Newsroom Management and Economics of Journalism

Persone

Di Salvo P.

Docente titolare del corso

Descrizione

Objectives and goals

Journalism and the mainstream media have become highly commercial activities in Western democracies, many of them struggling for survival and even public TV and radio can hardly escape from the developments on the market place. The past ten years, in particular, have been characterized by a huge economical crisis that has impacted harshly on media companies and newsrooms. Despite this complex and challenging scenario, this period was also a time of innovation and many companies and news outlets experimented new editorial and financial strategies. In parallel, new challenges arose in the relationship between journalism and technology, in particular when it comes to the role of big digital platforms, disinformation and power distribution on the Internet. The course participants will explore strategies to secure and improve journalistic quality and some of the most innovative approaches to the economics of journalism and its future.

Consultation Hours
Dr. Philip Di Salvo: after lectures and by appointment

Georgia Ertz / Dr. Bartosz Wilczek: by appointment

Exam

Presentations in class: students are required to prepare a presentation in a group of 2/3 people about a journalistic company that has been particularly innovative in terms of business model and editorial practices. This presentation accounts for 30% of the final grade. Further information on the task will be provided during the first lectures.

The case studies from which students can choose are the following:

1) The Washington Post (> managing innovation): https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/washington_post_bezos_amazon_revolution.php

2) The New York Times (> paywall): https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16991090/new-york-times-digital-paywall-business-growing-fast-facebook-google-newspaper-subscription

3) Quartz > (bots and mobile): http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/for-quartz-bots-are-a-chance-to-build-a-new-path-for-interacting-with-news-and-news-outlets/

4) The Guardian (> membership): http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/11/asking-members-to-support-its-journalism-no-prizes-no-swag-the-guardian-raises-more-reader-revenue-than-ad-dollars/

5) Il Post (> membership - Italian case): https://www.ilpost.it/2019/05/30/piu-di-prima/

5) Republik(> crowdfunding - Swiss case): https://www.cjr.org/innovations/news-startup-crowdfunding-switzerland.php

6) ProPublica(> no-profit journalism): https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/propublica-local.php

7) BuzzFeed (> lolcats and investigative journalism): https://en.ejo.ch/media-economics/business-models/13-things-newspapers-can-learn-from-buzzfeed

8) Vox (> explanatory journalism): http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/03/recirculate-vox-medias-new-structure-for-story-packages-gives-readers-context-and-helps-them-stick-around/

9) AJ+ (> social media): http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/how-aj-embraces-facebook-autoplay-and-comments-to-make-its-videos-stand-out/
Final exam: All students have to pass a written final exam, related to the course content and to the obligatory course texts (marked with an *). This exam counts 70% of the final grade and will take place in January, during the exam session.
Repetition: Students whose final grade should be insufficient can repeat the exam in the reparatory session in September 2019. In case of repetition, this exam will still count 70%, and the grade from the presentation will be considered and will still count 30%.
Talking points: articles indicated under this category are to be read in preparation of each lecture, as indicated in the calendar. Although these readings will not be included in the exam material and grading, they will serve as discussion points at the beginning of each lecture. Your active participation in the discussions will be appreciated.

Warning: Presence during lectures and the group presentation in class are mandatory. For those students who decide not to follow this rule, the final exam will count 100% of the grade.

Readings: All mandatory readings will be posted on the iCorsi.ch platform in Pdf format or linked.

Suggested further readings

Economics of Journalism and Innovation:

Anderson, C.W., Bell, E. and Shirky, C. (2014). “Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present”. Tow Center for Digital Journalism. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8N01JS7.

Aris, A. and Bughin, J. (2009). Managing media companies. Chichester: Wiley.

Brock, G. (2013). Out of Print. Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age. London: Kogan Page.

Di Salvo, P. and /Bassan, V. (2015). Next Journalism. Wired-E-Book http://www.wired.it/attualita/media/2015/03/05/next-journalism-ebook/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=marketing&utm_campaign=wired.

Dobelli, R. (2014). The Art of Thinking Clearly. New York: Harper Paperbacks.

Doctor, K. (2010), Newsonomics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Fengler, S. and Russ-Mohl, S. (2008): “The Crumbling Hidden Wall: towards an Economic Theory of Journalism”. In: Hidden Wall: Towards an Economic Theory of Journalism, in: Kyklos, Vol. 61, Nr. 4, 520-542.

