A privilege to host New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger, who gave the 2024 Reuters Memorial Lecture March 4. Among many favourite lines from his talk is this – “Journalistic independence demands a willingness to follow the facts, even when they lead you away from what you assumed would be true. A willingness to engage at once empathetically and sceptically with a wide variety of people and perspectives. An insistence on reflecting the world as it is, not as you wish it to be. A posture of curiosity rather than conviction, of humility rather than righteousness.”
And an honour to chair the subsequent panel discussion with him, Zaffar Abbas from Dawn, Melissa Bell former publisher of Vox, and Alessandra Galloni from Reuters, all of them people I deeply admire for their work and how they do it.
The social contract between journalism and much of the public is fraying – news use is declining, interest in news down, avoidance widespread. Based on survey data and especially well over a hundred interviews with consistent news avoiders, we look at why, and what it means when people live largely without news
We show that news avoidance is not “just” a response to the content on offer. It is also fundamentally shaped by who we are, what we believe, and the tools we rely on.
It happens at the intersection between identity, ideology, and infrastructures, and compound inequalities.
News avoiders, as we explain in the book, and this excerpt from it, tend to be younger, women, and from lower socioeconomic classes. Politics matters too, but this is less about whether people are left- or right-wing and more about the “other divide” between the connected and the disconnected.
In contrast to news lovers (and many regular users), news avoiders tended to see following news as an atomized, solitary activity – they are not embedded in any news communities encouraging regular use. They also often see news as being “not for people like them”, and more for elites.
News avoiders’ conviction that they cannot make a difference politically – and that news certainly will not help them do so – is the core of how they talk about their relationship with news. Whereas news lovers have a sense of political efficacy, news avoiders often do not.
We think avoidance is a problem for journalism, for society, and for people missing out.
But many news avoiders do not see their (distant) relationship to news as a problem. They do not see news as worthwhile, serving people like them, net good for society, let alone a duty.
Because news avoidance is only in part about content, the response cannot be more of the same.
Anyone who wants to respond to news avoidance need to meet people where they are.
“From news for the few and the powerful, to news for all the people.” That is how Juan González and Joseph Torres in their book describe the historical “grand arc of the American press.” That is not the direction of travel now. If anything it is going in the opposite direction.
Whether or not journalists and editors want to do this (in an already difficult and challenging situation) is their decision. For those who do want to address news avoidance, we present five ideas based on our research in the book and in this article.
I wrote a piece for the Financial Times about why I think we need to focus squarely on this as we head into a big election year.
My (naively unworkable) working title when I submitted it was “It’s the elite, stupid: stop gaslighting the public about where consequential misinformation comes from”.
A few links below to evidence that has informed my view.
Third, to state the obvious, some politicians sometimes weaponize false and misleading information for their own purposes. It’s easy to pin this on “populists” – there may be something to this – but it can come from establishment types too – Blair, Bush, Kennedy, Reagan, etc.
Fifth, we don’t need to “forget” technology, as the FT headline suggests, but look at root causes – how political elites make use of tech, and how tech companies react to this use, sometimes treating them differently as a matter of policy, sometimes perhaps for pragmatic reasons.
In summary – misinformation often comes from the top, elite cues are more consequential than more misinformation added to what is already a vast ocean of content, populists may be particularly likely to use this for political purposes but they are not alone, and some politicians want to be allowed to act as they please. There is a lot of research on misinformation – if you are interested in more, great and warmly recommended resources include the “Critical Disinformation Studies” syllabus from CITAP, Brendan Nyhan’s “Political Misinformation” syllabus as well as (both of these are pretty US-focused) for example the edited volume “Disinformation in the Global South” for a wider view.
We document how many coming of age now eschew direct discovery for most brands, have little interest in conventional news offers oriented to older generations’ habits, interests, and values, instead embrace participatory, personable, personalised options offered via platforms.
This shift in media use is accompanied by ‘generalised scepticism’, not just low trust in news found via social and search (as we have shown before) but also concern over whether online news is real or fake (esp. among those who say they mainly use social media as source of news).
And there are other concerns around platforms and algorithms – across the countries where we asked, nearly half agree of respondents ‘worry that more personalised news may mean that I miss out on important information’ (48%) and ‘miss out on challenging viewpoints’ (46%).
Active online participation with news is declining (offline too), and concerned about what they see on platforms, majority of respondents say they have tried to influence story selection in one or more ways (e.g. changing settings), with different objectives (and rarely more fun).
