Gutenberg’s death in the Balkans: news values in Kosovo and Albania

Abstract

When the audience shifted online in the age of social media and platformization, the gulf amongst journalists on what constitutes news today grew. Television journalists and editors continue to feel that the public should be provided with the information they need, i.e. the elite-centric method, whereas digital journalists and social media managers believe that the public should be presented with what the public wants, i.e. the popular-centric approach. As a result, the aim of this article is to investigate the news values considered by journalists and editors in Kosovo and Albanian media. The results of in-depth semi-structured interviews with journalists, editors, and social media managers demonstrate that Kosovo, which has the youngest population in Europe, has no paper press since the beginning of 2020, although the press in Albania survives for traditional third-age readers. Televisions are elite-focused; however, in Kosovo, televisions adapt items for social media, aimed at a younger audience. In both countries, digital journalism is increasingly audience-focused, with sensation, entertainment, and conflict as the primary news values. Regardless of the standardized methods, the article proposes that different countries be evaluated for newsworthiness based on their political and socioeconomic environments.

Keywords:

• News values
• social media
• digital journalism
• platformization
• television
• public

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Lincoln Geraghty, School of Media and Performing Arts, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

SUBJECTS:

• Mass Communication; Public Relations; Communication Theory; Media & Film Studies; Media & Communications; Media Studies

1. Introduction

Traditionally, the main goal of journalism is ‘to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing’ (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021, p. 23), while its main responsibility is to ‘disseminate truthful information to keep the public informed’ (Tandoc et al., 2022, p. 2). Real news makes the public more alert to propaganda and misinformation (Acerbi et al., 2022), enabling the public to have a rational critical debate (Couldry et al., 2010).

In journalism textbooks, students are taught that ‘journalism’s first obligation is to the truth; its first loyalty is to citizens; Its essence is a discipline of verification; its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover; it must serve as a monitor of power…’ (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021, p. 23). The news should first have relevance, then be useful, and then be interesting and timely (Brooks et al., 2014; Mencher, 2011). To achieve this, the news must be reported by responsible journalists who are objective, who must report autonomously and qualitatively, have an ethical code, and be oriented toward serving the public interest (Anderson et al., 2016).

These observations on journalistic work, the journalism profession, and journalism’s responsibility to society are fundamental for many editors and practitioners (Altay et al., 2023). Journalists have traditionally had to strike a balance between what the public needs and what the public wants (Tandoc, 2015, p. 782). The challenge today is balancing traditional professional standards of journalism with technology and its advances; in other words, reconciling external market pressures with the personal preferences of journalists (Nelson & Tandoc, 2019). In the past, the difference between popular journalism and quality journalism was straightforward. The balance between the two began to tip with the emergence of the internet and the rise of digital journalism. The gap has grown because increasingly the elite-centered nature of news has moved towards being more popular. To survive, the media have had to begin shifting their interests away from journalism and closer to commercial gain and profit (Anderson et al., 2016). Even traditional professional standards of journalism began to be compromised. These compromises increased with the growing popularity of commercial television and the digitalization of journalism (Dvir-Gvirsman & Tsuriel, 2022), especially in the era of social media where news is also platformized (Van Dijck & de Waal, 2018).

These new circumstances have caused journalism to be re-examined due to the threats from different advertising models, corporate culture, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), as well as the rise of despotic populist leaders who want to denigrate the free press and the fact-based approach of journalism (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021, pp. 2–3). Given that digital platforms in Western media markets contain about 70% digital advertising, publishers are increasingly trying to consider perspectives on audience satisfaction (Myllylahti, 2019; Olsen, 2021). In fact, the biggest challenge for news media today is how to convince users to pay for digital news (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017b; Kormelink, 2023), prompting the discussion that is so widespread in media studies nowadays: the challenging economic situation of news organizations and their complex relationship with digital platforms (Cook & Milburn-Curtis, 2023). In 2022, 41% of the population in Norway paid for online news, as did 33% in Sweden; in the USA, Belgium, and Finland, this figure was 19%; it was lower elsewhere (Newman et al., 2022).

However, if journalists offer the public what they want and not what journalism professionals value, it means lowering the value of the media product to the level of the average consumer. In the past, journalists did not know exactly who their audience was; now, audience preferences are easily recorded and reported by web analytics (Tandoc, 2015). The reliance on web analytics and its metrification of news values makes audience preferences affect the editorial autonomy and importance of the media, while global news platforms use algorithms to compete with national news organizations (Martin, 2021; Tandoc, 2014).

