COMS 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: The New York Times, Commercial Press, Making Money

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 230
• Professor: Cayley Sorochan

Document Summary

The political economy of commercial mass media and the crisis in journalism~ The media sells commodities that you can own, it sells access to content (charging for internet access, streaming services like net=lix) but for many traditional mass media is the selling of audiences. The audience itself is a commodity in the media industry. We don"t pay for broadcast channels we pay through out attention. Television programs advertise, we"re paying through our attention to advertisements. The book publishing industry published books and makes money. Starr is making an argument about the idea that the commercial bubble functioned very well in the 20th century. Aside from the problems faced by newspaper industry, there are general critiques made by the general mass media. Baker is making a more general critique on the ability of the market to serve public interest. Problem of the general mass media was said to be like a market failure of public goods.