The Journalist–Audience Relationship

This chapter reflects on one of the most important—yet least studied—aspects of journalism: the connection between how journalists perceive and pursue their audiences. Journalists, like all media producers, can never possibly know precisely who sees what they publish. Instead, they create what communication scholar Eden Litt calls an imagined audience that includes the people with whom they believe they are communicating. Once journalists imagine their audiences, their goals become not just producing the news, but producing news in such a way that it will resonate with those they hope to reach. This chapter explores how journalists have traditionally imagined and pursued their audiences, and how both of those things are beginning to change.