The print newspaper, which for centuries has been the primary way of disseminating quality news, has fallen into crisis. Even in Kosovo, a small European country, print newspapers disappeared at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the news values that are considered by journalists and editors active in Kosovar and Albanian media. These two neighboring countries were selected not only because they share the same language (Albanian), culture, and similar historical past, but also for the fact that in the case of Kosovo, it has become the first and only European country that has had no daily print newspaper. Up until three years ago, there were ten.

But, before this comparison is made between these two Balkan countries, traditional values of news or what constitutes news will be explained first, and then the evolution of these values in the era of digital journalism and online media will be discussed, showing how the approach to news values has increasingly moved from what the public needs to what the public likes. This leads us to explore the transformations that this era has brought about in the way news is received by the public, its reliability, and its focus on audience preferences.

2. Literature review

2.1. News values

Millions of events happen in the world every day, but only a small number of them are selected by journalists to become news stories (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001). When we watch the evening news on television or read information online, we see that some news appears on one medium but not on another, almost as if it did not happen at all. Comparing the front pages of newspapers, you can find different things on one and other things on another. So, there is no uniformity in the coverage of events by different media. This happens because of the different perceptions that journalists have about the importance of events in society. In other words, they are selected according to the journalists’ criteria of what constitutes news, or according to the news values that journalists give to the events they have decided to cover and then report as a news story.

The notion of news value has commonly been discussed in terms of newsworthiness—i.e. what constitutes news (Meijer, 2022, p. 232). News values generally present a set of criteria that help journalists to determine the likelihood of an event being reported as news (Tandoc, 2014). Dealing with research on news values means ‘answer[ing] the question why a story has been selected for publication’ (Caple & Bednarek, 2016, p. 436). These news values are related to journalists’ assessment of their work or product and are related to the professionalization of journalists since the late 1800s (Kristensen, 2021).

The concept of news values was introduced by Galtung and Ruge in 1965, ‘to explain ways news workers may avoid subjectivity associated with “selection distortion”’ (Pompper & Hoffman, 2020, p. 603). To explain them, they ask the question ‘how do “events” become news?’ (Galtung & Ruge, 1965, p. 64). According to Galtung and Ruge (1965), they must ‘satisfy the conditions of frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance…’ (p. 70). However, these values were present in the Cold War era when the press gave special importance to international developments due to global tensions at that time. According to Gans (1979), news values also indicate these components: ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, etc.

As time passed and society changed, so have news values. In 2001, Harcup and O’Neill re-examined the news values established by Galtung and Ruge more than three decades previously. Analyzing the content of news reported in the British press, they found that news values were those stories that related to the power elite, celebrity, entertainment, surprise, good news, bad news, etc. In 2017, Harcup and O’Neill revisited their study and noticed several changes. Given that social media was already widespread, they found chronological news values to be exclusivity, bad news, conflict, surprise, audio-visuals, etc. (2017, p. 1482). Table 1 outlines these changing trends in more detail.

Table 1. Evolution of news values over time.

Galtung and Ruge (1965, p. 70)	Harcup and O’Neill (2001, p. 279)	Harcup and O’Neill (2017, p. 1482)
1. Frequency. An event that unfolds at the same or similar frequency as the news medium is more likely to be selected as news.	1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organizations, or institutions.	1. Exclusivity: Stories generated by, or available first to, the news organization because of interviews, investigations, surveys, etc.
2. Threshold. Events have to pass a threshold before being recorded at all.	2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous.	2. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as death, injury, defeat, and loss (of a job, for example).
3. Unambiguity. The less ambiguity, the more likely the event is to become news.	3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, etc.	3. Conflict: Stories concerning conflict, such as controversies, arguments, splits, strikes, fights etc.
4. Meaningfulness. The culturally similar is likely to be selected because it is within the news selector’s frame of reference.	4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast.	4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise, contrast, and/or the unusual about them.
5. Consonance. The news selector may predict (or indeed want) something to happen.	5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy.	5. Audio-visuals: Stories that have arresting photographs, video, audio, etc.

But these are not the only news values, and this is not the only chronology. Other researchers examine news values from different societal perspectives. Weaver et al. (2007) view news values more from the perspective of norms in society (such as sociological, cultural, organizational, and economic) and less as a reflection of what citizens want or like.

For television, the most important news values is timeliness, followed by relevance, identification, conflict, sensation, and exclusivity (Schultz, 2007). Being the first to break the news means that you will also have exclusivity, and this attracts television audiences. However, emergencies can undermine the quality of the television news, and haste can undermine the news verification process (Bourdieu, 1998). For O’Neill (2012), celebrity is at the top of the hierarchy of news values, even in the serious Western press, while for Caple and Bednarek (2016), the owner of the news organization, advertising companies, and the commercial press in general play a very important role; therefore, the hierarchy of news values is: negativity, timeliness, proximity, superlativeness, eliteness, etc.

