media
2 May 2008
What Does the Future of Journalism Look Like?
That was the question posed at the Future of Journalism Summit in Sydney yesterday
The outlook is (as these things tend to be) a little bit of good and a little bit of bad. There was a broad consensus among panelists that newspapers - in their current form, at least - have an impending expiration date. Philip Meyer, who will be speaking at the conference today, pins that date - somewhat arbitrarily - at 2043.That's not to say "quality journalism" will disappear altogether, though. Conference star attraction Roy Greenslade, of The Guardian, predicts that even post-decline, each major city will continue to have a "paper of record" (whether that paper of record will be distributed on paper is another matter). The biggest newspapers - the New York Times, The Guardian and so on - might even go fully international, expanding their coverage beyond their home cities and countries. The Guardian already has more online readers in the US than in the UK, Gleensade said.
Greenslade's sentiments were echoed by Crikey's Eric Beecher, who predicted that Australia's two-newspaper cities would soon turn become one-newspaper ones, like most cities in the US. (That's already the case in all but Sydney and Melbourne.)
One theme that kept recurring throughout the day - raised by Greenslade and Off The Bus's Jay Rosen, among others - was that of the divide between the information rich and information poor, closely mirroring the divide between the money rich and money poor. Information will still be recorded and reported, it will just be reported to those with the will and the means to pay for it.
It's no coincidence, then, that one of the easiest forms of journalism to monetise is that catering to investors and financial markets. Newspapers like the Australian Financial Review and the Financial Times were in no danger of dying, Greenslade assured. Beecher, meanwhile, charges subscribers more than twice as much for the online investment publication Eureka Report than for Crikey.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, though - there are plenty of opportunities in the new media sphere for creative and resourceful journalists. It's near the point of cliché to say that the role of journalists in online media is to facilitate conversation, but Rosen has taken this beyond mere rhetoric, hiring a campaign organiser rather than a journalist to coordinate Huffington Post's Off The Bus project, which tracks the 2008 US Presidential campaign.
In the new media world, it seems, journalists are community builders and facilitators as much as they are reporters - something Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington knows well. This flies in the face of the gate-keeping journalist or editor most of us are accustomed to, where gravitas is conveyed by being distant and aloof. Now, effective journalists are those who actually engage with the people reading them.
Another key role for civic-minded new media journalists, according to "Australia's new media queen" (as declared by conference chair and South Australian Stateline presenter, Dominique Schwartz) Margaret Simons, is to draw out the connections between niche interests and larger state, national and international issues. A third key issue was convergence: or getting the same journalist to write, edit, film and present the one story.
The one question no one seemed able to answer was how media companies were going to pay for all this. Print revenue is in decline, and while online news consumption is on the up and up, the revenue associated with it isn't yet close to making up for the drop (although it's interesting to note that newspapers have traditionally made quite significant profits - up to 50 per cent, according to Greenslade).
If the final panel - featuring ABC Managing Director Mark Scott, NineMSN editor-in-chief Max Eucharist and News Ltd Editorial Operations Director Campbell Reid, and Greenslade - is any indication, the key seems to lie in convergence - companies producing across television, print and online and selling ad packages across multiple mediums - and/or subsidising journalism through other, more profitable, enterprises.
The Washington Post, for instance, provides just 10 per cent of the revenue for the Washington Post company, even as it serves as the company's flagship. But where does this leave the smaller media outlets that the web seems to foster so well?
Still, the overall vibe of the day was positive, and inspiring. One attendee told me at the post-conference drinks that she felt like stabbing herself during that final - rather heated - panel, but I walked away feeling excited by the possibilities for both newmatilda.com's future, and that of the journalism industry as a whole.
The Future of Journalism conference was organised by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation.
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"What does the future of journalism look like."
Um, does it look like a mixed metaphor? ;)
There was a piece in the New Yorker a couple of weeks back about the Huff Post, citing some interesting statistics about the decline in newspaper readership, and offering the (sort of) hopeful observation that the Huff Post is ‘almost breaking even’ now, during the run up to the 2008 US election.
So I logged on, had a look round their site, and in three or four clicks I was on their politics main page.
In their headline, they mispelled CLINTON.
Hmmm…
Does this mean the telegraph is doomed?
Nice article Rachel. This piece from wan is interesting:
http://www.wan-press.org/article12949.html
Interesting take, Rachel. Why did the attendee want to stab herself? They weren’t that bad, were they? Cheers Margaret
"A third key issue was convergence: or getting the same journalist to write, edit, film and present the one story."
