Valuable Journalism

This paper aims at building a conceptual bridge called Valuable Journalism between quality journalism and users' experience of quality. To that end a questionnaire was designed, built on previous data and triangulated with the results of three simultaneously organized qualitative audience studies. The distinct dimensions of valuable journalism, as well as their interrelatedness and internal consistency, were then tested with explorative and confirmative factor analyses. The findings suggest how the resulting four dimensions-urgency, public connection, understanding the region and audience responsiveness-and 13 news subjects may provide a good starting point for journalists and news organizations who want to focus more on what users and audiences actually experience as valuable journalism.