Parks (2021) considers that when the media incite emotions, they become more attractive to the audience; therefore, he proposes joy as a new news value. Proximity, conflict, human interest, controversy are the news values in social media that most engage the public; this can be seen from items shared publicly on Facebook and Twitter (García-Perdomo et al., 2018; Trilling et al., 2017). Collective insecurity is a news value in the case of wars, such as the current Russian aggression against Ukraine, or in the cases of diseases or pandemics. Conflicts and natural disasters are newsworthy even in the age of social media, both from the perspective of journalists/editors and the public (Aritenang, 2022). In a study carried out at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (April–June 2020), Robertson (2023) notes that news first presents what is relevant for the public (or which affects public interest), before presenting its social importance or utility, the reliability of sources, and the factual basis of the news story, etc. However, for Usher (2014), the traditional values of the news remain and are needed to have a healthy democracy. News values today have evolved, increasing in speed and public interaction; therefore immediacy, interactivity, and participation are already new news values that are widely used in digital journalism (Usher, 2014).

In the era of digital journalism where the public is quite fragmented and where news organizations seek to survive by various means (including by looking for audiences willing to pay for news), Meijer (2022) proposes another concept for quality journalism, that of valuable journalism. In analyzing the answers of about 3000 respondents, Meijer (2022) emphasizes that journalism, ‘to be valuable, should first of all be trustworthy and truthful’ (p. 235). Meanwhile, a segment of the public continues to look for impartial news. In examining the meaning of impartial news in Brazil, India, the USA, and the United Kingdom, Mont’Alverne et al. (2023) state that impartial news means news without a partisan slant: just the facts, without commercial considerations. It is not only balanced, but editorial decisions were also not driven by ulterior motives.

But, there has always been a conflict between entertaining news and objective reporting. The aim of journalism was even questioned in the twentieth century (Pilger, 2005), and mainstream television received criticism for producing content that was of inferior quality to that of the time’s press (McNair, 1994). Bourdieu (1998) criticized television at the time for its mediocre quality, asserting that it hides itself by showing that the television manager is a hostage to the public and that the television emergency has diminished the quality of the news. Schudson (1978) from a professional and historical perspective, has carefully investigated the objectivity of American journalism at various historical and ideological phases when sensationalism with lucrative publications (penny press) was extended. Meanwhile, a century earlier, in his 1842 publication for the Parisian press, Balzac criticized the journalists of the time, asserting that valuable publicists of the past included Puffendorf, Montesquieu, Bentham, and others, while ‘today’s [in 1842] publicists have torn it to pieces and all have a piece that they shine in the eyes of the crowd’ (Balzac, 2002, p. 7).

2.2. From elite-centric journalism to audience-centric journalism

However, in digital journalism today, audience clicks affect news selection (Welbers et al., 2016) as well as commercial pressure on the media (Strömbäck et al., 2012). Traditional news media has lost its presence and influence in public communication and discourse; their audience has fallen, and advertising sponsorship has fallen, while the public has migrated to digital communication platforms including social media (Pavlik, 2019). In the UK, for example, 27% say they have come across news while using social media (Newman et al., 2021). ‘Today, more people get news via Facebook and Google than via any news organization in human history’ (Nielsen & Ganter, 2022, p. 1). In 2022, according to data from the Reuters Institute, Facebook remained the most popular platform compared to other social media, at around 60%. It was also the most popular platform for obtaining information: 40% in Europe and up to 59% in Africa (Newman et al., 2022).

So, the use of online media has grown continuously, and the public is fragmented between online and offline users. Although this audience is fragmented (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017a), most of the public in Europe, the USA, Australia, Canada, etc., still get their daily news from traditional (offline) media than from online media (Newman et al., 2021).

New circumstances led to the emergence of news and other content: to create audiences for advertisers, to sustain power, to defend partisan causes, to create visibility for influential whistle-blowers or self-promotion for individuals, to empower company brands, and for social media corporations to make money and increase profits, etc. (Waisbord, 2019). With online journalism and the many competing media sources, the public also has abundant sources of information, and these have made it more difficult for today’s media to bring information to them or to attract their attention (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017a; Lamot, 2022).

