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Journalism Studies
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When Newsworthy is Not Noteworthy
Angela M. Lee & Hsiang Iris Chyi
Published online: 10 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Angela M. Lee & Hsiang Iris Chyi (2014) When Newsworthy is Not Noteworthy,
Journalism Studies, 15:6, 807-820, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2013.841369
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WHEN NEWSWORTHY IS NOT
NOTEWORTHY
Examining the value of news from the
audiences perspective
Angela M. Lee and Hsiang Iris Chyi
In the history of news production, the gap between editors news judgment and audience interest
has been widely noticeable. In scholarly research, while news consumption remains a central
focus, the value of news content as a product has rarely been examined from the audiences
perspective. News is almost always presumed by scholars and practitioners to be of value, which,
however, is not necessarily the case in todays media environment. The recent decline in news
consumption from the traditional media is often attributed to demographic factors, particularly
age. However, such age-oriented narratives shift the responsibility away from news providers to
users. From the media economics standpoint, when news organizations fail to address users
needs and wants, the product delivers limited utility and demand would dwindle as a result. This
study conceptualizes and empirically examines the noteworthiness of news content as perceived
by the general public. Results based on a national survey of US internet users show that only
about one-third of the content produced by the mainstream news media is perceived as
noteworthy. While previous studies identified demographics as significant predictors of news
consumption, findings from this study suggest that perceived noteworthiness is a stronger factor
influencing news consumption in terms of news enjoyment, newspaper and TV news use, and
paying intent for print newspapers. Instead of using technology to pursue a particular
demographic group, news organizations should rethink their content strategy and prioritize
audience-oriented value creation to serve news consumers at large.
KEYWORDS news audience; news consumption; noteworthiness; relevance of news; survey;
value of news
Introduction
Despite the rise of the internet and mobile devices as news platforms, the well-
documented decline in news consumption from traditional media (especially newspapers
and broadcast TV news) among the general public has raised concerns about the future of
news. While online news usage has gained some ground in recent years, online
newspaper users are not nearly as engaged as print readers (Langeveld 2010; Readership
Institute 2008). According to the biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press (2010a), 17 percent of Americans did not consume any
news yesterday, and 45 percent suggested that getting news is not enjoyable.
Empirical research suggests that the lackluster interest in following the news is
especially notable among young people, and the discussion on plausible solutions thus
focuses on this particular demographic group (Kaufhold 2010; Mindich 2005; Zerba
Journalism Studies, 2014
Vol. 15, No. 6, 807820, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2013.841369
2013 Taylor & Francis
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2011). To retain young readers, many news organizations take a technology-driven
approachfocusing on the Web as the number one priority for attracting young readers
(Graybeal 2011) and devoting a substantial portion of their dwindling resources to
emerging platforms such as e-readers, smartphones, tablets (Chyi and Chadha 2012), and
social media (Greer and Yan 2010; Ju, Jeong, and Chyi forthcoming). Media scholars also
devise intervention measures targeting young adults (Kaufhold 2010; Mindich 2005).
Such age-oriented narratives describe an observable phenomenon (i.e., younger
people are less likely to follow the news) but also shift the responsibility away from news
providers to news users (or, to be more accurate, non-users). For example, Kaufhold (2010,
28) asked, what if the media isnt brokenand audience is? Yet, from the media
economics standpoint, when news organizations fail to address users needs and wants,
the product delivers limited utility and demand would dwindle as a result. For example, in
2009, a London-based paper
1
apologized for losing touch and being negative,
predictable, and complacent (Patrick 2009, para. 2). Indeed, what if people consider
news irrelevant or uninteresting? What if what journalists consider newsworthy is not
noteworthy to audiences?
In media research, news is often studied as is and presumed to be innately of value.
But news is a product and the decline in demand should be studied from the audiences
perspective. In an attempt to probe the underlying reason for decline in news
consumption, this exploratory study goes beyond user demographics to examine how
US news consumers perceive newshow much content is considered noteworthyand
how that perception influences news enjoyment, news use, and paying intent.
