Comments on: AP’s ethnography of news consumption

By: Mediactive » Toward a Slow-News Movement

Mediactive » Toward a Slow-News Movement — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:39:40 +0000

[...] as always, great insight. Excerpt: Why do we persistently refresh news, looking for updates? (See my comments on AP’s ethnography of news consumption, which suggests that this is a common pattern.) It makes sense for certain types of news – if [...]

By: …My heart’s in Accra » Why we fall for fast news

…My heart’s in Accra » Why we fall for fast news — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:25:26 +0000

[...] Why do we persistently refresh news, looking for updates? (See my comments on AP’s ethnography of news consumption, which suggests that this is a common pattern.) It makes sense for certain types of news – if [...]

By: The Roman Gate

The Roman Gate — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:56:23 +0000

[...] Associated Press commissioned an interesting report (which I’ve summarized here) on youth consumption of news media. One of their most interesting findings was the discovery that [...]

By: Piracy - A Great Excuse to Write About Somalia

Piracy - A Great Excuse to Write About Somalia — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:30:47 +0000

[...] Associated Press commissioned an interesting report (which I’ve summarized here) on youth consumption of news media. One of their most interesting findings was the discovery that [...]

By: …My heart’s in Accra » Piracy - a great excuse to write about Somalia

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:18:28 +0000

[...] Associated Press commissioned an interesting report (which I’ve summarized here) on youth consumption of news media. One of their most interesting findings was the discovery that [...]

By: Putting People First in italiano » L’etnografia delle notizie di AP

Putting People First in italiano » L’etnografia delle notizie di AP — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:45:48 +0000

[...] Leggi tutto l’articolo (Worldchanging reprint) Scrivi un commento [...]

By: Build the Echo » Blog Archive » links for 2008-08-15

Build the Echo » Blog Archive » links for 2008-08-15 — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:03:17 +0000

[...] …My heart’s in Accra » AP’s ethnography of news consumption News as social capital? Interesting analysis of an AP report… (tags: buildtheecho rebirth_of_journalism) [...]

By: Putting people first » AP’s ethnography of news consumption

Putting people first » AP’s ethnography of news consumption — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:38:11 +0000

[...] Read full story (Worldchanging reprint) Leave a Reply [...]

By: Charles Edward

Charles Edward — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:51:01 +0000

Ethan, there’s a bad link in the body — the AP report (which I agree is very interesting, while also of course being quite self-serving) has the extension newmodel.pdf (not hewmodel.pdf, which is how it comes up for some reason).
The thing that intrigues me about these studies (I include the annual State of the News Media studies)is that they take for granted the existence of some abstract thing called “news”, even as their own findings point firmly at the notion that a better word would be “stuff that I can talk to my friends about and…ideally…look just a little smarter and/or cooler than them”. The 2008 State of the Media study does get closer to this “news as social capital (or is it the Pew & Youth & News study? — sorry, I’ve read so many of these that I get muddled) in pointing out that people seem to respond more to stories about individuals (hence celebrities) and even individual animals (hence the interest, at the time of the study, in the fate of the race horse with a broken leg), rather than to events or “issues.” The unbundling of content that everyone has noted seems to make inevitable that the world will sort out into a small number of people who are interested in, say, the doings of the Afghan parliament, just as there is a small number who are interested in other esoteric topics (my marker for a totally esoteric interest that I used to use in arguments was “fans of left-handed albino penguins” but then I discovered that ther is a whole raft of websites devoted to penguins, including pages on a genetic variation that leaves them blonde –not quite albino, and still no mention of which flipper they prefer, but close enough to my conjectural case that I have realized I can’t possibly make up anything that the internet hasn’t already done a hundred times over).

By: Glenna Gordon

Glenna Gordon — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:51:09 +0000

This is such an interesting post. As someone who (sort of) works for the AP, such processes are not illuminated to even those of us who earn a meager day rate from them, time to time.

There are other pieces of information I would have loved to read alongside this informative group of points:

-How does the AP compare to Reuters, AFP, BBC, etc?
-How do major media events like the Olympics and the American Elections, which mean budget cuts for places like Uganda, affect consumers’ consumptions patterns? Are there news consumers who want to read about things other than Obama and Beijing? How could AP be meeting these needs?
-If consumers of news say they want more depth, why is this a need not met by news wires? I find that a lot of people google terms and find my blog because they want to know more about the news behind the news, and what happened after the story. While this is satisfying for me personally, it is far from an economically viable way for me to work as long a the AP is not interested in supporting me to provide this kind of content.
-I’m also interested in the economics of making a single news story – something which may go beyond the breadth of this post, but is nonetheless interesting: if the AP pays me X dollars to take photos for one day, what percent of their operating cost does that represent? Clearly, I file my work to someone in Nairobi or Joburg, who puts it on the wire, who puts it in the papers, etc, but if there are only 24 discrete news events in 24 hours, and this is related to where the wires have stringers, what is the cost to the wire of having another stringer somewhere else?

Thanks for presenting all this information!

Glenna (Scarlett Lion)