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>> 109 4 Perpetual Feedback Monitoring the New Media Environment I want to make enough money so I can afford you. It’s really that simple. You need to, in effect, help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want and therefore generates more revenue. . . . [I]f we don’t have the revenue, it doesn’t really matter. —Sam Zell, January 31, 2008 News outlets’ incentives in the free market are clear: appeal to audiences with content that meets demand. If audiences consistently demanded information on critical topics that made them informed citizens, this would be great. News content would consistently meet democratic ideals and improve citizenship. Unfortunately, audience demands are not always so upright. People prefer content deviating greatly from the democratic ideal—and journalists know it. In response to the above remark by Sam Zell, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and several other newspapers, one of his journalists retorted, “But, what readers want are puppy dogs.” The incentives of the market do not care whether the news meets democratic ideals—the incentives merely encourage owners and operators like Sam Zell to meet demands and subsequently turn a profit. So, if news firms have to report puppy dogs, scurrilous sex scandals, or other 110 > 111 With modern technology, news firms now have the ability to solicit thousands of viewer opinions on moment-specific topics. News firms can get immediate feedback on their stories and use that feedback to shape future coverage. The mechanisms for soliciting audience feedback provide a widely available public sphere for audiences—and audiences have been seemingly happy to contribute. But, under the auspices of taking part in a public sphere, audiences have been too willing to provide firms with market information. This has made news firms much better able to target audiences; this is not unlike walking into a car dealership and telling the salesman which car you “just can’t live without” before you begin to negotiate for it. And more broadly, the temptations created by increased market knowledge have further retarded the opportunities and incentives for journalists to use independent judgment. This chapter begins with a discussion of the increasingly accurate and accessible methods used by news firms to monitor audience preferences. These include traditional ratings information, polling, as well as methods of tracking audience feedback and interest on individual stories. I then provide telling examples showing how news firms’ solicitation of audience opinion shifts subsequent coverage. Afterwards, I allow news content to speak for itself, and demonstrate how both hard and softer news programs have met demands for entertainment by expending precious news space on meaningless but entertaining stories. Demands for entertainment lead not only to an overabundance of stories about trivial topics but also to a perverse style of reporting important stories. Methods for Monitoring the Market In recent years, news firms have embraced technologies that allow immediate audience feedback on their programming and reporting. Newspeople solicit audience feedback via email, Twitter, Facebook, text messages, and webpages. Audiences are encouraged to “keep the conversation going” after the report is over. Newspapers have for the last two decades published their stories on the internet, and in doing so have offered online readers methods for immediately responding to articles. 112 > 113 data then set the rates that advertisers are willing to pay for advertising space. News programming attracting large target audiences will be able to charge more for their advertising space than news programming reaching fewer people. Ratings therefore give media firms important information for drawing in larger audiences. In response to ratings, media firms offer more programming generating high ratings, and less programming generating lower ratings. Highly rated television programming stays on the air, while poorly rated programs either disappear or are altered in an attempt to draw in higher ratings. This is certainly true with entertainment programming: nighttime shows disappear each season (sometimes midseason) as ratings information becomes available. Sit-coms and dramas are offered renewal contracts at the end of each season because of their ratings. News programming is little different. The cable news outlets , as discussed in chapter 3, have made many changes to their line-ups in response to poor ratings. Shows hosted in the last decade by Phil Donahue, Allan Keyes, and Elliot Spitzer are now gone. Shows that top the ratings, such as The O’Reilly Factor, stay. Nielsen ratings rely on samples of households for estimating audience size and composition. While the ratings are a useful baseline for...

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