Imagining journalism’s audience: The digital age did not sharpen newsroom perceptions of their target audiences, writes James G. Robinson.

“The central irony of the newsroom is that while many journalists’ decisions are made with readers in mind, the audiences for their work often remain unfocused, imagined abstractions, built on long-held assumptions, newsroom folklore and imperfect inference,” he writes, based on a Tow Center for Digital Journalism report.