Social media platforms is also where respondents are most likely to say they come across people criticising journalists or the news media. These criticism are often driven by politicians, and looking across our dataset, we find a correlation between exposure to media criticism and low trust in news.
Despite reservations over misinformation, trust, algorithms, and more, the “new normal” is a world where people overwhelmingly, everywhere, opt for digital media in terms of their use – and are often not paying attention to mainstream outlets and journalists even when it comes to news.
This is a super difficult environment for the business of news. On one side, various competing platforms are attracting most online advertising. On the other, many different subscription offers compete with news, and most news subscriptions go to a few winners, mostly upmarket national titles.
Report lead author is Nic Newman, working with Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig Robertson and myself.
It is made possible by 18 sponsors, our amazing country partners, and the whole Reuters Institute team.
It’s a community effort, and I’m so happy to be part of this community.
We are using the hashtag #DNR22 for discussions on Twitter.
As I write in my foreword, we live in an age of extremes, also when it comes to some aspects of news and media use.
While many of the most commercially successful news media are doing well by primarily serving audiences that are, crudely put, like me – affluent, highly educated, privileged, in many countries predominantly male, middle-aged, and white – questions continue to mount around the connection between journalism and much of the public.
The purpose of our research at the Reuters Institute is to ensure that reporters, editors, and news media executives and others who care about the future of journalism can understand these trends and many others on the basis of reliable, robust, relevant research that can help inform how they – on the basis of their different ideals and interests – chose to adapt to a changing environment.
The Digital News Report is a key part of this.
Seven highlights from this year’s report below.
First, we find that a growing number of news media willing to embrace digital and able to offer distinct journalism in an incredibly competitive marketplace do well by doing good. But many struggle in an unforgiving winner-takes-most online environment, for example when it comes to subscriptions.
Second, while many commercially successful news media primarily serve audiences that are, crudely put, like me (affluent, highly educated, privileged etc) our findings document connection between journalism and much of the public is fraying. Interest and trust is down, news avoidance up.
Third, more broadly, in many countries much of the public question whether the news media are independent of undue political or government influence – even in very privileged countries, barely half say news media are independent of undue influence most of the time.
Fourth, these issues are compounded by differences in how new generations use media – looking specifically at those under 24 we find much less interest in connecting directly with news media, different views on what journalism ought to look like, much heavier reliance on newer forms of social media.
Fifth, across markets 54% say they worry about identifying the difference between what is real and fake on the internet when it comes to online news. More of those who say they mainly use social media as source of news (61%) are worried than among those who don’t use social at all (48%).
Sixth, despite these concerns, access to news continues to become more distributed. Across all markets, less than a quarter (23%) prefer to start their news journeys with a news site or app, down 9pp since 2018. Those aged 18–24 have an even weaker connection with news sites and apps.
Seventh, as publishers, but also individual journalists, seek to reach people via social media, it is important to note that, in most countries, half or more of respondents feel that journalists on social should stick to reporting the news on social media (even as a sizable minority feel they should be allowed to express personal opinions).
Our core argument is that the power of platforms is deeply relational and based on ability to attract end users and partners like publishers.
It’s always hard to summarize extensive empirical work briefly, but here a few key points from my short Twitter thread on the book, with a few pics of some central passages in the book.
Platforms do not control the means of production, but the means of connection, and they are powerless without partners. To understand their power we need to understand both reservations partners have and why they often embrace platforms nonetheless, continue to work with them.
Platform power is an enabling, transformative, and productive form of power—and power nonetheless, tied to institutional and strategic interests of platform companies, often exercised in highly asymmetric ways.
It goes beyond hard and soft power. We identify five main aspects.
In the short run, actors make choices, in the long run, these choices become structures. Both platforms and partners have agency here, but there is a huge asymmetry between the biggest platforms (facing a few big platform rivals) and a multitude of much smaller publishers.
We approach platform power through an institutionalist lens, and focus on how it is exercised in relational ways through socio-technical systems that develop path-dependency and momentum over time and retain an imprint of their founding logics that shape ongoing interactions.
Our analysis is based on interviews across several countries, observation, background conversations, as well as on-the-record sources and more. In the methods appendix we reflect on individual and institutional positionality, including differences between the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism where I work and much of the research was done, and Simon Fraser University where Sarah now works.
The evolving relationships between platforms and publishers speaks to fundamental feature of the contemporary world – that not only individual citizens, but also social and political institutions, are becoming empowered by and dependent on a few private, for-profit companies
Very proud of the advance praise from colleagues with experiencing working in publishing companies, for platforms, as well as some leading academics researching digital media, including from Vivian Schiller, Nick Couldry, and José van Dijck. It means a lot to me personally to read what they kindly had to say about the book in advance of publication!
