21st-Century Journalism VI
Hard on the heels of The Elements of Journalism, the book highlighted in yesterday's post, the July/August issue of Columbia Journalism Review arrived with an article by Daniel Schulman addressing single-minded efforts at some newspapers to improve circulation through catering more intensively to reader interests.The occasion for Schulman's article is the inauguration in January of John Lavine as the new Dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Schulman reports preliminarily on the promgram of change that Lavine is introducing at the school.
Lavine came to Medill from Northwestern's Media Management Center, where he was founding director. While at the Media Management Center, Lavine devoted much of his energy to the Readership Institute, an affiliated news industry think tank.
The Readership Institute aims to provide research-based guidance to the industry concerning what attracts and sustains reader interest. To see an example of a newspaper that has taken the Readership Institute's recommendations to heart, you can check out The Journal Times, a 30,000 circulation paper in Racine WI.
The obvious concern as newspapers harken to the advice of the Readership Institute, is that they may begin pandering to readers. Indeed, a major issue under discussion in the portion of the blogosphere that focuses on civic affairs and politics, is the traditional media's weakened embrace of their watchdog function. A common explanation for this dialing back of combative coverage of government is that it's a turnoff for many readers.
In fact, one of the big advantages of the rise of the blogosphere is that it provides people seriously interested in news with an alternative source of information and analysis, thereby providing a countervailing force to those who would push traditional papers too far in the direction of "news lite."
Labels: Journalism
posted by Karen Nelson @ 10:35 PM
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