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Home Future of Journalism

Print Is At The Root Of Good News

The Future of Journalism by The Future of Journalism
December 4, 2020
in Future of Journalism
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Print Is At The Root Of Good News

He loves call with good news

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First published in The Age (August 18, 2011)

David McKnight, Penny O’Donnell

An Australian inquiry into media bias would ignore the bigger crisis  facing newspapers in the digital age.

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Does Australia need an inquiry into the news media?  It does, but not for the  reasons that prompted Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Senator Bob Brown to  discuss the idea. They are angered because of political bias. But there is an  even bigger and more complex issue.

According to some, the newspapers of Australia are dinosaurs due for  extinction. The vast newsrooms with busy journalists hunched over their phones  and the late-night decisions on the front-page headline will disappear. And,  according to some, good riddance.

We beg to differ. Newspapers’ problems are problems for democracy and for an  informed public. This has been recognised by several overseas inquiries.

To claim an elevated role for newspapers in a democracy may seem bizarre  given the latest phone hacking revelations, but this is the case.

Newspapers are in trouble because advertisements are going online.

In the jargon, the ”business model” that has sustained mass-circulation  newspapers for more than 100 years is in swift decline.

The techno-optimists assure us that we will still get our news by social  media, by online, by radio and television but not from paper and ink.

The  internet has certainly allowed an unprecedented flowering and exchange  of ideas and opinion. But it has not produced a substitute for the news that is  produced by newspapers.  In fact, most news on the internet is ultimately  generated by newspapers, supported by their clunky print advertising business  model. Convergence fosters re-purposing and wider distribution of stories, but  newspaper journalists are still the main creators of original content.

These so-called dinosaurs also provide the raw material for radio talkback,  TV news shows, other newspapers and the Twitterati. Not all newspaper-based news  is high quality. Some is routine and some is biased but the key point is that  high-quality news has been paid for by print advertising, not the cover price of  the newspaper. And this will soon end.

Newspapers matter for other reasons.  They and their journalists set the  political agenda for the electronic media and the internet. Murdoch’s Sydney  tabloid The Daily Telegraph and The Australian are said to be  the most influential news media in Australia, according to independent  research.

Newspapers achieve this because they have the biggest newsrooms and they  originate and publish far more stories each day than any other news medium.

The second most common source of internet news is generated from public  broadcasters such as the ABC. ”Free” news on the net is mostly paid for by  print advertising or the taxpayer.

Quality journalism is expensive – for example, the estimated costs for the  foreign coverage of  The New York Times is $70 million a year.

To pay for such costs, newspaper publishers are seeking new revenue and are  cutting staff. The losers are the readers and the wider public.

The future of quality journalism and the crisis of newspapers is a project we  are exploring with the financial support of the Australian Research Council and  the Walkley Foundation for Journalism.  In the past 12 months we have surveyed  100 senior journalists and editors from all major newspapers. Our research is  incomplete, but given the debate on an inquiry into the Australian media we feel  our partial results should be aired.

Generally, we found that most journalists and editors frame their notion of  quality in journalism by referring to the public interest.  They are alarmed at  the breakdown of the business model that has sustained newspaper journalism.  When asked how important it was to develop a new business model, 87 per cent  said it was  ”very important” or ”important”.  Of those who offered an  opinion about whether such a new business model would emerge, only half were  confident of success. Among the comments  were: ”It’s a life and death issue,  really”; ”The challenge for us is to produce journalism that people will pay  for”.

When asked what kind of support was needed from their own news organisations  to guarantee the quality of journalism in the future, 54 per cent wanted more  investment, resources and time to work longer on stories. Sixteen per cent  answered that what was needed was vision, leadership and ”standing up for  quality”. Ten per cent argued that news organisations should simply aim to  produce good content and investigative journalism.

Many now believe that the attempt to put journalism on the web was mistaken  and that the future lies in a subscription model, using tablets to deliver news.  We agree. It is not a question of supporting a particular physical product –  newsprint – but of ensuring that the society is serviced by a workforce that   has the highest possible standards and the capacity to produce in-depth  journalism.

In the near future the only kinds of quality journalism that are financially  viable may be the specialised financial journalism to service wealthy investors,  or a partisan journalism subsidised by media owners with interests in other more  profitable businesses.

We are concerned that if political bias is the central concern of an inquiry,  it will achieve little. Everyone will see this as code for attacking News Ltd,  which  may simply boycott the inquiry.

A more useful and forward-thinking inquiry would explore the policy, tax  relief and resourcing options open to governments committed to real diversity in  news and innovative  forms of journalism. The  situation of two major newspaper  corporations is far from ideal, but there is nothing to be gained from an  inquiry that ignores the real crisis in news.

Dr David McKnight is an associate professor at the Journalism and  Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, and Dr Penny  O’Donnell is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at  the University of Sydney.

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