The widespread use of social media was seen as an opportunity by newsrooms to spread news. This has made news publishers seek to increase their audiences by using various online platforms and social media (Nielsen & Fletcher, 2022). In reflecting on their audience, this means seeing what the audience wants to be informed about, not what the journalist thinks the audience should be informed about. Therefore, we have two approaches to evaluate news values: either what the journalist values or what the audience values (Tandoc, 2015); in other words, quality journalism vs. popular journalism (Meijer, 2022).

Elite-centered journalism has traditionally been dominant, and this continues even today in classic texts for teaching journalists (e.g. Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021; Missouri Group, 2014; Mencher, 2011). Even Galtung and Ruge (1965), when introducing the concept of news values, admit that news is elite-centered. But today, with the internet and social media, and where the media are looking for an audience that is willing to pay for online news, we increasingly have a focus on audience-centered journalism (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018; Lamot & Paulussen, 2020; Schaetz, 2023; Tandoc, 2014, 2015).

The division between elite-centered journalism and audience journalism has to do with the issue of who (the media or the public) wants what: ‘what they need’, e.g. watchdog journalism or ‘what they want’, e.g. sports, food and drink, arts, and entertainment stories (Nelson & Tandoc, 2019). In other words, journalists are expected to maintain a balance between what the audience needs to know and what the audience wants to know (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018, p. 437). Therefore, when we have significant media competition and an online public, the issue that arises today is ‘how we serve them and what platforms we use to serve them require us to know who is in our audience and what they want from us’ (Filak, 2019, p. 33).

Orientation towards audience preferences makes the media quantitatively measure its audience, how much they consume a medium, and what they like the most from it. Audience measurement is not new. Newspaper circulations were always recorded; radio was measured statistically from the 1930s onwards, as was television. Today we have Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights, and other tools for measuring audiences (Kristensen, 2021). ‘Audience metrics are quantitative information that is used to monitor, measure, and analyze varying aspects of audience, including, but not limited to, the size and constitution of audience, audience behavior, and audience engagement’ (Wang, 2018, p. 472). In digital journalism, newsrooms have implemented audience analytics to see which news items are the most clicked on or read, how much time is spent on a certain news item, thus measuring the news consumption of the audience (Lee & Tandoc, 2017).

However, the use of audience analytics in newsrooms exerts external pressure on journalists from web analytics companies which ‘promote profit-making orientations in the newsroom that challenge and influence the professional values and norms of news production’ (Lamot & Paulussen, 2020, p 360). In fact, many newsrooms use audience metrics not only to orient media strategies towards audiences but also to evaluate journalists for their work (Lee & Tandoc, 2017). In addition, news organizations have developed social media departments in the newsrooms, which enable journalists and editors to quantitatively measure the consumption of news and the nature of the news that is most consumed by the audience (Dodds et al., 2023). ‘Furthermore, audience metrics may also lead journalists to mimic other media and copy stories that do well on other platforms for publication on their own channels’ (Lamot & Paulussen, 2020, p. 361).

Bearing in mind the above, our focus is on the following four research questions:

• RQ1. What are today’s news values that journalists and editors in Kosovo and Albania consider?

• RQ2. What are the differences between television and online journalism in terms of news values?

• RQ3. What is the role of audience metrics in the newsroom?

• RQ4. What are the differences between two countries in terms of news values?

3. Methodology

This study draws on qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews (Allen, 2017; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005) collected from news professionals (n = 31) working as journalists or news editors in Kosovo and Albania. The interviews were conducted between January and March 2023. Fourteen were interviewed in Kosovo (n = 14): seven news editors, five journalists, and two social media managers. In Albania, 17 media professionals (n = 17) were interviewed: seven news editors, seven journalists, and three social media managers. The journalists interviewed worked for five leading news organizations in Kosovo (three television stations and two online media) and for five leading news organizations in Albania (three television stations and two online media). The interviews were conducted until the researchers thought they had attained saturation of responses.

The goal of semi-structured interviews is to obtain the interviewee’s concrete descriptions rather than abstract reflections or theorizations; interviewers normally seek descriptions of how interviewees experience their professional world, rather than thoughts about why they have certain experiences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2017, p. 1003). Semi-structured interviews are extremely useful for gathering the same information from all the participants and allowing them to elaborate on their thoughts (Pajo, 2018).

Work on the ideals of journalism and news validity has been documented by qualitative research in the field of journalism studies (Kristensen, 2021). The qualitative study of the newsroom is an effective method for this problem because the researcher defines some key themes that he/she wants to explore (Nelson & Tandoc, 2019). This means whether the main actors of the drafting and selection of news (journalists and editors) are oriented toward what the public wants or towards what the public needs. The role of the journalist comes from the perception he/she has of what is expected of him/her in terms of personality, integrity, attitudes, knowledge, and professional ideals (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018).