The research for this book was made possible by the prize money from the 2014 Tietgen Award, which funded Sarah’s position as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the associated research costs.
We would like to thank first of all our interviewees and everybody else who has talked to us, joined off-the-record discussions we hosted, invited us to events, and let us sit in on meetings. The book would not have been possible without them sharing their perspectives, and whether they agree with our analysis or not, we hope they recognize the processes they are part of in what we write about here.
In addition, many different colleagues and friends have provided generous (and often challenging!) feedback as we worked on this, including David Levy, the former Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and our many good colleagues there. Special thanks go to Chris Anderson, Gina Neff, Joy Jenkins, and Lucas Graves, who went through an entire draft manuscript with us and provided invaluable input. Daniel Kreiss and the anonymous reviewer helped further sharpen our thinking, and the series editor Andrew Chadwick went above and beyond in helping us develop our ideas. Fay Clarke, Felix Simon, and Gemma Walsh all did an outstanding job as research assistants at various stages of the project. Angela Chnapko at Oxford University Press masterfully guided us through the publication process.
My presentation notes for opening part of OECD panel on “Competition, Media and Digital Platforms” at the 2022 Open Competition day. Video of whole session here. More context at the end of the post.
News media used to operate in a low-choice environment where they had high market power over both audiences and advertisers.
Before the move to a digital, mobile, and platform dominated media environment, news media used to control both the channels of distribution and bundled the content people accessed, and captured a significant share of both audience attention and advertising spending because of the positions they occupied.
As a consequence, in markets that were geographically differentiated due to how print and broadcast distribution works, a significant number of news media made quite a lot of money by dominating local markets and specific audience niches.
News media now operate in what is, for citizens, a high-choice environment when it comes to content, and have very limited market power over both audiences and advertisers.
In a digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment, platforms increasingly control the channels of distribution, news is unbundled and competes for attention with all sorts of other content, and news media capture a much smaller share of audience attention and, as a consequence, of advertising spending.
This is a much, much more competitive market, and one characterized by very strong winner-takes-most dynamics where a few winners are doing well but many titles, especially legacy but also new entrants, have a much harder time making money.
A few key datapoints illustrate this –
A rough estimate is that people spend something like twenty percent of the time they spend reading print reading news, and something like ten percent of the time they spent watching television watching news.
By contrast, in the countries where we have data, all news media combined account for something like three to four percent of the time that people spend with digital media.
Since advertisers were never interested in the news per se, but in reaching audiences, it is not surprising that they have gone where the audience is.
Online, that is, to a large extend, on platforms – and the popular success and evident market power of a few big platforms, most prominently Google and Facebook, has undoubtedly exacerbated the commercial challenges news media face as they account for a large share of total advertising sales.
The biggest platforms are the face of the challenge, but they are not all of it – it is important to recognize that, according to eMarketer, globally, most of the biggest sellers of digital advertising are platforms who can offer very low prices, very detailed targeting, and often both depth and breadth in terms of audience reach.
Advertisers still spend some money with news media, especially those news media who can offer premium brands and an advertising environment that stands out from just “stuff on the internet”. But over time I’d expect the share of advertising spending that goes to news media won’t be much higher than the share of audience attention that goes to news media – and, as said, right now, that’s a few percent.
If we look at those few percent of attention, and the news media industry specifically, we can see that the shift from a pre-digital to a digital environment has further intensified existing winner-takes-most dynamics.
In the past, economies of scale and high barriers to entry drove consolidation and the formation of local monopolies and oligopolies. Media markets have always been highly concentrated.
In a digital environment where geography no longer presents a meaningful barrier to entry, the same dynamics are playing out at a national level and to a smaller extend at a global level.
Look at attention, and by extension advertising, first.
In the markets where we have data, out of hundreds of competing news media, typically, a handful of titles – almost always national brands – account for half or more of all time spent with news online.
That’s the big head – at the long-tail end of the distribution, in the US, all local news titles combined have been estimated to account for less than one-sixth of all time spend with news online, in the UK, about one-tenth.
It stands to reason that a tiny amount of attention combined with no market power over audiences or advertisers is less lucrative than being the dominant player in local content and local advertising.
Look at paying for news next.
Here too we see strong winner-takes-most dynamics. In the markets where we have data, again, a small number of predominantly national titles, out of hundreds of news media, often account for half or more of all digital news subscriptions.
