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Researchers and practitioners increasingly believe that journalism must improve its relationship with audiences to increase the likelihood that people will consume and support news. In this paper, we argue that this assumption overlooks the importance of structural- and individual-level factors in shaping news audience behavior. Drawing on Giddens' theory of structuration, we suggest that, when it comes to the amount of time that people devote to news, consumers' choices are guided more by life circumstances than by news preferences. To illustrate this point, we draw on a combination of interview and audience analytics data collected when so many people's life circumstances changed: the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that people consumed more news during the early months of the pandemic than normal because (1) they had more time on their hands due to things like shelter-in-place orders, layoffs, and shifts to working from home and (2) they were more interested in understanding the coronavirus' spread and risks as well as the preventative measures being pursued. We conclude that journalists should embrace "journalistic humility," thereby acknowledging and accepting that they have much less control over the reception of their work than they would like to believe., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

This study relies on 22 expert interviews and a survey among 40 financial journalists in the United States to reassess the role of financial journalists for financial markets in today's high-frequency information and news era. Findings point to a discrepancy between the ideal active watchdog role journalists picture for themselves and their actual role enactment. Furthermore, the process of constructing and distributing financial news has been found to be self-referential within the financial system, leaving little room for alternative voices. In this sense, the influence of regular financial reporting in driving stock market prices has been found to be limited but contingent on various factors such as unexpected news, repeatedly negative reporting, or news about a merger. Eventually, facing the proliferation of online news, journalists have raised a general concern regarding the loss of journalistic values, but they also see potentials for their discipline in light of automated reporting and online news.