Helen:
Sweeping generalisation alert;- "People don't choose newspapers that infrm them about things they didn't know, they choose papers that reassure them their prejudices are correct". thus the Telegraph's readers feel no dissonance because that lede is exactly what they'd expect to hear about Europe.
thus the Telegraph's readers feel no dissonance because that lede is exactly what they'd expect to hear about Europe.
afew:
Yes. As we often say, foreign correspondents send in what the home audience wants to hear. In this case, the copy not rising (or falling) to that standard, the editor does the job - most people are content with a quick scan anyway, and let them have their filet mignon, rump steak, or other haemo-dripping chunk of freshly-slaughtered mammal. And others (Sven, for example) will tell us the whole business is about selling advertising space. So here we have the editor doing advertising for what is not in the article, so the readership figures stay up (as far as possible) and the newspaper can get advertising income. These two explanations can be seen as concordant. But I don't think it's that simple, because it doesn't take into account the role of the media in dynamising and augmenting an existing tendency in public opinion. How many Brits were Eurosceptic/phobic in the 1970s compared to now? How many are more so than they were then? Whatever the failings of Brussels (and they are many), how much and how often have British newspapers played on the Thatcher theme of nothing good ever coming out of continental Europe? In other words, how responsible are those newspapers for creating and sustaining an appetite for Europhobic red meat in their readership, and not (for example, and I would not wish them to do this) for anti-American red meat? Or anti-something else? And why, if newspapers are gradually failing businesses that time and technology will sweep away, are wealthy businessmen interested in owning them? Not for the profits they can pull out of them. But also not because newspapers are without influence. No doubt their capacity to spread propaganda still offers a good bang for the buck.
And others (Sven, for example) will tell us the whole business is about selling advertising space. So here we have the editor doing advertising for what is not in the article, so the readership figures stay up (as far as possible) and the newspaper can get advertising income.
These two explanations can be seen as concordant. But I don't think it's that simple, because it doesn't take into account the role of the media in dynamising and augmenting an existing tendency in public opinion. How many Brits were Eurosceptic/phobic in the 1970s compared to now? How many are more so than they were then? Whatever the failings of Brussels (and they are many), how much and how often have British newspapers played on the Thatcher theme of nothing good ever coming out of continental Europe? In other words, how responsible are those newspapers for creating and sustaining an appetite for Europhobic red meat in their readership, and not (for example, and I would not wish them to do this) for anti-American red meat? Or anti-something else?
And why, if newspapers are gradually failing businesses that time and technology will sweep away, are wealthy businessmen interested in owning them? Not for the profits they can pull out of them. But also not because newspapers are without influence. No doubt their capacity to spread propaganda still offers a good bang for the buck.
The continuing fall in sales and advertising income for almost all newspapers means that content will become even more one-sided in an attempt to hold on to reader loyalty. Loyalty, in this case, means a profiled audience that advertisers use in their media planning. (An audience profile is a detailed analysis of spending habits and other behaviour - a quite surprising amount of statistical information BTW)
But, in the end, the costs of content production, printing and distribution are not met by sales of the paper. The bulk of these costs (and any minor profit) are met by advertising.
There is still relatively low income from online ads (in the case of the Telegraph, it's a premium banner and sponsored features). But for online media the business model has yet to be worked out. There are many of them. The most likely model to succeed, imho, is the "pay for no ads", where the online version is free, but loaded with ads placed within the content. You pay a period subscription to have content delivered without ads. It won't be much - and if you offer up some details about yourself, it will be almost free. Online will be a high volume, low margin business for the big media channels.
But the real way in which readers' views will be manipulated, and by which a media channel is already able run both a print and online edition without doubling costs, is CMS - content management. This means raw content can be automatically repackaged to appear in any programmed print or online layout - simultaneously.
When you hook this up with site visitor monitoring, other purchase behaviour databases and statistical tools, and combine them with <rules> for presenting content based on visitor information, the viewer will have a customized page of both advertising and content. I have not yet thought through the effects this will have, but I am ready to guess that it will allow both greater editorial freedom and a more complex calculation for the media planners.
You, the end user, will have a totally `personalized' edition in the future - whether it is the personalized edition you would have wanted or not. Most people are too lazy to set up their own parameters for content. If they feel they belong in the right `gang', they will accept what they are given (as has always been the case). You can't be me, I'm taken
Additionally, you'll have to have a "default" website anyway, that you can display to "virgin" users - that is, users about whom you have insufficient records to generate a custom site (the only identification you get, after all, is an IP - and they change every once in a while).
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
What I meant by "not so simple" came after those words. Commercial forces and technology don't explain everything. Whatever destiny holds in store for them (da-dum!), newspapers right now are still fairly influential in creating and sustaining conventional wisdom.
Yes, owners (outright like the Barclays thru Press Holdings, or publicly traded like Murdoch) do choose editors, and thus editorials (and more) - but the slant of the paper has to have an audience. I don't think content is a wrapper for delivering editorials, it's a wrapper for advertising products and services. The 'conventional wisdom' is marketing ;-)
But I know we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You can't be me, I'm taken
But I still don't see (in your picture) why wealthy businessfolk like to own newspapers if it's such a constraining and unprofitable deal - unless there's another side to this, which is influence in the political debate.
I see most of the major media owners as engaged in a charade of influence. You can't be me, I'm taken
