gent trajectories. The gaps between
the thematic composition of the top
stories selected by journalists and
consumers increased by an average of
19 percentage points.
Does the divergence between supply
and demand depend on geography or
ideology? Results from a third study,
undertaken in collaboration with
Northwestern University graduate students Eugenia Mitchelstein and Martin Walter, show that the mismatch is
a widespread phenomenon that cuts
across media from countries and regions with disparate histories, cultural
makeup, and ideological positions. 2
This study deployed the design
of the second study to examine 11
sites in Western Europe and Latin
America: The Guardian and The Times
in the United Kingdom; El País and
El Mundo in Spain; Die Welt and Der
Tagesspiegel in Germany; La Reforma
and El Universal in Mexico; Clarín
and La Nación in Argentina; and
Fol-ha de Sao Paulo in Brazil (there was
only one Brazilian site because data
from a second comparable site was
not publicly available). All the sites
were the online presence of leading
generalist, mainstream, and elite
newspapers with national reach in
their respective countries. Moreover,
in the five countries from which two
news sites were sampled, the pairs
had somewhat divergent ideological
outlooks—either conservative and
centrist or conservative and liberal.
Once again, there was a sizable thematic gap between the supply and demand of online news, with the journalists leaning more toward stories about
politics, business, economics, and international matters than readers. The
differences between the top news choices of journalists and consumers ranged
from 30 percentage points in The Guardian to 9 percentage points in Clarín, with
an average of 19 percentage points. In
addition, there were no major patterns
of variance in this gap by geographical
region or ideological preference. First,
journalists choose news about politics,
economics, business, and international matters 20 percentage points more
often than readers in Western Europe
and 19 percentage points more often
in Latin America. Second, while on conservative sites the thematic difference
between journalists’ and consumers’
it is unlikely that
the mismatch
between supply
and demand of news
in the elite media
began with the Web.
choices was 21 percentage points, on
centrist/liberal sites this difference was
19 percentage points.
the future of media and Democracy
It is unlikely that the mismatch between supply and demand of news in
the elite media began with the Web.
As the noted sociologist and former
journalist Robert Park wrote many
decades ago, “The things which most
of us would like to publish are not the
things that most of us want to read. We
may be eager to get into print what is,
or seems to be, edifying, but we want
to read what is interesting.” But the
strong market position of these elite
media meant that because advertisers
had to go through them to reach potential consumers, journalists could
get away with fulfilling their sense of
civic duty by disseminating “
edifying” news despite their limited appeal
among the general public.
But in the highly competitive contemporary media environment, few
news organizations enjoy the kind of
natural monopoly or oligopoly position
that newspapers and television networks had in the past. Perhaps, none
do. Of all media markets, the Web is
the most competitive one because of
low geographic and distribution barriers and the very high number of players.
In addition, the Web enables organizations to automatically track the
number of clicks garnered by each
story. This has meant that personnel
at elite online news sites are deeply
aware of the extent to which supply
and demand don’t meet. They must
confront the dilemma introduced
at the beginning of this column on a
daily basis.
What should they do? If they stay
the course and the nature of consum-
er preferences does not change (and
there is no reason to suspect it might),
the mismatch between supply and de-
mand will further erode their econom-
ic sustainability. If they change course
and give consumers more of what they
want, they will likely pay the price of
becoming a different kind of news or-
ganization and having to compete in
an already crowded space of “populist
media.” Either way, the future does not
bode well for them.
References
1. Boczkowski, p. News at Work: Imitation in an Age of
Information Abundance. university of chicago press,
chicago, IL, 2010.
2. Boczkowski, p., mitchelstein, e., and Walter, m. (in
press). convergence across divergence: understanding
the gap in the online news choices of journalists and
consumers in Western europe and Latin america.
Communication Research.
3. Boczkowski, p. and peer, L. (in press). the choice gap:
the divergent online news preferences of journalists
and consumers. Journal of Communication.
Pablo J. Boczkowski ( pjb9@northwestern.edu) is a
professor in the Department of communication studies at
northwestern university and also, during the 2010–2011
academic year, a visiting scholar at the university of chicago
Booth school of Business. He is the author of Digitizing
the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (mIt press,
2004) and News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information
Abundance (university of chicago press, 2010).
I would like to thank shane greenstein for the invitation to
write this column and shane and eugenia mitchelstein for
feedback on earlier versions.
copyright held by author.