In our interviews with journalists and editors, the focus was on the main topics relating to the connection between determining the values of the news audience and maintaining quality. In other words, we aimed to explore editorial policies, to evaluate news values in the era of digital journalism, the role of social media, and the professional role of the journalist, including where professional attitudes may have been challenged (Weder et al., 2023). Since we were dealing with these topics and wanted to give the interviewees the opportunity to elaborate on some of these concepts, we chose semi-structured interviews as the most appropriate format for this kind of study (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Some of the questions asked during interviews covered the research questions and problems raised in the literature, including:

• How do you decide what stories to cover?

• What do you mean by important news?

• Is this news important to the public or to you as a journalist/editor?

• Which do you value more: what the public needs or what the public wants?

• Do you know your target audience (how do you know them)?

• What function do web analytics and social media metrics play in your business?

• Which news was the most popular?

• How much the most clicked news encourages you to produce the same kind of news?

• Where do viewers follow you more, on television or social media?

• Does the reader follow you more, directly on the web/portal or through social media?

Our questions also find support in previous studies, such as on the role of audience metrics in news selection (Lamot & Paulussen, 2020; Tandoc, 2014); how journalists use web analytics in their news work (Tandoc, 2014); how online audience metrics helped digital editors determine which content to place on the organization’s homepage and what to share via social media platforms (Nelson & Tandoc, 2019); as well as how journalists decide to maintain the quality of their journalistic work, how they decide which stories to cover, and how they maintain the quality of their work (Dick, 2014).

Following the review of the literature, the authors developed the research questions and interview questions, and they also agreed on the order of the questionnaire questions. Since the authors of this article reside in Kosovo and Albania, they found it straightforward to identify the most popular television stations in these two countries, while they used digital media for leads. All of the interviews were conducted by the authors in Albanian, the official and majority language of both Albania and Kosovo. The interviews were conducted face-to-face, were recorded, and then transcribed. The length of the interviews varied from 40 min to an hour and 20 min, averaging about an hour. In total, these interviews comprised 22 h. The total amount of text came to over 40,000 words.

The interview transcripts were analyzed using constant comparative analysis because it is more suitable for the aim of the work, to arrive at themes that address the research questions. Additionally, this is because constant comparative analysis enables researchers to compare and contextualize the collected data with existing theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). This method is well suited to both etic coding, driven by theory and literature, and emic coding, driven by themes that emerge from data analysis and can incorporate conceptual and theoretical frameworks (Fram, 2015; Perreault et al., 2020). Viewing the data through the participant’s perspective and attributed set of meanings is emic, whereas viewing the data through researcher-established criteria is etic (Creswell, 2007; Scott & Howell, 2008). In this regard, the responses were coded, and the topics were divided into three main categories: news values for television, news values in digital journalism or newspapers, and the role of social media in newsworthiness. The contents were analyzed by the three authors and then harmonized to produce a version on which all three authors agreed.

4. Results

4.1. News values for television

The ten most watched television channels in Kosovo have websites and social media accounts. Newspapers in Kosovo have gone online and are no longer published in paper format. Dozens of other informational portals operate alongside them. The television newsroom and the social media newsroom of each television station are separate, but the journalists who work in these two newsrooms have different criteria for what is newsworthy. Those who work in the television newsroom maintain an attitude that we can call elite-centered. According to them, the public should be informed about important things in society and the nature and importance of is evaluated according to journalistic standards. ‘Politics, recognition of the country, rapprochement with the EU, talks with Serbia, economic and social development, justice, corruption, health are the most important news for the television screen’ (Television editor, Kosovo).

On television, news values begin with political developments, while bad news, corruption, economic and social issues follow afterward. Television editors are not influenced by social media statistics, but they see that journalists themselves are influenced by the consumption of news on social media. ‘We often notice this in the newsroom when the journalist brings up the continuation of a problem that has had a “boom” in social media’ (Television editor, Kosovo). News values are dynamic, based on societal stability, and Kosovo continues to produce many dynamic events. ‘The Hague Court for war crimes, the country’s north, riots, threats from Serbia, and so on. There are developments that are top news, and the rest are unimportant’ (Kosovo television journalist).

There are national television stations in Kosovo that have abandoned the inverted pyramid format and seek to package the news in a way that is more attractive to the public. ‘We follow the feature format in delivering the news, we keep the news, but they give it something more, we show it in a different way. We have seen that the public likes this news in a creative way’ (Television Information Director, Kosovo). The widespread use of technology and the massive shift online have made television managers think of reaching that public too.

