Reading Preferences of the Audience of Business Media (the Case of the Vedomosti Newspaper Website)

Section: Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

The paper presents the result of an analysis of web metrics of the Vedomosti newspaper website. Its purpose is to identify the main reading preferences of the business media audience. The main issue of the article is readers’ thematic preferences: which topics and why the audience for a business publication tends to choose. The study was conducted by the method of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most popular texts of Vedomosti in 2017. The main conclusion is that business and economics become less and less interesting for business media readers, which makes these media universal rather than thematic. However, despite the fact that in the first place a business media reader chooses articles drawing on his personal life, in such media he is attracted by a historically established high-quality brand. This is the main reason for readers’ loyalty to Russian business media. In addition, the author of the paper discovered and formulated that there are three main reasons why the reader prefers this or that article in business publications: it concerns him personally, or it concerns his work, or it concerns famous people.

DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.1.2020.4258

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