Literature Review
The Decline in Traditional News Consumption
The decline in news consumption from traditional media is evident over time. The
percentage of those who read a newspaper yesterday went from 56 percent in 1991 down
to 31 percent in 2010; TV news viewership also reduced from 68 to 58 percent during the
same time period, while radio news listeners dropped from 54 to 34 percent (Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press 2010a, figure 1). The most recent figures from the 2012
State of the News Media report paint the same picture: the newspaper industry has
experienced steady losses in terms of paid circulation for over a decade (Edmonds, Guskin,
and Rosenstiel 2012). Additionally, network news lost about a half of total viewers between
1980 and 2011 (Guskin and Rosenstiel 2012), and local TV news also has suffered slight
declines in viewership since 2007 (Potter, Matsa, and Mitchell 2012).
By contrast, cable television
2
(Holcomb, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel 2012) and digital
media (Olmstead et al. 2012) have gained some ground over the past few years in terms of
popularity. However, more people now say they get news from time to time as opposed
to at regular timesfrom 48 percent in 2002 to 57 percent in 2010 (Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press 2010a, figure 10). So the extent to which recent rises in cable
and online news consumption will make up for losses in consumption of hard news on
politics, public affairs, and current events from traditional news media is questionable at
best (Jones 2009), particularly since it has been shown that online newspaper users are not
nearly as engaged as print readers (Langeveld 2010; Readership Institute 2008). Moreover,
with less than half (45 percent) of the US population stating that getting news is not
808 ANGELA M. LEE AND HSIANG IRIS CHYI
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enjoyable (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2010a), the future of news
consumption remains a concern.
Age and News Consumption
Age has been considered one of the strongest predictors of news consumption and
is often identified as the problem in the decline of news consumption (Feldman 2007).
According to the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of those over the age of 65 reported
reading a print newspaper yesterday. Among those aged 1824, only 7 percent did so
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2010a). With low usage of traditional
news, young adults today are less informed and less engaged with news compared to
their parents or grandparents (Mindich 2005). However, while young adults may be losing
interest in hard news, studies suggest that they are increasingly turning to soft news
(including tabloid news programs, daytime talk shows, tabloid newspapers, etc.) as news
alternatives, and some scholars suggest that these sources may serve to educate the
politically uninterested or unmotivated audiences (Baum 2002; Cao 2008).
The Daily Show is often the focus of such scholarly inquiry, and several factors attest
to its influence and popularity in the United States (Baym 2005). In terms of viewership,
not only has its viewership grown substantially since early 2000s,
3
The Daily Show appeals
most to the young adult population (age 1829) (Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press 2010b), and previous studies documented that a major appeal of the show and
other political comedy shows is that they simultaneously amuse and inform the viewer
(Feldman 2007).
In the attempt to understand why young adults are shunning news, Buckingham
(2000) found that middle and high school students in the United States and in London
share the sentiment that television news is boring, repetitive, and unentertaining, and
criticize news for its increasing triviality and sensationalism in the face of commercializa-
tion. Young adults often feel marginalized by mainstream news media and find most news
information irrelevant to their own lives even though they desire to be both entertained
and informed. For example, when asked to grade mainstream new medias coverage of
their generation, over 50 percent of Millennials gave mainstream media a letter of C or
below for essentially failing to give them compelling reasons to follow the news
(Poindexter 2012).
Because news consumption is most evident among young adults, how to retain
young adults is often portrayed as the main challenge in reviving the troubled news
industry. However, is age the real problem? There may be larger issues underlying this
observable phenomenon, and one plausible explanation is the disconnect between what
editors consider newsworthy and what audiences perceive to be noteworthy.
