What is Newsworthy? Theory and Evidence

Abstract:

We introduce a model in which a benevolent news outlet decides whether to report the realization of a state to a consumer, who pays a cost to receive it. A simple statistical rule, called a proper scoring rule, describes when the outlet should be more likely to report the realization. Using data from the US television news, we show that a particular scoring rule successfully predicts many salient features of news reporting. We show how to use this rule as a control variable to discipline tests of reporting bias, and we show that controlling for it matters in our applications.

Speaker Bio:

Jesse Shapiro is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard University, Shapiro served as the Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University and the Chookaszian Family Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Shapiro received a BA in economics in 2001 and a PhD in economics in 2005 from Harvard University. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He was a 2011-12 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, a 2017 Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Updated paper can be found here.