Topic: Online News: Public Sphere or Echo Chamber?
Forum Participants: Pablo Boczkowski, Professor of Comm Studies @ Northwestern
Joshua Benten, Director of Neiman Journalism Lab @ Harvard
Forum Moderator: Jason Spingarn-Koff, Knight Journalism Fellow @ MIT
The main quibble between Boczkowski and Benton seems to be whether online news agencies are providing the right type and quantity of news that the readers/consumers demand. Boczkowski says no because there is always a gap between journalists' supply and consumers' demand of information. He sees it as the conflict between journalistic ethics (to provide what's edifying) and consumer tastes (to be attracted what's interesting). Benton says yes because the internet provides a wide range of information from mainstream media to marginal blogs and can always manage to "supply" wherever there is a "demand." He believes the problem should be framed as a gap between distribution and promotion.
Boczkowski: 1) the news industry is transitioning from a monopoly/oligopoly mode to a more competitive mode
2) news agencies shift from generalist to niche strategies. This leads to the "ghettoization" of society where people live in their own community of interest and avoid oppositional opinions from other groups. The future will see the deepening of informational inequality
3) news agencies face the conflict between the logic of the occupation and the logic of the market
4) consumer demand for news flunctuates radically between ordinary times and times when critical historical events take place
Benton: 1) no clear line can be drawn between journalistic/elite demand for news and popular/mass demand for news (he wonders about the consumption habit of journalists after a full day of muckraking--probably only read vampire news)
2) journalistic values are never purely reflected in the organization of the newspaper's front page; are news organizations really public institutions or businesses? the answer is often the latter--they not only sell news, but sells an image of the readers to advertisers
3) no clear line can be drawn between the print world and the online world
4) consumer demand for news are multifaceted (not simply low taste for entertainment and escapism) -- they use news as A) producers, B) consumers, C) entertainment, D) voters (from James Hamilton 'FIT TO SELL')
Q & A:
DECOUPLING OF THE ELITE & THE GENERAL PUBLIC--is it right?
THE NEWS FORMAT IS BIASED; IT FOCUSES ON THE PROBLEMS, THE CRISES--not necessarily, wikipedia's high traffic testifies to the demand for background and context, investigative journalism/documentaries testify to the demand for indepth analysis
THE WEB HAS A "RESONATER EFFECT"--Lasswell's two-step flow combines and merges on the internet
THE 'INFORMED FRIEND'--how interpersonal networks are intertwined with (trational and online) media effects
THE 10 MOST READ STORIES--closest to the journalistic intent
THE 10 MOST EMAILED STORIES--most useful and bizarre
THE 10 MOST COMMENTED STORIES--most controversial
NYT: "DEATH OF BLOGGING" (bloggers drift to social media)
WASHINGTON POST: "HYPERLOCAL NEWS EXPERIEMENT"
ONLINE NEWS BECOME "DIGITAL ANALOGUES" OF TRADITIONAL NEWS--NYT website mimic the display of print news, revive print aesthetics
GOOGLE NEWS HAVE 44% READERS LEAVE WITHOUT CLICKING ON ANY LINK--reading headlines are enough for their news demands
things are changing... MAJOR NEWSPAPERS DON'T CARE ABOUT CLICKS ANY MORE, THEY TRY TO CREATE A BRAND BY PROVIDING QUALITY CONTENT, TRY TO BUY YOUR TIME, NOT YOUR CLICKS
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