Rethinking news and the role of journalism

C. Ann Hollifield

Chapter 5 in Rethinking Media Economics, 2025, pp 54-69 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: News media organizations globally are struggling to produce quality journalism in a financially sustainable way. Meeting this challenge requires rethinking how news markets and news audiences function. News markets in the digital era are characterized by ever-increasing competition for audience attention, a condition traditional microeconomics holds cannot exist for more than a brief period because of the law of supply and demand. Second, news audiences’ behavior has changed, with demand shifting toward sources offering ideologically slanted content over more fact-based, ideologically neutral news, a condition that defies traditional assumptions about homo economicus and the marketplace of ideas. Finally, media economists and industry executives face these developments with an inadequate understanding of their causes. This chapter argues that in order to meet the challenge of 21st-century news media viability, new conceptual frameworks are needed that include information economics, behavioral economics, human psychology, and emerging neuroscience.

Keywords: News media viability; Journalism; News audience behavior; Information economics; Behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035341955
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