DOES QUALITY MATTER?
Suggestions for new research on TV news

You've probably heard this before: What's really needed to improve the quality of journalism is proof that a company can do well (financially) by doing good (journalism). But the evidence all seems to be to the contrary.

Much has been written about declining quality being the almost inevitable consequence of an increasing emphasis on the bottom line. In the new book Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company, the authors note that "news has become secondary, even incidental, to markets and revenues and margins and advertisers and consumer preferences."

And yet, isn't it possible that better journalism can lead to higher profits? That's a question well worth some research and exploration, says Philip Meyer, Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Meyer has developed a list of suggested research studies that could answer that central question, by examining two conflicting hypotheses:

THE INFLUENCE HYPOTHESIS: Hal Jurgensmeyer, a Knight Ridder business-side vice-president in the 1970s, had a business model that defined the newspaper's product not as news, not as information, but as influence. A newspaper firm produces, he said, two kinds of influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is for sale. But the two forms are closely linked because the latter cannot be strong without the former. In other words, quality matters.

THE WALL STREET HYPOTHESIS: A news medium is primarily a platform for delivering advertising messages to eyeballs. Quality journalism and social responsibility are mostly cost without commensurate benefit to shareholders. As Lauren Rich Fine, an analyst for Merrill Lynch, told the American Journalism Review, "Until you can show me that your subscribers are willing to pay more money because of the quality…you really do need to make decisions that sometimes seem short term in nature, because you chose to go public, and shareholders really do deserve a return."

Problem 1: Measure quality in journalism
Problem 2: Measure shareholder rewards and their correlation with quality over time
Problem 3: Find out how to help consumers perceive quality in journalism

We've taken Phil Meyer's "thought-starter list" of research project ideas and modified them to apply only to broadcast journalism. We're posting them here, for the taking. Please share the list with your faculty colleagues and graduate students. If you decide to pursue one of these ideas (or if you're already doing a similar study), please let us know so we can note that on this page and avoid duplication of effort. And if you have ideas to add, please send them along!

Thought-starter list of projects

1. Test the belief that broadcast companies that take drastic measures to maintain steady earnings in poor economic times return more to shareholders in the longer run.

2. Document the supposition that Wall Street believes quality has no economic benefit by replicating the Meyer-Wearden survey of analysts (Public Opinion Quarterly 1984).

3. Use accuracy (as perceived by news sources) to compare the quality of TV stations in the same market.

4. Use survey research to determine norms for the ratio of news staff to viewers at local TV stations, adjusting for market size.

5. Choose a convenience sample of markets where the news broadcasts are expected to vary by quality and apply social responsibility measures with content analysis.

6. Do community power studies (Floyd Hunter's method) in the test markets and determine where the television general manager and news director fit.

7. Calculate the newsroom diversity index for stations in test markets.

8. Determine the advertising market share that television newscasts get in the test markets and compare it to their audience market share. (This may require developing a new methodology to relate print and non-print eyeball capture.)

9. Search the literature to document earlier efforts to unpack the components of journalism quality as it applies to television news. Propose ways of updating these efforts.

10. Develop measures of quality than can be assessed with content analysis. (See the Project for Excellence in Journalism local TV news project for one template.)

11. Create a measure of "customer service" by television newsrooms and run field experiments to measure that in test markets.

12. Evaluate the physical presentation (including graphic design) of each news broadcast in the sampled markets.

13. Use surveys or focus groups to test the public's ability to detect quality journalism.

14. Do secondary analysis of Knight Foundation and Putnam data to test the public's ability to detect quality journalism.

15. Build a database from Nielsen ratings to assess each station's success at maintaining viewership for key newscasts in the sampled markets.

16. Find a way to operationalize the concept of a television station's societal influence and measure it. One possibility: Count the number of civic associations with whom the general managers are associated.

17. Correlate stations' societal influence level with commercial rates, volume, and return to shareholders (after adjusting for size).

18. Compare the societal influence level at stations that editorialize versus stations that do not.

19. Operationalize the measurement of long-term return to shareholders by broadcast companies.

20. Operationalize a way to classify investors along a time-horizon dimension: the continuum from day traders to Warren Buffet.

21. Measure long-term changes in share of market (both advertising and viewership) and find what predicts them.

22. Use focus groups to develop a PR/advertising campaign for helping viewers be more effective media critics.

23. Replicate Leo Bogart's 1977 survey of newspaper editors among television news directors to get their definition of quality.

24. Write a case study of John McManus's Grade-the-News website project in the San Francisco Bay area.

25. Evaluate the integration of a station's online product with its broadcast product. Determine the correlation between online-broadcast integration and viewership and revenue.