It ‘s already happening in regional Australia with local commercial media like WIN where the camera operators seem to be the reporters and editors for news. While I was playing unpaid citizen journalist for a WA Community Cabinet visit to Broome recently, the pros seemed to be doing their own journalistic equivalent of a one-person-band. I was awe struck by one journo who was doing film, sound and asking the Minister all the questions. He was then heading back to base to edit the piece which may or may not go to air.
My video experiments are on the blog link below under the Kimberley label. Mind you, I’ve had no success downloading them to the much advertised ABC local. Technical difficulties not of my making I’m told.
Two lessons from my recent experiences:
* It’s very time consuming - a full day’s work for a two minute clip would be an underestimation if working alone. It’s probably a 20 second sound bite on the mass media.
* The skill set required is daunting: creative and technical skills across multimedia which are evolving exponentially.
Yes, but you wouldn’t be dead for quids! (A bit of the irreverence that Margaret Simons regards as part of internet writing.)
Kevin Rennie
http://laborview.blogspot.com/
Tim - I mix metaphors like cupcakes.
Margaret - I believe she was scared that she’d be out of a job, soon. Which is an understandable fear, given that the business model is yet to really be worked out, but the decline of print does not have to mean the decline of news and information. In many ways, quite the opposite.
Kevin - Yes, you’re absolutely right. A couple of people brought this up during the last session - that it was all well and good to ask media producers to produce more, but that doing so was time consuming.
How did they spell Clinton?…O-b-a-m-a?
Who needs reporters? We can all be reporters.
We need someone to explain to us what our senses are actually telling us, but more importantly we need someone to tell us what to think.
Enter the journalist.
They may know what is actually going on, some of them, but how to break the news and get by the subies and editors that’s the trick.
Most follow the line of least resistance.
As far as going to prison to protect their sources’ identity and true investigative stuff, that stuff is for the movies.
Anyway what happens in 2043, do we get teleported instantly to our destination like on star trek, and we don’t need to take a bog anymore to take the tabloid in with us in case there’s no toot paper?
That would be a relief.
Alvin Toffler eat your heart out.
Bring on future shock!
Media Watch tonight had some similar grist well referenced with face to face talent.
Actually end of conference drinks were just from day one, and being teetotal myself I foolishly skipped them when it would have been much better to stay and watch tipsy full timers in the pro am stakes (being the latter).
Also next day the man from Time.com - you can see him in The Australian ‘Media on Monday’ business section today - was talking about no trouble monetising their international readership to I presume international advertisers - I don’t know …. credit card, or sports car or Reinhold Messner watch or something.
Next morning I was much gratified to ask a question of venerable Phillip Myer on the satellite link from the USA about the more sinister side of the digital revolution in media and even citizen journalism. It related to an anecdote from a Walkley intern who mentioned her laptop imac has inbuilt camera. All it takes is a few little law changes and those cameras have the govt on the other end. Then we are in Orwell’s world for real in a two way screen situation.
Doesn’t take much to imagine networking to every room either. So this tells me the spirit of the revolutionary pamphleteer of late 17C (read libertarian press of today) will continue to have it’s role. If only as insurance against totalitarian/monolithic big govt.
Myer referred to "dystopian" Brave New World and 1984, with the notion that drugs or entertainment might be the mass pacifers disempowering engaged politics and real democracy (the alcohol industry today?). I raised him a dystopian Rollerball movie mid 70ies (check it out in your local DVD shop, and directors commentary too). For an old guy he had a young mind. Gotta love that.
My day one report, at least part thereof is here, with pics - check out young Mr Brill:
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Future of Journalism conference in Sydney Australia #1
Mood: chatty
Topic: big media
http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1810509/future-of-…
Ultimately future journalism will be judged by and will survive on its quality and relevance not its platform. The medium is not the message or is it the massage we have come to expect from our big brothers in the mass media.
The Pentagon’s Military Media Analysts Program is one recent, shameful example. The silence of U.S. and other media conglomerates about the use of ex-military "experts" to spread war propaganda clearly demonstrates why we can’t just leave it to the professionals.
Kevin Rennie
http://laborview.blogspot.com/
As Eric Beecher pointed out with strong resonance at the F of J conference - the business models currently will generate some journalism excellence on millions of dollars revenue. He concedes the point. But as former editor at Fairfax his point is that the business models online for media are not tens or 100 millions of dollars as before. Gives the example of The Age valued now at maybe $300M versus $1.5B say 20 years back with Robert Maxwell as unsuccessful takeover approach.
This is important feedback. On the other hand Yahoo, Google and many others are very very big finanical operations now, so maybe post Tech Wreck 1 01-02, maybe Eric is being a bit too minimalist about the online business models now?
Let’s trust our One Tel times are over now? One thing everyone agrees is that the times are very uncertain for all concerned.