Our audience is no longer the public that sits in front of the TV and waits for information, but the audience today chooses YouTube, chooses Facebook, TikTok, chooses other alternative forms to be informed at the time they want and through the communication channels they want. The social media editorial office does not broadcast the information that we in the television editorial office value, but the information that ‘ignites’ the online audience (Television editor, Kosovo).

In Albania, on the other hand, a comparable situation prevails, but they are less concerned about the dissemination of the TV product on social media than they are in Kosovo. ‘The news we serve are politics, bad news, justice, economy, sport and showbiz’ (Television editor-in-chief, Albania). Television journalists in Albania say that they provide the public with important news that has a direct impact on the lives of every individual.

The editorial focus is to try to give the public what we think they need in their daily lives to be informed about what is happening around them. The news that the public likes is not excluded, but generally that public does not want information, they want entertainment, they want showbiz, sports, the promotion of a singer, etc. (Television editor-in-chief, Albania).

Television journalists consider important news as that relating to political and economic decisions that affect the lives of citizens but ‘About 70–80% of the news is selected by the editors, the rest our television leaves to the preferences of the public. If the public wants showbiz, we cannot offer them 25 min of showbiz, out of the 30 min of news’ (Television editor-in-chief, Albania). Television journalists in Albania are determined to show that ‘on television, the quality of the news is not negotiated with the public’s preferences, even at the price of a decrease in viewership. The public that wants entertaining news and bombastic headlines finds them on social media and not on the television screen’ (Television journalist, Albania). But younger journalists, especially those who work in television stations close to politics, believe that quality news follows political hierarchies: ‘first the prime minister, then ministers, party leaders and then members of parliament’ (Television journalist, Albania).

Television stations that do not have high ratings are more audience-oriented than television channels with high ratings. ‘To be honest, the public wants lighter, more average things. We deliberately softened the quality of the media product a little to capture the taste of the majority, that is, with the strategy of clicks’ (Television editor, Albania). Others have chosen news value categories that are attractive to the public without lowering professional standards. On some Albanian television channels, the 11 p.m. news is mainly filled with the day’s current affairs and bad news. ‘In the news editions where I am the editor-in-chief, news that is attractive to the public is primary: the public wants news from crime, we provide it; the public will know about political scandals, we also offer it to them’ (Television editor-in-chief, Albania).

But there are media executives who recognize that today’s changing focus is what interests the owners of the media companies and what attracts the largest audiences. ‘I would be a hypocrite not to accept it: in most newsrooms, important news is the one that goes parallel to the interests of the media owners, and the news is selected based on the interest to gain as much audience as possible’ (Television editor-in-chief, Albania).

4.2. News values in digital journalism or newspaper

While television journalists continue to believe that the public is interested in news that journalists believe to be important, journalists working on the web or social media do not share the same belief. In Kosovo, television journalists are often required to support the editorial staff of web or online pages in cases where there are developments that attract the online public.

During the day, for example, in Tv we have about 25 news stories, while on the web about 250. In one period, we have seen that 9 of the 10 most-read news stories on the web are news about Big Brother. That is why we have decided to engage journalists who write about politics or economics to also write news about Big Brother (Television editor-in-chief, Kosovo).

In news portals (which have replaced paper newspapers) and on social media, it is sensation, entertainment, celebrities, and showbiz which are the categories that make up news. ‘It is true that our video products on YouTube do not have any journalistic quality or professionalism, but the public also likes to be entertained and from the profits we make from advertising here, we make our salaries’ (Journalist and portal manager, Kosovo).

In Albania, however, the newspaper remains a medium that aims to preserve traditional readers, usually elderly. ‘Print newspapers, in general, include more nostalgic stories than news. The media report on what dictator Hoxha said to one of his subordinates, Shehu, before executing him’ (Journalist, Albania). Television coverage is perhaps more advanced due to the development of several digital platforms with multiple television channels. ‘On the web, we discover that the most consumed news is that which satisfies their impulses, such as lifestyle, showbiz, and sports’ (Director of web television, Albania). Since televisions have multiplatform news, journalists say that television is the source of important news for the traditional public, while for young people it is social media. ‘We offer the public what they want only in social media where the public consumes a lot of information but does not delve into it’ (Television editor, Albania).

For journalists and editors of online media, the important news is what the public wants, which translates into profit for the media as well. ‘A part of digital media, especially social media, fight for clicks, where the news is presented may be incomplete, with a bombastic title, in search of clicks and there are many people who follow them and have fun with them’ (Digital media editor, Albania).

