view suggests that changes within the news industry will also logically be slower in reacting to that passive audience.

A hybrid of these two views—audience as technocrat and audience as passive—is, again, implicitly audience as market. This is the view of large media organizations that are increasingly using new technologies to segment and personalize their materials for a variety of audiences. Smith (1992) began to view the audience from a market perspective in his recommendations to journalists and their news organizations:

Why can’t newspapers give readers what they want and what they need? Or give them what they need in a way that they can use it? I believe in the classic traditions of newspapers: Protecting the public’s interest, ferreting out truth, and nailing scoundrels. That’s why many of us got into newspapers, but whose interest is served if the newspaper is unread? (p. 34).

As a focus on segmenting audiences suggests, the newsgathering process has also been examined from an economic perspective. Economic models of the audience as devised by media economists such as Owen and Wildman (1992) typically treat the audience as rational. Audiences have clear preferences and will choose media content based on those preferences. These economists also characterize media organizations as completely rational entities that are operating exclusively to maximize profit. Squires (1993) suggested that such a view is increasingly practiced at modern news organizations like the Tribune Company:

Owners and managers of the new media … want content defined in advance by target audience responses to surveyor’s questions and then designed to fit inside the elite and narrow parameters of the most desired advertiser targets with a single goal—attainment of the corporation’s financial objectives. (p. 145)

As such an economic view implies, the institutional perspective of the audience as market goes beyond merely viewing the audience in terms of segmented groups, but instead “creates” an audience to meet the news organizations’ needs within the institutional environment. Ettema and Whitney (1994a) argued, “In an institutional conception, actual receivers are … reconstituted … as institutionally effective audiences that have social meaning and/or economic value within the system” (p. 5). From the institutional perspective, the audience is viewed as a market served up for advertisers. The news organization looks to construct the best audience it can.

Overall, it is clear that a variety of ideas regarding audience are reflected among the different levels of analysis.

THE IMPLICIT AUDIENCE BEHIND WORKING THEORIES

McQuail (1983) distinguished between three types of theories at work in understanding the media: common-sense, working, and social-scientific theories. Common-sense theories are those that develop out of media usage by everyday media consumers. McQuail argued that these theories are important because they are often reflected in public opinion polls and help shape public policy toward the media. Working theories are those understandings that tend to govern and guide the behavior of media professionals. Social-scientific theories are, of course, those created within the academic environment.

Because the focus of this research is on how views of the audience bear on the construction of news within organizations, the theories of the audience most relevant for study are working theories. News workers at both of the news organizations I observed (WGN-TV and the Chicago Tribune), are quoted at length to illustrate these working theories.

Images of the audience, like other journalistic working theories, develop out of the everyday work of the journalist. In his text, The Reflective Practitioner, Schön (1993) described working professionals as those who must “deliberately involve themselves in messy but crucially important problems and, when asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trial and error, intuition, and mudd...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: How Audience Images Help Construct the News
• 1 The News Audience in Theory
• 2 The Tacit Audience in Newsmaking
• 3 The Tacit Audience in News Values: Timeliness, Proximity, Conflict, and Prominence
• 4 The Tacit Audience in the “Master” News Values: Interest, Importance, and Impact
• 5 The Audience From Different Organizational Levels
• 6 News to Touch the Audience
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author