Listening to News Audiences: The Impact of Community Structure and Economic Factors

Abstract

This study examines influences on the degree to which news organizations attend to everyday readers through online feedback, or conversely via advertising and marketing data. Factors at the community level, the market level, and the organizational level are examined as predictors of editors’ exposure and attention to audiences. Results of a national survey indicate that most editors tend to pay attention to both online reader feedback and marketing data. Factors at the organizational level, such as organizational size and public ownership, were more influential than community-level factors in explaining level of attention. Community structural pluralism was not a strong predictor of attention to feedback via marketing data or online. These findings suggest a business motive in editors’ communication and reinforce previous research pointing to the importance of organizational and peer-level factors in shaping journalists’ response to audiences.

Notes

¹We do not assume that all organizations conduct formal market research. However, all of these news organizations have an interest in publishing advertising from their communities, and so it is assumed that sales staffs, large or small, gather information that helps target these efforts, even if only informally.

²Papers were originally selected for another study related to mimicry of large papers by smaller papers; this study required representation from particular circulation ranges. However, these ranges are appropriate for the present study, which requires variation in community complexity, a measure that corresponds closely to newspaper size.

³Similar measures have been used by Hindman, Ernst, and Richardson (2001); Demers (1998); and Donohue, Olien, and Tichenor (1989).

⁴The content analysis was conducted February to May 2008. Each home page was coded once, as these features do not change from day to day. Three coders searched specific terms using the browser's “Find” field to locate html text and scanned home pages for text in image formats. Coders determined if the found term's context was relevant to the feature sought. An initial reliability test on site home pages not included in the sample yielded Scott's pi coefficients less than .80 for three of the five measures. Coders were retrained twice more, yielding a Scott's pi of higher than .80 for all measures.

⁵This coefficient is just below the generally accepted .70 level, suggesting all items may not be measuring the same latent construct. However, a factor analysis was conducted, and the results did not suggest multidimensional data, and so the summed measure was left intact.

Note. N = 181. Values are Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. DMA = designated market area.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

Note. N = 181. Standardized regression coefficients (partial correlation coefficients in parentheses).

^a N = 178.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

⁶Organizational Size and Structural Pluralism had unacceptable skewness scores, above 1.0. Two cases had outliers on more than two variables and so were dropped from the analysis. Eight cases had outliers on only one variable—Organizational Size—and these were changed so that outlying values equaled the closest value not determined to be an outlier by the box plot. As a result, the new mean for size was 48,626.44 and the new standard deviation was 46,660.69. Durbin-Watson statistics for all regression models fell between 1.9 and 2.1. According to Ott, uncorrelated residuals are evidenced by a Durbin-Watson statistic between 1.5 and 2.5. There was no evidence of multicollinearity among independent variables, as the condition index offered by SPSS reached no higher than 6 (a common rule of thumb is that a condition index of 15 or higher suggests possible collinearity problems).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carly T. McKenzie

Carly T. McKenzie (Ph.D., University of Alabama, 2010) is Director of Communications in the School of Dentistry at University of Alabama-Birmingham. Her current research interests include curriculum development, provider-patient interactions, and patient satisfaction.

Wilson Lowrey

Wilson Lowrey (Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2000) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at University of Alabama. His research interests include media sociology and emerging media forms.

Hal Hays

Hal Hays is a doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. His research interests include the role of media exposure and cognition in developing perceptions of self and others.

Jee Young Chung

Jee Young Chung (Ph.D., University of Alabama, 2010) is an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama. Her research interests are issue and crisis management in public relations and media influence on body image.

Chang Wan Woo

Chang Wan Woo (Ph.D., University of Alabama, 2009) is an Assistant Professor of Public Relations in the Division of Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. His research interests include strategic communication, sports communication, and the role of social media in public relations.