4.3. The role of social media

Social media editors have a public-centered approach to news values. Blood, violence, sex, and amusement are more appealing to the public on social media in both Kosovo and Albania.

In Kosovo, social media managers say they aim to increase clickability and debate on social media, not to see which news story television deems the most important.

The success of my job as a social media manager is when I increase clicks and followers. That’s money. To achieve this, as we have achieved, we follow what the public wants and not what I like. This is how my performance is measured where I work. (Social media manager, Kosovo).

Media managers admit that due to technological developments and the abandonment of television by the youth, online journalism leans more towards what the public likes. ‘The news of the week was the European Parliament’s decision that from 1 January 2024, Kosovars will travel without visas to EU countries. However, on social media, we posted short satirical information videos and memos related to this news’ (Digital journalist, Kosovo). The online audience prefers news where there is entertainment, sensation, and blood. ‘The most clicked news in recent weeks remains the one where the son cut off his mother’s head’ (Social media manager, Kosovo).

In Albania, according to digital journalists, the most important story for them is the one that gets clicked by the public, not what they value as journalists. ‘I don’t care what the public needs, but what the public wants, what the public clicks. We have the public thanks to Zuckerberg, thanks to social media. As a result, we adapt the latest news from social media metrics reports’ (Digital journalist, Albania). According to them, sexual scandals involving politicians are extremely popular on social media. ‘The public like these things, so we provide them, even with video when possible’ (Journalist and social media manager, Albania).

5. Discussions

The main news value on television in Kosovo and Albania is politics. This is because both countries are in the process of joining the EU, with challenges relating to the rule of law, corruption, etc. (European Commission, 2022a, 2022b). Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008 after a period of administration by the United Nations (UN), has undergone dynamic political developments: it is not yet a member of the UN. It holds talks with Serbia and there have often been tensions between the two countries, especially after Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Albania, which for five decades was subject to perhaps the harshest communist dictatorship in Europe, is extremely politically polarized yet aims to accelerate its entry into the EU. These circumstances are akin to the international tensions identified by Galtung and Ruge (1965), which increase the importance of political news.

These circumstances have made media coverage of political developments a priority; the hierarchy of news values is political news, security, celebrities, corruption, religion, social issues, etc. These news values are mainly for television news, less for digital journalism, and not for social media news. These values lean more towards traditional, elite-centered news values (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021; Missouri Group, 2014) and as well as are more aligned with the hierarchy set out by Harcup and O’Neill (2001)—i.e. the power elite, celebrity, entertainment, surprise, bad news (p. 279). Meanwhile, social media give greater priority to sensation, exclusivity, conflict, celebrities, entertainment, and audio-visual aspects independent from television, etc. These values have the attitude of audience-centered journalism (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018; Schaetz, 2023; Tandoc, 2015), with the hierarchy of news values like Harcup and O’Neill: exclusivity, bad news, conflict, surprise, audio-visual (2017, p. 1482).

The above provides answers to the first research question about the news values considered important by journalists and media editors in Kosovo and Albania, but also to the second research question that has to do with the differences between values in television journalism and online journalism.

Audience measurement is of great importance in digital journalism and social media in both countries. Independent online news organizations (portals) also distribute news on social media. Journalists and their managers in both countries (Kosovo and Albania) do not hesitate to admit that clicks are their survival. On social media, sensation, entertainment, celebrities, showbiz, are the main categories that make up news. The use of multiplatform and the sharing of news on social media is done to increase the audience and generate profits. The declaration of the digital journalist from Albania that ‘we have the public thanks to Zuckerberg, thanks to social media’ proves the importance of social media in digital journalism. This ‘social media capital’ is conceptualized as ‘the resources that news organizations can generate via social media efforts’ (Shin & Ognyanova, 2022, p. 579).

Journalists, particularly those in Kosovo, noted that when some issues cannot be accommodated on television, they break onto the web or the television channel’s social media. To reach and engage with a larger audience, as well as to benefit from advertising revenue, news organizations (whether new or old) aim to distribute as many products as possible on social media, which is a channel for news sharing (Cook & Milburn-Curtis, 2023). Digital journalists in Kosovo and Albania admit to being affected by web and social media metrics to follow the type of the most clicked stories. The audience datafication can be understood as a ‘cultural, economic, and political good within journalism’ (Schaetz, 2023, p. 17). Therefore, this offers an answer to the third research question about the role of audience metrics in the two countries.

