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Journalistic and Commercial News Value: News Organizations as Patrons of an Institution and Market Actors

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Journalistic and Commercial News Value: News Organizations as Patrons of an Institution and Market Actors
JOURNALISTIC AND COMMERCIAL NEWS VALUES

Journalistic and Commercial News Values
News Organizations as Patrons of an Institution and Market Actors
SIGURD ALLERN

Why do some events fill the columns and air time of news media, while others are ignored? Why do some stories make banner headlines whereas others merit no more than a few lines? What factors decide what news professionals consider newsworthy? Such questions are often answered – by journalists and media researchers alike – with references to journalistic news values or ‘news criteria’. Some answers are normatively founded; others are pragmatic and descriptive. In the present article, I submit that editorial priorities should not be analyzed in purely journalistic terms. Instead, they should be seen as efforts to combine journalistic norms and editorial ambitions, on the one hand, with commercial norms and market objectives, on the other.

Commercial Enterprise and Patron of an Institution
News media have a dual nature. On the one hand they represent a societal institution that is ascribed a vital role in relation to such core political values as freedom of expression and democracy. On the other hand, they are businesses that produce commodities – information and entertainment – for a market. At the same time, because their products are descriptions of reality that influence our perceptions of the world around us, news media wield influence that extends far beyond the marketplace. Who controls the media is of significance to every member of society. As figures like Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi and the new Russian media barons remind us, control of the media is a key to political power. And while many venerable industries wither and die (or undergo profound metamorphoses) the consciousness industry – as writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1974) dubbed the media and other actors in the communication sector – is rapidly expanding. Newspapers, radio programs and television transmissions differ with


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