Assistant Professor,
No matter how well editors try to provide a news fare suiting to readers information needs, the reader-editor gap continues to exist. A primary reason for the reader-editor gap is the high selectivity that readers’ exercise while reading. Therefore the editors consciously try to improve their news presentation styles to ensure a greater readership of the content. Nonetheless, the reader-editor gap exists reminding of the need for a better understanding of the readers’ content preferences while gate keeping the content by the editors. It is in this context that this study is envisaged to examine the news programming practices and readers’ content preferences with specific reference to Malayalam dailies. The findings of the study highlight the fact that readers do not read everything that is printed by the newspapers. Newspaper readers are far more selective than the editors are.