Although the two countries have the same language, similar cultures, and slightly different political contexts, this paper highlights some differences in media consumption in both countries. Digital and social media journalism is more organized in Kosovo than in Albania. The internet is also used more widely in Kosovo, which is the country with the youngest population in Europe (Eurostat, 2021, 2023). For example, young people in their mid-30s may have limited news consumption habits and therefore news organizations may find it difficult to reach them; they are not even interested in paying for online news (Newman et al., 2022). Especially in Kosovo, television channels adapt television products for social media by shortening an item or capturing only a snippet to make it more interesting for the wider public. News continues to be produced by journalists, but its distribution is determined by platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. These platforms are now seen as partners and not as harming newsrooms because they are becoming more and more integral to how people find and access news (Nielsen & Ganter, 2022). Television stations in Kosovo use multiple platforms more than television channels in Albania, because Kosovo uses the internet more than Albania and has a younger population (Eurostat, 2021, 2023). These provide answers to the fourth question about the differences between Kosovo and Albania.

6. Implications for theory

The analysis of news values should not only be researched ethnographically by newsrooms and by interviewing journalists or even audiences, but also from the social, political, technological, and demographic context. Since April 2020, Kosovo has become the first European country that has no printed newspapers. This is not because of the cost of paper or distribution (it is smaller than Albania) but for demographic reasons including the level of internet usage. According to Eurostat (2021, 2023), 93% of the population uses it daily (the EU average is 80%) and 95% of households have broadband high-speed internet. Kosovo also has the youngest population in Europe, a quarter of the population is <15 years old (Eurostat, 2022). On the other hand, compared to other Balkan countries, Albania has the lowest percentage of daily internet usage at 60% (Eurostat, 2021); only 71% of households have a broadband connection compared to the EU average of 77% (Eurostat, 2023).

In both countries, elite-centered news values continue to remain on the television news, while audience-centered ones now dominate social media. Therefore, when analyzing news values, researchers should also consider the current age of the population, as well as the accessibility and the daily use of the Internet. The tendency among the new online generation is that online media will become their traditional news source, rather than television or print media.

7. Conclusions

Kosovo is the first European country without print media, but it is also the leading European country in terms of internet access. Television channels are increasingly losing their viewers to digital journalism, especially social media. A large part of the public has gone online, especially young people. Television channels maintain the standards of elite-centered journalism but, through the multiplatform competition for news, television news is adapted for their social media sites by cutting, shortening, and adapting the product according to the preferences of the public. For social media managers, ‘increasing clicks and followers is money’, and this can only be accomplished by offering the public what they want.

In Albania, the printed press survives mainly for the older generation, while television preserves its traditional audience by paying less attention to television products on social media. In respecting the standards of elite-centered journalism in a highly politicized environment, television news values continue to be politics, hierarchical state actors, and bad news. Television stations in Albania also use multiplatform news, but often without adapting them specifically for social media.

In both countries, digital journalism has a more audience-centered orientation where sensation, entertainment, and conflict are the main news values. It is not only journalists or editors who decide about news values. As a targeted way to increase audiences and the financial survival of newsrooms, metrics have become the new mechanism to evaluate what is news today. Journalists and television editors in Albania believe that they have greater viewership on television and insist that they are not influenced by the public’s preferences. In Kosovo, the tendency of journalists and editors shows that clickability can be more important than the number of television viewers, so they are more inclined to consider the public’s preferences. Both sides agree that even on television, the public’s taste is internalized by journalists: when journalists see that a piece of online information has received a lot of attention on social media, has fueled a lot of discussions, or has set an agenda, then their next aim is to orient these observations towards a news value of mass interest.

The news values in these two countries are fragmented and dynamic. They are fragmented because the younger generation uses the internet and seeks out more entertainment, whereas the older generation watches more television and consumes news mostly for political reasons. However, due to societal developments, the news values become dynamic and changeable. Kosovo and Albania frequently make spectacular political headlines, in contrast to the majority of the rest of Europe: Albania because of tensions and extreme polarization, and Kosovo because of internal tensions and problems with Serbia. As a result, news values in online media shift from time to time, shifting from entertainment or public-centric in times of quiet to political or elite-centric in times of turmoil.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Hasan Saliu

Hasan Saliu is an Associate Professor and the dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at AAB College, Pristina, Kosovo. His primary areas of study include journalism, strategic communication, and public diplomacy.

Ramadan Çipuri

Ramadan Çipuri is an Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Tirana, Albania. His research mostly addresses topics on media ethics and media self-regulation.

Xhevahire Izmaku

Xhevahire Izmaku, PhD, is a lecturer and researcher at AAB College’s Faculty of Mass Communication in Pristina, Kosovo. Her primary areas of study are political journalism and political communication.