Making the News Popular: Mobilizing U.S. News Audiences

Making the News Popular: Mobilizing U.S. News Audiences

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Description

The professional judgment of gatekeepers defined the American news agenda for decades. Making the News Popular examines how subsequent events brought on a post-professional period that opened the door for imagining that consumer preferences should drive news production--and unleashed both crisis and opportunity on journalistic institutions. Anthony Nadler charts a paradigm shift, from market research's reach into the editorial suite in the 1970s through contemporary experiments in collaborative filtering and social news sites like Reddit and Digg. As Nadler shows, the transition was and is a rocky one. It also goes back much further than many experts suppose. Idealized visions of demand-driven news face obstacles with each iteration. Furthermore, the post-professional philosophy fails to recognize how organizations mobilize interest in news and public life. Nadler argues that this civic function of news organizations has been neglected in debates on the future of journalism. Only with a critical grasp of news outlets' role in stirring broad interest in democratic life, he says, might journalism's digital crisis push us towards building a more robust and democratic news media.

ISBN

978-0252081637

Publication Date

6-3-2016

Publisher

University of Illinois Press

City

Champaign, Illinois

Keywords

journalism, news media, social media, consumer preference, democracy, news audiences

Disciplines

Communication Technology and New Media | Journalism Studies | Mass Communication | Social Influence and Political Communication | Social Media

Comments

A volume in the series: The History of Communication.

Making the News Popular: Mobilizing U.S. News Audiences

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