Greenfield, A. (2017). Radical technologies: The design of everyday life. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books.

Hamilton, J. T. (2004). All The News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information Into News. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jarvis, J. (2012). Gutenberg the Geek. Ebook.

Kennedy, D. (2016). “The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder Is Reinventing The Washington Post – and What Lessons It Might Hold for the Beleaguered Newspaper Business”. Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy http://shorensteincenter.org/bezos-effect-washington-post/.

Krumsvik, A. H. and Storsul. T. (2015). Media Innovations

A Multidisciplinary Study of Change. Gotebord: Nordicom. http://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/publikationer-hela-pdf/media_innovations._a_miltidisciplinary_study_of_change.pdf.

Küng, L. (2015): Innovators in Digital News. London: I.B. Tauris & Co.

McChesney, R. W., & Pickard, V. (Eds.). (2011). Will the last reporter please turn out the lights: The collapse of journalism and what can be done to fix it. New York: The New Press.

Russ-Mohl, Stephan (2009). “Journalism in the Bermuda Triangle”. Tagesspiegel, Feb. 15. Available from: http://en.ejo.ch/newsroom-management/journalism-in-the-bermuda-triangle.

Russ-Mohl, S. (2015). “The Antagonistic Partnership on Trial. The Relationship between PR and Journalism – Seen under the Perspective of Behavioral Economics”. Ethical Space Nr. 1, 30-34.

Vos, T., & Heinderyckx, F. (Eds.). (2015). Gatekeeping in transition. New York: Routledge.

Quality Management in Journalism:

Anderson, P.J., Ogola, G. and Williams, M. (2014). The Future of Quality News Journalism. A Cross-Continental Analysis. New York: Routledge.

Ball, J. (2017). Post-truth: How bullshit conquered the world. London: Biteback Publishing.

Beckett, C. (2012). WikiLeaks. News in the Networked Era. Cambridge: Polity.

Bell, E. and Owen. T. (2017). Journalism After Snowden. The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State. New York: The Columbia Journalism Review Books.

Boczkowski, P. J., and Anderson, C. W. (eds.). (2017). Remaking the news: Essays on the future of journalism scholarship in the digital age. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Brevini, B.; Hintz, A. and McCurdy, P. (2013): Beyond WikiLeaks. Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Carlson, M., and Lewis, S. C. (eds.). (2015). Boundaries of journalism: Professionalism, practices and participation. New York: Routledge.

Fengler, S. et al. (eds.) (2014): Journalists and Media Accountability: An International Study of News People in the Digital Age. New York: Peter Lang.

Franchi, F. (2013). Designing News. Changing the World of Editorial Design and Information Graphics. Berlin: Gestalte.

Morozov, Evgeny (2011). The Net Delusion. How Not to Liberate the World. London: Allen Lane.

Nienstedt, H.W, Russ-Mohl, S. and Wilczek, B. (eds.) (2013). Journalism and Media Convergence. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Pariser, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble. New York: Penguin. Edizione italiana: Il filtro. Quello che Internet ci nasconde. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

Reagle, J. M. (2015). Reading the comments: Likers, haters, and manipulators at the bottom of the web. Boston, MA: Mit Press.

Ries, A. and Ries, L. (2004). The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. New York: Harper Collins.

Rusbridger, A. (2018). Breaking News. The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. Edinburgh: Canon Gate.

Russell, A. (2017). Journalism as activism: Recoding media power. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Russ-Mohl, S. (2002). “Garanzia di qualità giornalistica nel ciclo dell’attenzione”. Studies in Communication Sciences/Studi di scienze della comunicazione, Vol. 2, Nr. 1 105-130 Available from: http://it.ejo.ch/?p=204.

Schiffrin, A. (2014). Global muckraking. 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World. New York: The New Press.

Simon, J. (2014). The new censorship: inside the global battle for media freedom. New York: Columbia University Press.

Other sources

Websites

Adage: http://adage.com/

European Journalism Observatory: http://www.ejo.ch

International Journalism Festival: http://www.journalismfestival.com/

Journalism News: http://www.journalism.co.uk

Monday Note: https://mondaynote.com/

Newspaper Ombudsmen: http://www.newsombudsmen.org/

Newsonomics (Ken Doctor): http://newsonomics.com/about/

Newsosaur (Alan D. Mutter): http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/