Editorial Judgment Versus Audience Interest
In the history of news production, the gap between editors news judgment and
audience interest has been widely noticeable. For example, Lowrey (2009) notes that news
editors have traditionally neither cared nor understood their audiences demand for
various kinds of news content. Instead of paying attention to what their audiences may be
interested in, most news editors share the view that what interested them would interest
the audience (Gans 2004, 229). More recently, Boczkowski and his colleagues have also
found a persistent gap between what journalists prefer and what audiences desire
WHEN NEWSWORTHY IS NOT NOTEWORTHY 809
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internationally. Specifically, whereas journalists largely prefer hard news, audiences tend to
favor soft news across the board (Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, and Walter 2011; Boczkowski
and Peer 2011; Boczkowski 2010).
While a growing number of qualitative newsroom studies found online news editors
are becoming more conscious of audience preferences with the rise of audience data and
traffic statistics (Anderson 2011; MacGregor 2007), empirical evidence of news editors
narrowing the gap between journalists and audiences news interests remains scant. An
empirical study examining the influence of audience preferences on editorial decisions of
news placements (Lee, Lewis, and Powers 2012) suggests that the effect of audience
preferences on news placements is tenuous at best, indicative of a lingering disconnect
between what journalists find newsworthy and what audiences deem noteworthy.
Value Creation Versus Value Destruction
Economics suggests that the value of any good or service is perceived and
determined by the consumer rather than the producer, but news organizations are
increasingly having difficulties creating such value (Picard 2006). In the past, the cost of
operation, production, and distribution determined the amount of media contentand
the scarcity of it. According to Picard (2006), news organizations have historically created
the economic value of news through two major activities: (1) The actual creation of
content, which is influenced by the choices of what is considered newsworthy or
informative; and (2) how content is selected, organized, presented, packaged, and
processed. This suggests that, for news organizations to create value, relevant content
has to be presented in interesting and attractive manners.
However, technological and social changes are actually destroying the value of news
by disrupting the established equilibrium between news supply and demand and
reshaping existing relationships between journalists and the people whom they serve
(Picard 2006). Specifically, information scarcity has been replaced by an oversupply of
information. As overall demand remains relatively stable (subject to time and budget
constraints), the abundance of information leads to information surplus (Chyi 2009)a
plethora of information available to users at the price of zero. Inevitably, traditional news
outlets would experience substantial declines in news consumption as it becomes just one
of many information choices at users disposal while competing with other types of media
(e.g., entertainment content, games, etc.) for scarce attention (Davenport and Beck 2002).
This poses two challenges to journalism: first, news organizations that once relied on
the mass audience assumption are losing their relevance in this digital media landscape.
Second, the internet makes available an unprecedented amount of informationnews
and non-newsthat competes for finite user attention. In particular, entertainment
content has become so readily availableand it is easily more interesting than news (even
soft news). Therefore, to create value in todays media landscape, news organizations must
create content deemed relevant and interesting to compete with all other media.
Value of News: Defining Noteworthiness
While news consumption remains a central focus in scholarly research, the value of
news as a product has rarely been defined and examined empirically from the audiences
perspective. Audience research rarely questions the value of content in the quest to
understand motivations that drive news consumption. For example, as one of the most
810 ANGELA M. LEE AND HSIANG IRIS CHYI
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popular audience-centric approaches that seeks to understand why and how audiences
use media, the uses and gratifications paradigm posits that audiences use media to satisfy
different needs and gratifications (for an overview, see Lee 2013). Implicit in such a
theoretical approach, especially when applied to news consumption, is the assumption
that news content is of value to audiences and thus by nature is capable of fulfilling
different gratifications such as surveillance, the need to know, to understand what is going
on in the world, and to keep up with the way the government functions, among others
(Katz, Haas, and Gurevitch 1973; McCombs and Poindexter 1983; McQuail, Blumler, and
Brown 1972). However, what if news is perceived as of little value and thus leads to non-
consumption?
