Otterblog

One of the criticisms newspapers hear quite frequently is: “You’re doing that just to sell newspapers.” My response is always the same: No, we’re doing that because it’s a story people care about and that for most of our readers, who have subscriptions rather than buy out of a rack, the decision to buy a paper has been made well before the paper is either planned or printed.

But there’s a provocative study making its way around journalism circles that challenges some of our conventional wisdom. Richard Morin writes about it in the Washington Post, and here’s the link to the actual study, entitled Blood and Ink and published in the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics (Study 285).

You’ll need your slide rule. The study is heavy-duty game theory and statistical analysis, but the authors essentially contend that the media and terrorists are in a mutually beneficial relationship, where terrorism leads to more coverage and more coverage leads to more terrorism. The inference is that this is a financially beneficial relationship for both parties. Terrorists use their press clippings to raise money, so to speak, and newspapers use banner headlines about terrorism to—you guessed it—sell more newspapers.

But the authors admit the limits of this implication. They note that their model probably only applies to tabloids and the like, which are based on impulse buying more than subscriptions.

It’s no secret that most newspapers are either losing circulation or holding steady. So, yeah, I want to sell more papers. But it’s hard to imagine our readers lining up to buy the newspaper if we overplayed every act of terror committed in the world today. We don’t think that’s where our future lies, and most studies about what readers want from a paper suggest that shock strategy isn’t a long-term success formula. Rather it’s information they can use, stories that demand to be read, and a presentation that ties it all together with sophistication and impact.