Journalism Between The State And The Market

Using the Nordic media model as an empirical backdrop, Journalism Between the State and the Market defines and analyzes journalism’s fundamental problem: its shifting location between the state and the market. This book examines how this distance is decreasing as journalism steps closer to both the market (algorithmically monetizing audiences) and the state (lobbying governments for subsidies and attacking public service broadcasting). The book analyzes journalism’s negotiated position between the market and the state in the age of disruptions, offering a theoretical foundation that seeks to account for the structural conditions of journalism in the digital age. For scholars, graduates and students in journalism, news sociology and media and communication studies, Journalism Between the State and the Market provides a theoretical perspective that can be used as a valuable tool when studying and observing the current developments in journalism.

This book explores the challenges to news professionalism and media autonomy stemming from the state, market pressure, the digitalization of communication, and a polarized civil society in Hong Kong. China is tightening its control over post-handover Hong Kong, which includes press freedom. Harsh market competition, coupled with shifting readership from mainstream media to digital platforms, is squeezing the business viability of media organizations. The polarization of civil society in post-handover Hong Kong had degraded consensual values upon which news professionalism relies. Journalists have had to reorient news professionalism and media power in the midst of state-society tension, market pressure, and the shifting communication mode driven by digitalization. These are the key questions for Hong Kong media. This dynamic intervention will be of interest to journalists, scholars of civil society, and scholars of Asian politics.

Following recent developments in digital technologies, financial crises, and changes in audience preferences, this book addresses the critical challenges and disruptions facing the profession of journalism: an arguably precarious industry suffering from employment insecurity, individualization, and loss of autonomy. Drawing on research from the Norwegian and Nordic media landscape, Journalism Between Disruption and Resilience elaborates on how boundary struggles between journalism and other forms of content, such as marketing and public relations, have become blurred, while social distinctions within the profession are deepened and exacerbated by downsizing and cutbacks in newsrooms and their journalistic staffs. The impact of these developments on the institutional and democratic role of journalism in society is discussed alongside the tensions between professional autonomy and precarious work. Expanding upon several earlier research studies, grounded in the sociology of professions and freelance work, this book provides a new theoretical framework from which to addressjournalistic precarity and the role of journalism in society. This is an insightful study for advanced students and researchers in the areas of professional journalism, journalism education, and media industries including marketing and public relations.

That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the details, and competitors' products. But in All the News That's Fit to Sell, economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens. Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news, and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic on news judgments. This is the first book to develop an economic theory of news, analyze evidence across a wide range of media markets on how incentives affect news content, and offer policy conclusions. Media bias, for instance, was long a staple of the news. Hamilton's analysis of newspapers from 1870 to 1900 reveals how nonpartisan reporting became the norm. A hundred years later, some partisan elements reemerged as, for example, evening news broadcasts tried to retain young female viewers with stories aimed at their (Democratic) political interests. Examination of story selection on the network evening news programs from 1969 to 1998 shows how cable competition, deregulation, and ownership changes encouraged a shift from hard news about politics toward more soft news about entertainers. Hamilton concludes by calling for lower costs of access to government information, a greater role for nonprofits in funding journalism, the development of norms that stress hard news reporting, and the defining of digital and Internet property rights to encourage the flow of news. Ultimately, this book shows that by more fully understanding the economics behind the news, we will be better positioned to ensure that the news serves the public good.

This book provides a comprehensive theory of commercial news production. The author's systematic study of the way in which firms deploy resources, such as reporters and photographers, to maximize return to shareholders leads to an examination of the ways such practices affect journalistic quality. John H McManus examines the application of market logic to news and its growing importance to local broadcast media. Until the mid-1980s, local television news tended to be viewed by journalists in other media as an inconsequential, market-driven medium. During the last decade, however, newspapers and network television have also found themselves to be prey to market forces as a consequence of increasing competition and a shrinking advertising market.

The rise of Juan Perón to power in Argentina in the 1940s is one of the most studied subjects in Argentine history. But no book before this has examined the role the Peronists’ struggle with the major commercial newspaper media played in the movement’s evolution, or what the resulting transformation of this industry meant for the normative and practical redefinition of the relationships among state, press, and public. In The Fourth Enemy, James Cane traces the violent confrontations, backroom deals, and legal actions that allowed Juan Domingo Perón to convert Latin America’s most vibrant commercial newspaper industry into the region’s largest state-dominated media empire. An interdisciplinary study drawing from labor history, communication studies, and the history of ideas, this book shows how decades-old conflicts within the newspaper industry helped shape not just the social crises from which Peronism emerged, but the very nature of the Peronist experiment as well.

How the media are organised and funded is central to understanding their role in society. Critical Political Economy of the Media provides a clear, comprehensive and insightful introduction to the political economic analysis of contemporary media. Jonathan Hardy undertakes a critical survey of political economy scholarship encompassing worldwide literature, issues and debates, and relationships with other academic approaches. He assesses different ways of making sense of media convergence and digitalisation, media power and influence, and transformations across communication markets. Many of the problems of the media that prompted critical political economy research remain salient, he argues, but the approach must continue to adapt to new conditions and challenges. Hardy advances the case for a revitalised critical media studies for the 21st century. Topics covered include: media ownership and financing news and entertainment convergence and the Internet media globalisation advertising and media alternative media media policy and regulation Introducing key concepts and research, this book explains how political economy can assist students, researchers and citizens to investigate and address vital questions about the media today.

Government interventions in media markets are often criticized for preventing audiences from getting the media products they want. A free press is often asserted to be essential for democracy. The first point is incorrect and the second is inadequate as a policy guide. Part I of this book shows that unique aspects of media products prevent markets from providing for audience desires. Part II shows that four prominent, but different, theories of democracy lead to different conceptions of good journalistic practice, media policy, and proper constitutional principles. Part II makes clear that the choice among democratic theories is crucial for understanding what should be meant by free press. Part III explores international free trade in media products. Contrary to the dominant American position, it shows that Parts I and II's economic and democratic theory justify deviations from free trade in media products.