Against the backdrop of attention economy, which is characterized by information
surplus (Chyi 2009) and collective attention deficit (Davenport and Beck 2002), for any
media content to be considered valuable in the market it has to be noteworthyi.e.,
perceived as worthy of audience attention (by the audience, not the producer). Based on
the value creation framework (Picard 2006), this study further conceptualizes noteworthi-
ness as the integration of two elements: relevance and interestingness. Building upon
these two dimensions, we argue that in order for content to be perceived as noteworthy,
news has to be either relevant or interesting to the audience. These dimensions are also
comparable to the two types of media gratifications in the uses and gratifications
literatureinstrumental and ritualizedsuggestive of their distinct and important roles in
contributing to news consumption. Whereas instrumental uses of news tend to be
information-oriented, ritualized uses of news are more about relaxation or to pass time
(Rubin and Perse 1987). To explore the value of news from the audiences perspective, this
study addresses the following research questions:
RQ1: To what degree do people perceive news produced by mainstream media as
noteworthy?
RQ2: Does the perception of noteworthiness vary across different news categories?
RQ3: Do demographic variables account for the difference in perceived noteworthiness?
In addition, this study seeks to examine the effect of perceived noteworthiness on
news enjoyment, news use, and paying intent. Specifically, how perception fares,
compared to demographic variables, in predicting enjoyment, use, and intention to pay?
This study examines the following research questions:
RQ4: To what degree does perceived noteworthiness predict news enjoyment?
RQ5: To what degree does perceived noteworthiness predict news use in print, TV, and
online?
RQ6: To what degree does perceived noteworthiness predict the intention to pay for
news in print and online?
Method
To address the research questions, this study used data collected through a Web-
based survey of 767 US adult internet users conducted in August 2010. Survey Sampling
International (SSI), a survey research provider with more than 30 years of experience, which
also provided samples for the Pew Research Centers media consumption survey (Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press 2012), was commissioned to administer the
WHEN NEWSWORTHY IS NOT NOTEWORTHY 811
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survey. The survey was distributed to SSI panelists via e-mail, allowing respondents the
flexibility to choose when and where to participate. The completion rate
4
was 84.5 percent.
The survey specifically asked respondents about their news use, news enjoyment, perceived
news noteworthiness, and paying intent for print and online news formats.
In terms of key demographic variables, the survey used in this study over-sampled
females and those with lower income in the United States. To reduce bias and to ensure
the results were comparable to the US internet population, gender and income were
weighted in the analysis (see Table 1).
Survey Instrument
To assess the amount of news content considered noteworthy, respondents were
asked the following questions:
Thinking about all the news available to you, overall, _____% of news content created by
the U.S. mainstream media is relevant or interesting to me.
Specifically, _____% of (a) international (b) local (c) political (d) business (e) sports (f)
entertainment news is relevant or interesting to me.
News enjoyment was measured by this question, adopted from the Pew Research
Centers biennial news consumption surveys:
In general, how much do you enjoy keeping up with the news? (1 is Not at all and 5 is
A lot).
Time spent on print newspaper/online news/TV news was measured by this
question:
About how much time did you spend (a) reading (print) newspapers (b) getting news
online (c) watching TV news (cable and satellite included) yesterday?
TABLE 1
A comparison of the sample and the US internet population
Internet
population
a
(%)
Sample
unweighted (%)
Sample
weighted (%)
Gender
Male 48.4 35.7 50.7
Female 51.6 64.3 49.3
Age
1834 33.0 29.9 28.8
3554 41.2 45.2 44.6
55+ 25.8 24.9 26.6
Income
Less than $50,000 36.6 64.3 35.8
$50,00074,999 21.0 18.0 20.9
$75,000149,999 30.7 14.7 31.0
$150,000+ 11.7 3.0 12.4
Education
Did not attend college 40.2 35.3 28.0
Attended college 29.8 33.4 31.3
Graduated college plus 30.0 31.3 40.7
N 223,672,000 767 776
a
Source: Mediamark Research & Intelligence data published by the US Census Bureau, based on
adults 18+ years old with internet access as of fall 2008.
