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| (Image by Cara Barer) |
For many news organizations, the future isn't
pretty. The Internet beheaded their old advertising business model
and provided no suitable replacement. Their websites, while wildly
popular with users, have never managed to become profitable. Many
newspapers give away their valuable content on the web, even though
it is very costly to produce and site revenues can't pick up the
slack. At first glance, the brave new world of online journalism
seems like a nightmare for legacy media companies saddled with lots of
physical and financial overhead. Many outlets are in desperate condition after withstanding years of losses.
In Canada, the federal government is considering ways to help its unstable news industry fight back against digital goliaths like Google and Facebook. New taxes and copyright measures designed to level the playing field for domestic news producers are just some of the proposed ways to make Canadian news companies more competitive.
This political intervention, however, will not be enough to turn back the tides of online journalism and keep archaic news organizations alive.
News organizations need to reinvent themselves. Whether they publish in print or online or both, I think that news organizations will be required to focus on their greatest strengths and abandon unsustainable diversions. In some cases, that might mean abandoning breaking news coverage to the online sphere in favour of unique and perceptive analysis that can't be "scooped" by Twitter. In others, that might mean discarding the mindset that digital news delivery is the only thing that matters anymore.
Michael Rosenwald's article "Print is dead, long live print." undercuts the widely-held assumptions that emphasizing online news always makes financial sense and that print is in free fall because people prefer pixels over paper. He argues declining print readership might have a lot more in common with the declining quality of its journalism due to persistent budget cuts. Rosenwald also makes the case that the online news experience has a negative effect on readers themselves; he describes how the digital culture of skimming actually hurts our reading comprehension because it leads to a distracted and fragmented understanding that is hardly retained.
Rosenwald persuasively points out some of online journalism's business flaws, including the observation that the average online news consumer is less loyal and less likely to pay for content. In many cases, online journalism might be a bad investment for papers or magazines that are barely staying solvent.
Will print ever rise again and challenge the Internet's dominance as the 21st century's main information medium? No. But, it can mount a comeback if publishers are willing to differentiate themselves in this era of alternative facts and fake news.
More and more newspapers will be required to return to their roots or face extinction. They will have to realize that they can't do it all on a limited budget and cede some ground to digital-only outlets in an attempt to preserve their core product. This calculating retreat and return to high quality local/regional journalism might be the only way for some companies to stop the bleeding.
Nevertheless, organizations with international reputations and strong financial backers like the Washington Post or New York Times will be able to fill the void and expand their influence in the digital realm. With any luck, it will also finally register with the general public that real journalism needs to be financially supported. Paywalls and subscriptions are one of the only ways for credible news sources to sustainably supply good reporting, writing and multimedia production in an online environment.
There is always the possibility that legacy media organizations are doomed, no matter what. I don't buy it, but change occurs so rapidly these days that it isn't safe to discount any possibility.
In Canada, the federal government is considering ways to help its unstable news industry fight back against digital goliaths like Google and Facebook. New taxes and copyright measures designed to level the playing field for domestic news producers are just some of the proposed ways to make Canadian news companies more competitive.
This political intervention, however, will not be enough to turn back the tides of online journalism and keep archaic news organizations alive.
News organizations need to reinvent themselves. Whether they publish in print or online or both, I think that news organizations will be required to focus on their greatest strengths and abandon unsustainable diversions. In some cases, that might mean abandoning breaking news coverage to the online sphere in favour of unique and perceptive analysis that can't be "scooped" by Twitter. In others, that might mean discarding the mindset that digital news delivery is the only thing that matters anymore.
Michael Rosenwald's article "Print is dead, long live print." undercuts the widely-held assumptions that emphasizing online news always makes financial sense and that print is in free fall because people prefer pixels over paper. He argues declining print readership might have a lot more in common with the declining quality of its journalism due to persistent budget cuts. Rosenwald also makes the case that the online news experience has a negative effect on readers themselves; he describes how the digital culture of skimming actually hurts our reading comprehension because it leads to a distracted and fragmented understanding that is hardly retained.
Rosenwald persuasively points out some of online journalism's business flaws, including the observation that the average online news consumer is less loyal and less likely to pay for content. In many cases, online journalism might be a bad investment for papers or magazines that are barely staying solvent.
Will print ever rise again and challenge the Internet's dominance as the 21st century's main information medium? No. But, it can mount a comeback if publishers are willing to differentiate themselves in this era of alternative facts and fake news.
More and more newspapers will be required to return to their roots or face extinction. They will have to realize that they can't do it all on a limited budget and cede some ground to digital-only outlets in an attempt to preserve their core product. This calculating retreat and return to high quality local/regional journalism might be the only way for some companies to stop the bleeding.
Nevertheless, organizations with international reputations and strong financial backers like the Washington Post or New York Times will be able to fill the void and expand their influence in the digital realm. With any luck, it will also finally register with the general public that real journalism needs to be financially supported. Paywalls and subscriptions are one of the only ways for credible news sources to sustainably supply good reporting, writing and multimedia production in an online environment.
There is always the possibility that legacy media organizations are doomed, no matter what. I don't buy it, but change occurs so rapidly these days that it isn't safe to discount any possibility.
With that observation in mind, the future of journalism is going to be fraught with tension as the old media takes one last shot at coexisting with its leaner Internet rivals.
