#Dr. tchia litman phd update#

5 Barry offered a more realistic model showing that the desire for diversity is balanced against the desire for other characteristics of content, always within the limits of available time for reading, watching and listening.īarry helped examine the creation of the Fox network, showing how a confluence of regulatory and economic factors made possible the enormous gamble for News Corp. He identified a major flaw in the long line of studies examining diversity or its absence in media content, refuting the underlying assumption that there is an unlimited demand for diversity. 3īarry developed a model predicting what will happen if people can't get reliable information from the media about urgent topics like birth control, showing they will instead assemble an understanding from whatever sources they can find. 2 He then took an overused, ill-defined buzzword - convergence - and gave it meaning by showing how people select news from different media based on differences in characteristics like speed of delivery, convenience, and quality.

#Dr. tchia litman phd update#

1 He later helped update the fundamental model of newspaper competition developed in the 1970s to reflect three decades of changing technology and markets. You cannot call yourself a student of media economics if you don't know his work.īarry and a doctoral student completed the first study linking the quality of news to the financial performance of newspapers.

26 after battling cancer.īarry was one of the first classically trained economists devoted to understanding producers of and audiences for newspapers, television broadcasts, and film. So it came as a shock to hear that Barry, 59, died Dec. He made everyone's understanding of media economics better. I learned something, usually more than just one thing, that was important and useful. He always began with a few introductory questions to be sure I understood what was coming next - a single, penetrating query that would send me back to the library to spend hours digging through books and journal articles in search of an answer.

Barry Litman used to sit quietly in meetings of my dissertation committee, holding a document I had labored over for days, waiting for his turn.