812 ANGELA M. LEE AND HSIANG IRIS CHYI
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Paying intent for newspapers print and online editions was measured by asking this
question:
Some newspapers are considering charging users for content online in the near future.
How likely is it that you personally would pay for news and information on the following
platforms? Print ____; Website ____(1 is Very unlikely and 5 is Very likely)
Demographic information on gender, age, education, income, and race was
collected using standard survey questions.
Results
In response to RQ1, which asks about the degree to which people perceive news
produced by mainstream media as noteworthy, respondents were asked to give their
answer as a percentage. On average, respondents indicated 36 percent of news content
provided by the mainstream news organizations is of noteworthiness (SD = 29). In other
words, an average internet user found nearly two-thirds of the news irrelevant and
uninteresting.
Specifically, 9 percent of the respondents found nothing noteworthy in the news
provided by the mainstream news organizations. Half of the respondents said 25 percent
or less of such news is noteworthymeaning they perceive three-quarters of the news
produced by the mainstream news media as of little value (Table 2).
RQ2 asks whether peoples perception of noteworthiness varies across different
news categoriesthe data suggest local news is perceived most favorably, with on
average 43 percent of the content deemed noteworthy (SD = 33)followed by political
news (30 percent, SD = 30), international news (28 percent, SD = 28), business and finance
news (26 percent; SD = 30), sports news (23 percent, SD = 29), and entertainment news
(21 percent, SD = 27).
To address RQ3, which asks whether demographic variables account for differences
in perceived noteworthiness, ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression analyses were
conducted. Controlling for other demographic variables, the data suggest that women
( = 0.13, p < 0.001) as well as older adults ( = 0.10, p < 0.01) are more likely to perceive
news provided by mainstream news media as noteworthy.
Table 3 summarizes predictors of perceived noteworthiness across general news and
six subcategories of news. Interestingly, very different demographic variables account for
TABLE 2
Percentage of news perceived as noteworthy
a
Noteworthy content (%) Respondents (%)
0 9
125 41
2650 26
5175 11
76100 13
Total 100
a
Question: Thinking about all the news available to you, overall, _____% of news content created
by the U.S. mainstream media is relevant or interesting to me.
Weighted N = 776; mean = 36 (SD = 29); median = 25; mode = 50.
WHEN NEWSWORTHY IS NOT NOTEWORTHY 813
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TABLE 3
Demographics as predictors of perceived noteworthiness
Predictors News in general Local news Political news International news Business/finance news Sports news Entertainment news
Gender (male) 0.132*** 0.138*** 0.021 0.004 0.033 0.212*** 0.090*
Age 0.097** 0.113** 0.165*** 0.085* 0.159*** 0.069 0.138***
Education 0.023 0.041 0.134*** 0.158*** 0.141*** 0.035 0.070
Income 0.004 0.073* 0.043 0.044 0.143*** 0.013 0.038
Race (White) 0.010 0.087* 0.066 0.008 0.021 0.077* 0.022
Model F(5, 765) =
3.9
F(5, 765) =
6.9
F(5, 765) =
10.7
F(5, 765) =
6.5
F(5, 765) =
14.7
F(5, 765) =
8.8
F(5, 765) =
5.3
p < 0.01 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001
R
2
0.03 0.04 0.07 0.04 0.09 0.05 0.03
Cell entries are beta weights.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
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perceived noteworthiness of different news categories. For example, local news is perceived
as more noteworthy by women, older adults, those with lower income, and Whitesother
things being equal. Political and international news, in contrast, is perceived more favorably
by those who are older and with higher education. Business news and sports news have
vastly different predictorsthe former is perceived as more noteworthy by those who
are older, with higher education or higher income, whereas the latter is perceived as more
noteworthy by men and Whites. Entertainment news stands out because it is the only news
category younger adults perceive as more noteworthy than older people.
