Abstract
Much has been written about the crisis of print newspapers, but with more attention paid to issues of production and distribution rather than reception. Furthermore, the scholarship on contemporary print newspaper reception has been limited by a focus on the information dimension and on countries in the Global North. To help overcome these limitations, in this paper we ask two questions that inquire into the reception of print newspapers in the contemporary media environment, and do so within a country from the Global South. Drawing upon an analysis of 158 semi-structured interviews conducted in the City of Buenos Aires and other parts of the country, we find that people continue reading print newspapers not solely, or even primarily, for the information contained in their pages, but for dynamics that tie together news content with materiality, routinization, and larger practices of incorporation of this media artifact into their daily lives. These dynamics are partly shaped by distinctive aspects of the Argentine context, including business strategies, family rituals, urban patterns, and a culture of nostalgia.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 565-581 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journalism Studies |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 3 2020 |
Funding
This project was in part made possible by a grant to the first author from the Robert and Kaye Hiatt Fund for Research on Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University. We thank the editor, and reviewers for helping us develop this article through challenging and productive questions, suggestions and criticisms, and Mike Ananny, Chris Anderson, Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, and Silvio Waisbord for the advice with the overall project. An earlier versions of the manuscript was presented at the ICA 2019 preconference on “Digital Journalism in Latin America”. Last but not least, we wholeheartedly thank the research assistants whose collaboration was essential for this project: Victoria Andelsman, Tomás Bombau, Sofía Carcavallo, Paloma Etenberg, Rodrigo Gil Buetto, Camila Giuliano, Belén Guigue, Silvana Leiva, Inés Lovisolo, Mora Matassi, Mattia Panza, Jeanette Rodríguez, Celeste Wagner, and Marina Weinstein.
Keywords
- Print newspapers
- audiences
- journalism
- materiality
- news consumption
- newspaper reading
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication