All the News That's Fit to Sell

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Economic Theories of News 7 Chapter 2 A Market for Press Independence: The Evolution of Nonpartisan Newspapers in the Nineteenth Century 37 Chapter 3 News Audiences: How Strong Are the Public's Interests in the Public Interest? 71 Chapter 4 Information Programs on Network Television 121 Chapter 5 What Is News on Local Television Stations and in Local Newspapers 137 Chapter 6 The Changing Nature of the Network Evening News Programs 160 Chapter 7 News on the Net 190 Chapter 8 Journalists as Goods 215 Chapter 9 Content, Consequences, and Policy Choices 235 Notes 265 Bibliography 307 Index 339

James T. Hamilton is Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Political Science at Duke University. He has written or coauthored six books, including "Regulation through Revelation" and "Channeling Violence" (Princeton), which won the Shorenstein Center's Goldsmith Book Prize. He is also a recipient of the David N. Kershaw award for distinguished public policy research.

Winner of the 2004 Frank Luther Mott Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism and Mass Communication Research Award "More than ever before, Mr. Hamilton argues, hard news is not what fattens the newsstands or fills the airwaves. Instead we have celebrity profiles, product hype or what we used to call human-interest stories... Mr. Hamilton slices and dices cyberhit sums to show that the Internet marketplace is a lot like the older one... The title tarts up what is essentially an academic analysis of changes in the media marketplace. But there is nothing wrong with that: Selling is, after all, what purveyors of information do, and Mr. Hamilton has something to purvey."--Tim W. Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal "As Hamilton shows, news is now presented to specific audiences, depending on marketing decisions, with a resultant shift from political news to softer topics such as entertainment. He recommends ways to counteract this situation and increase the amount of hard news available to the consumer."--Library Journal "Using a variety of surveys and statistical charts of who watches what and how the news menu has been altered, Hamilton doesn't just assert the change; he proves it... [He] does not demonize news/marketing executives. He demonstrates that younger audiences prefer sports to international news, health and lifestyle to government news, more conflict and less exposition. The bottom line is that news brims with conflict and the adversarial pose that substitutes for hard information."--Ken Auletta, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Hamilton takes the analysis of news stories back to basics, reminding us that information is transformed into news--that most ephemeral and fragile of commodities--when there is an identifiable market for it and when it seems likely to yield a profit. In so doing, he opens up abundant possibilities for parallel studies and for a radical re-interpretation of the history of journalism."--Dilwyn Porter, Business History