When Newsworthy is Not Noteworthy

Abstract

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 audience's perspective. News is almost always presumed by scholars and practitioners to be of value, which, however, is not necessarily the case in today's 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.