Monitoring Change in Journalism

This Section provides information, news and analysis on the current changes taking place in the media industry: restructurings, technological change, the response of journalists and the activitities of the trade unions.

In this section you will find

- A News Digest on Changes in Journalism

- Links to Websites or Blogs Dealing with Changes in Journalism

BACKGROUND:

The crisis for media is global and it has been accelerated by economic downturn and recession. The World Association of Newspapers annual conference for 2009 has been postponed for six months because of lack of interest from newspaper owners.

All the big players in Europe are in retreat. Mecom, which has amassed around 300 or so titles in a buying spree in recent years is struggling to meet its debt burden following rapid expansion across Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and countries further east. It has now sold its German assets -- the Berliner Zeitung, Hamburger Morgenpost and other titles - to the rival publisher M. DuMont Schauberg of Cologne.

Even free newspapers are suffering.  Sales are down in many countries and there are many closures to report

Who is to Blame?

Journalists themselves - the reporters, sub-editors, photographers, feature writers, columnists, page designers - cannot be held responsible for the financial woes of the industry. As providers of the basic content, they have performed their tasks in good faith and with a dedication that has marked them out from every other newspaper employee and many employers.

This is as true of print and broadcasting journalists. The people who create the raw material, have no reason to feel guilty. Put simply, it isn't our fault. What is true is that we are in the midst of revolutionary change that is completely outside of our control.

The wider global financial crisis means that we are caught up in something of a perfect storm. It is wrecking the business models of newspapers and overturning all the old certainties.

Both enthusiastic supporters of the digital age who welcome the replacement of top-down journalism with bottom-up journalism, and those steadfast believers in the virtues of journalists as information gatekeepers, face the same desperate situation because economic catastrophe has robbed media companies of the chance to make a smooth transition from one platform to another.

It was always going to be difficult. It has been clear for a long time that website revenue would never achieve the volumes enjoyed by print. But that already difficult landscape has been shattered by an earthquake of market change. Even newspapers brimful with talent and the world's finest editorial minds have no chance against the economic and technological forces taking the media business apart. The sad reality is that journalists and journalism are the victims of the industry's decline.

The declining sales and declining profits of US and European newspapers are roughly similar in scale despite the differences in the forms of journalism. The flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and mountains of debt faced by newspaper owners are in evidence everywhere.

The real revelation of the internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership (in fact, thanks to the Internet there are more readers than ever before) but how it has drained away the economic lifeblood of newspapers. In classified advertising, for instance, which once made up more than 40% of a newspaper's revenues and more than half the profits, have evaporated. These advertisers went elsewhere because there are more accessible, cheaper and more efficient alternatives.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer says that newspapers - as we know them - are in their final decade. "The whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down," he told The Washington Post. "There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form." He may not be wrong, but there is no certainty that he is right. There are two categories of hope:

1.                               True local market newspapers.  Genuinely small town newspapers generate much original content - like sports stories from the schools or the police round-up and these matter to the readership. This content is not available from other sources. These newspapers can migrate successfully to the web, providing advertising slots for local fast-food shops and entertainment venues.

2.                               Niche-market regional and national papers. Newspapers that can generate enough original content that matters to a specific audience may survive. Most of the existing regional and national papers will wither, but those that can identify their own core audience - political, business, or cultural - can become newspapers of record on specific topics for specific audiences. They can prosper in the digital era if their audience is large enough to give them a decent return on investment for covering that market.

Both of these models may provide a model for survival, but both will need to operate in a multi-platform environment - print, mobile, online and video. In ten years there will still be newspapers but they will be very different from what we have today.