Such results indicate that noteworthiness is in the eye of the beholder, suggesting
that the one-size-fits-all bundled model based on the mass audience assumption is not the
best way to engage news users in the age of audience fragmentation.
To examine RQ4RQ6which explore the degree to which perceived noteworthi-
ness predicts news enjoyment, news use (print, TV, online), and intention to pay for news
(print, Web)OLS regression analyses were conducted. Table 4 summarizes the results.
Across all six regression models, perceived noteworthiness of news produced by the
mainstream media predicts heightened news enjoyment, news use, and intention to pay
for news. A closer look at the models indicates that noteworthiness is the strongest
predictor of news enjoyment, news use (newspaper and TV), and paying intent for print
newspapers when compared to demographic variables.
Discussion
This exploratory study examines the value of news from the audiences perspective
by proposing noteworthiness as a key attribute and conceptualizes it along two
dimensions within the value creation framework. Our empirical examination offers the
following findings:
1. The respondents report an average of 36 percent of news content produced by mainstream
media to be noteworthy, suggestive of the lack of relevance and interestingness in nearly
TABLE 4
News noteworthiness as predictor of news enjoyment, use, and paying intent
Predictors
Enjoyment
from news
Time spent
on reading
newspaper
Time
spent on
watching
TV news
Time spent
on getting
news
online
Paying
intent for
print
newspaper
Paying
intent for
online
newspaper
Gender (male) 0.110** 0.129*** 0.017 0.146*** 0.003 0.150***
Age 0.128*** 0.117** 0.078* 0.198*** 0.012 0.215***
Education 0.034 0.038 0.035 0.048 0.097** 0.015
Income 0.049 0.153*** 0.038 0.181*** 0.026 0.040
Race (White) 0.021 0.026 0.054 0.044 0.036 0.081*
Noteworthiness 0.424*** 0.168*** 0.197*** 0.148*** 0.230*** 0.098**
Model F(6, 764)
= 35.1
F(6, 742)
= 11.8
F(6, 733)
= 6.4
F(6, 733)
= 14.2
F(6, 764)
= 8.6
F(6, 764)
= 10.7
p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001 p < 0.001
R
2
0.22 0.09 0.05 0.10 0.06 0.08
Cell entries are beta weights.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
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two-third of news. Specifically, nearly 10 percent of the respondents find nothing in the
news noteworthy, and half of the respondents find less than a quarter of the news
noteworthy. Indeed, younger adults are less likely to perceive news as noteworthy, but the
same holds true for mensuggesting that, contrary to popular belief, age is not the only
factor associated with perceived noteworthiness.
2. In terms of perceived noteworthiness across different news genres, local news is deemed
the most noteworthy, yet still only less than 50 percent of such content is considered so.
Additionally, this study uncovered that different demographic variables predict perceived
noteworthiness of different news categories, suggesting that a bundled product does not
effectively fulfill different audiences information needs in todays media environment.
3. While previous studies identified demographics as significant predictors of news
consumption, findings from this study suggest that perceived noteworthiness is a stronger
factor influencing news consumption in terms of news enjoyment, newspaper and TV
news use, and paying intent for print newspapers.
Seeing age as an a significant predictor of news consumption, many news
organizations today invest heavily in their use of new platforms and devices as an
attempt to reach younger readers online; however, this strategy faces two fallaciesfirst,
while research shows that young adults (those under 30) are more likely to be online,
where a plethora of news information resides, younger adults are not more likely to
consume news online than older adults (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
2010a). Second, as findings from this study suggest, while demographic factors do predict
various aspects of news consumption, perceived noteworthiness is actually a more
important factor that influences news consumption and creates the kind of monetizing
value that will set news organizations apart from other media providers in the age of
information surplus. After all, with about two-thirds of the news deemed unnoteworthy by
the respondents, it is hardly a surprise that most news users are disinterested in most, if
not all, paywall models (Chyi 2012). The problem may not be that news users are unwilling
to pay, but that most news content is of limited appeal to most users.
