Now whilst that may be sensationalistic in terms of timescale - there is no doubt that the newspaper industry is in trouble. In the six months to March of this year the decline in US newspaper weekday circulation almost doubled (Source: Bloomberg) and a number of historic US newspaper titles have already hit financial trouble.
Yes the recession has hit media spend - but the core issue is that more & more consumers are getting their news from the internet.
But that's not really new news. What is new is how the internet is increasingly becoming the source for breaking news.
Last Thursday night I was doing some things around the house with BBC News 24 on in the background. But rather than seeing a journalist on the screen - there was a caption with an image of the TMZ.com site leading with the news of Michael Jackson's death. For the next couple of hours the BBC's news was simply reporting on the news from TMZ and the LA Times. Mainstream news media reporting breaking internet news.
In September last year, Robert Peston chose his blog to announce the proposed Lloyds/HBOS merger before breaking the news on BBC.
More recently, with reporting restrictions in place, the news from Iran has been lead by blogs, Tweets and videos from people on the streets.
In a 24-hour global news cycle no single news organisation is going to have the coverage to capture every breaking news story. So thanks to Twitter, blogs & the camera-phone the power of the consumer-journalist is massive. News can be broken by anywhere, anywhere, at any time.
Social media is increasingly driving the news agenda.
The challenge for the established media therefore becomes two-fold:
- How do they drive revenue from their online properties,
- How do they continue to verify the myriad of consumer-journalist sources?
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4 comments:
Hi Jed,
I actually posted this reply on another site as it's a subject that I find very interesting and that affects us all:
Currently, we have a situation where large Internet content providers reprint news re-skinned and re-formatted using their own branding i.e. news.google.com. This amounts to syndicating the article at almost no direct cost and, furthermore, it generates income from advertising - income that the newspapers are missing out on themselves!
From a regular consumer perspective, newspapers could consider adopting a micropayments system for ad-free versions of their content, but severly limit what is displayed to users who don't pay. This would only work if the industry as a whole acted in this way, forming a sort of 'cartel', but may go some way to ensuring their survival. RSS should also be provided on a paid-for basis.
Newspapers will continue to decline, but there will always be an appetite for professional journalism above and beyond the blogs.
Thanks,
Rich
That's really interesting because I've been thinking about how the 'ad funded' model can continue to exist in a recession-hit media world.
Last month Blyk (the ad-funded mobile operator) withdrew their consumer offer, the newspaper industry is slowly collapsing...and today Joost (the online video company) announced that market conditions mean it too was moving away from a consumer focussed ad-funded model. Goodness only knows how Spotify makes money.
So a new model HAS to be found as only the largest traffic sites can continue the ad-funded approach. And I agree I think it's got to focus on subscriptions. However, the print media industry let the genie out of the bottle with free content - and I think it's hard to see consumers willingness to pay for something that they have considered free for some time - unless there is an industry-wide approach. But who will blink first!
Don't think blogs will ever replace journalism, but the citizen-reporter will (and has already) become increasingly important for breaking some of that news....
You're right about the genie-in-the-bottle of free content: people expect to be able to read the news for free on the web.
However, would you pick up a copy of The Times or The Guardian from a newsagent and leave without paying?
I think it's undeniable that the citizen journalist is a powerful phenomenon. However, with such a multitude of voices, it becomes very difficult for people to draw a firm conclusion and, hence, some detail gets lost in the background noise.
Also, there is little oversight of 'blogs and Twitter. People with agendas can hijack the citizen-generated news more easily, whereas at least papers have an errors and omissions department and the fear of legal action to keep them in line.
Traditional media is dead! Long live traditional media!
Hi Jed,
An interesting article from El Reg about newspapers and agencies struggle to tighten up copyright law for their content:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/15/online_newspaper_publisher_protection/
Thanks,
Rich
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