Abstract
The obvious, instinctive response after reading the title of Anthony M. Nadler’s new thought-provoking book, Making the News Popular, revolves around the question of whether news needs to be popular. But Nadler’s work is not a call for journalists and scholars to conjure up ways to candy-coat news in some easily digestible fashion or report only on ‘popular’ subjects. The book is actually a historical account of how news organizations have attempted to engage audiences over time, of the ‘different models for popularizing and democratizing news that have been influential in the United States over the past several decades’ (p. 2).
Utilizing a critical lens, Making the News Popular is a historical tome that painstakingly demonstrates how media institutions, over time, have attempted to mobilize audiences into becoming attracted to news, thus making news more ‘popular’. While sometimes these efforts succeeded and sometimes they failed, the author does not focus too much or dismiss too easily any effort, instead critically examining each and attempting to illustrate both the context of the effort and its effects on the industry.
Before his conclusion, Nadler, an Assistant Professor at Ursinus College, details how, over time, the professionalization of the journalism industry in the United States affected how practitioners determined and utilized audience preferences. The book is split into four discrete historical sections: a look at the professionalization of the journalism industry, the market-driven movement in newspapers, the evolution of cable news, and how newer technologies adopted by news industries have evolved.
Throughout these four chapters, Nadler navigates the historical beginnings of each movement, teases out various scholars’ accounts of each, and then, fundamentally, illustrates their effects on the journalism industry and public life. For example, in his first chapter, Nadler traces the professionalization of the industry, from the early 18th century to the beginnings of objectivity a century later, to the downturn in profitability the industry faced in the latter part of the 20th century. Implicitly, the chapter also explores the ‘deprofessionalization’ of journalism in today’s times, a subject that potentially could have been investigated more explicitly.
To this reader, the second chapter, focusing on the market-driven movement in news organizations beginning in the 1970s, was most illuminating. Instead of simply focusing on how reader surveys, marketing techniques, and other profit-minded practices became embedded in newsrooms, Nadler traces the origins of the movement and also connects it to other particularly important issues such as diversity and gender. He also efficiently and effectively makes the argument that the rise in market-driven journalism did not only follow a fear of dwindling profits in newsrooms but also a neoliberal overwhelming faith in the positive power of markets. By critically connecting previously disparate threads of research, both empirical and nonempirical, the chapter elucidates a new history of the movement. While Nadler does unfortunately ignore some prominent elements of the market-driven movement aimed at mobilization, such as public journalism, his historical analysis does far more than simply illuminate history; it shines new light on a vitally important subject matter in today’s journalism industry.
While the weakest chapter in the book focuses on the new technologies such as social media and algorithms and how institutions have utilized these to engage and mobilize audiences, Nadler’s conclusory chapter ties the previous four together in a vital and important way. Instead of presenting some theoretical new model for both pleasing and growing audiences and turning robust profits, Nadler focuses his attention on the civic duty of journalism, something, for example, the founders of cable television news discussed in Chapter 3 did not seem to care about. The conclusion attempts to negotiate a way by which journalism can once again become a foundation for democratic life.
Making the News Popular, thus, does not conclude with what too many recent likeminded tomes do: a technocratic, idealistic stand arguing the democratic nature of the web will solve all that ails the industry. Instead, the book does not provide any easy answers. This refreshing conclusion ends a very solid, critical, McChesnian-like book that goes beyond rehashing history and generally succeeds at tracing how institutions have mobilized audiences and what this could mean for tomorrow’s news industry.