Consultants, News

News consultants are specialists in the news process who provide “inside” expertise often from market research that assists newsrooms in building audiences and maximizing revenues and profits. Newspapers and web-based news services hire consultants for direction on content and design that increase their numbers of readers and users.

News consulting is most widely identified with television news, where newsworkers not only provide content but do so in newscasts, in effect television “shows,” that each day and night are in direct competition with shows telecast by rival newsrooms. News consultants play an important role in selecting and directing a newscast’s performers, its anchors and reporters, whose on-camera delivery and “look” are essential to attracting audiences and determining a newsroom’s commercial success. This entry discusses consultants and newsrooms, ...