Limitations and Future Studies
Because of the exploratory nature of this study, the survey measured the value of
news content in terms of noteworthiness and conceptualizes it as a combination of two
dimensions: relevance and interestingness. But noteworthiness as a multi-faceted
theoretical construct arguably may include components beyond these two dimensions.
Additionally, the aggregate measure employed in this study may not be the most intricate
way to examine the two dimensions of this construct. Further studies are encouraged to
parse noteworthiness beyond these two dimensions and follow up with separate
measures for each dimension to more accurately capture the net impact of each and to
examine the relationship among various dimensions that make up noteworthiness. In
addition, all survey measures suffer from the confines of self-reports and this study is no
exception.
Moreover, while the high completion rate (84.5 percent) and relatively large sample
size (N = 767) of the survey used in this study contribute to the power of its statistical
analyses, online panel surveys are ultimately based on non-probability sampling, and its
generalizability remains contestable at best. The sample frame of this study is US internet
users. While people without internet access constitute an increasingly dwindling
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population, the exclusion of this group of news users is suboptimal. Future studies should
replicate this study using probability sampling to validate existing findings and to
contribute to this burgeoning area of research. Despite these limitations, findings from this
exploratory study suggest that noteworthiness is an underlying factor influencing the
consumption of news produced by mainstream media.
Conclusion
At the onset of Western journalism, the Venetian press in the late fifteenth century
enjoyed healthy profits by offering timely and relevant information that their readers
found valuable (Bettig and Hall 2012)and the same economic principle still applies
today. However, instead of reinventing content from value creation perspectives, most
news organizations focus on delivery technologies with the aim of reaching audiences
through multiple platforms and devices. Nonetheless, the fundamental noteworthiness
component cannot be accomplished through technology alone. With most news content
provided by mainstream news media deemed unnoteworthy by most news users today,
news organizations are advised to revisit their technology-driven strategy and to refocus
on audience-oriented value creation. After all, it is difficult for news organizations to
engage audiences without noteworthy content, and this also bears societal consequences
in that democratic societies necessitate an engaged and informed citizenry. In other words,
for the sake of news organizations and democratic political systems, the public should be
informed news users, but this a priori requires news content to be not only newsworthy
(from the producers perspective) but also noteworthy (from the audiences perspective).
The question of who is to blame? for the financial troubles in the news industry
may not warrant a simple answer. However, one thing is cleardespite news organiza-
tions tendency to direct such blame at factors outside of their own control (Chyi, Lewis,
and Zheng 2012), the fact that most news content is deemed of little value by the public
today calls for industry introspection, especially when the link between perceived
noteworthiness and news consumption is made evident by the findings of this study.
While this study employs a US-based survey in its analysis, the decline in news
consumption from traditional media is evident in many Western countries. As such, while
our findings may not be universally generalizable, we believe one of the ways to save
journalism around the world is to promote an audience-driven approach in understanding
the value of news. To be economically viable, as economics suggests, the value of news
should be conceived from the audiences perspective. Notwithstanding geographic
boundariesas long as journalism needs an audience, it will only be financially successful
when the gap between what is considered newsworthy to news producers and what is
considered noteworthy to audiences is narrowed.
NOTES
1. The Evening Standard.
2. Particularly Fox News Channel.
3. For example, its audience doubled to 1.3 million viewers a night between 2001 and 2005,
with two-thirds of the audiences aged between 18 and 49 (Brewer and Marquardt 2007).
4. Completion rate is the number of people who completed the survey divided by the
number of people who responded to survey invitations.
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Angela M. Lee (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), School of
Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, USA. E-mail: amlee229@gmail.com
Hsiang Iris Chyi, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, USA. E-mail: chyi@mail.
utexas.edu
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