They are the big head – at the long-tail end of the distribution, with some important exceptions, local titles have seen limited growth in digital subscriptions.
Where does this leave us?
It leaves us in a place where I think we should expect top-line revenues in the news industry as a whole to continue to decline for some time, driven primarily by audience and advertiser choices, and compounded by the success of platforms, as relatively lucrative legacy print and broadcast operations continue their long-term structural decline (print, traditional TV) or at best stagnate (which I consider best case scenario for linear scheduled TV) and digital is a much more challenging and competitive market.
And it points to a future where existing winner-takes-most dynamics in the business of news, for both attention, advertising, and reader revenues, are reinforced.
It will probably be a smaller industry than news was in the 1990s – but with a few percent of total advertising expenditures, a growing number of digital subscribers served at near-zero marginal costs, and auxiliary revenues from ecommerce and the like it will still be a multi-billion dollar industry, and one that will probably invest a greater share of revenues in editorial than it ever did, because the very high distribution and production costs associated with offline are falling away.
Compared to the recent past, it will be characterized by few winners – dominant national titles, and those new entrants who make good use of the gift of digital distribution at low cost, keep their content distinct and their costs low, and manage platform risk well.
And there will be many losers – especially among also-ran national titles, local titles stuck with a pre-digital cost structure, as well as titles trying to build a sustainable business around serving less privileged and often historically underserved parts of the public (as well as all titles with owners who prefer short-term asset stripping over the uncertain returns on long-term investment in digital transformation).
It’s going to be amazing for people like me, the most lucrative affluent, highly educated, news loving part of the public. It’s looking a lot more mixed for the majority of the public. The latter point is potentially problematic if one believes, as I personally do, that independent professional journalism, with its imperfections, play an important role in our societies, but that is more a political question.
As part of the opening, I was given four minutes to say a few things about the following questions: “How has news media changed in the digital age? Changes in the revenue model and changes in consumer behaviour? Any difference between large and small/local outlets?”
This post contains my presentation notes – a lot of ground to cover in four minutes! They draw on this handbook chapter from 2020, which I still hope is useful in capturing the main dynamics as I see them. I’ve added a few links to underlying evidence and two charts taken from the handbook chapter.
Two addendums to the notes above. First, as I made clear in the panel discussion, OECD member countries are very different, and so is the business of news (and political context) from case to case, this is just an attempt to capture what I see as the high level trends. Second, in the panel I somehow came to be cast as the pessimist – that’s not how I personally think of my analysis. While sobering, I think it also gives ground for evidence-based optimism. Whether you find it optimistic, pessimistic, or realistic, I give it in the spirit of James Baldwin’s piercing line: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced”, hence the title of this post.
(Oh, and finally, I wonder how many other presenters at OECD events are caught red-handed on video with a half-dozen Foucault books on the shelf behind them!)
We sometimes compare the multitude of intersecting challenges journalism faces to the global climate crisis. In the process of thinking about the climate crisis, I have come across the notion of fact-based hope, something I think applies to journalism too.
It’s about how we can be – and have evidence to be – resolutely hopeful even in the face of severe challenges.
This post is about fact-based hope for journalism, and inspired by the amazing Reuters Institute journalist fellows we host, including the most recent cohort (pictured after a day full of evidence-based optimism!).
As with the climate crisis, anyone who hasn’t recognized the so-called “burning platform” in journalism is in denial.
Ignoring or actively distracting from the conflagration – created by the combination of analogue business models disrupted by audiences’ move to digital media and the rise of platforms, much more intense competition for attention and advertising in an high-choice online media environment, and the often fraying “public connection” between much of journalism and much of the public, in many countries compounded by powerful people who wage little less than a war on independent news media and those who seek truth and report it – is doing the profession, the industry, and the public a disservice. On closer inspection, there never really was a ‘golden age’, but in any case, there is no going back. Business as usual is suicidal.
* * *
But as with the climate crisis, we cannot and should not let the scale, scope, and complexity of the challenges ahead lead to paralysis, let alone resignation.
Fact-based hope is about how we might move beyond the crises we face.
So let’s be clear: there are both systemic, policy-level and more individual, organizational-level things we can do to create the different kinds of journalisms we want in the future.
The systemic things are largely political choices, up to citizens and the elected officials who represent them. We have many options based on evidence or at least with proof of concept, and while not cheap, uncontroversial, or without downsides, it is important to clearly state we can choose, as societies, to create a more enabling environment for the freedom, funding, and future that journalism needs. (I’ve written about that extensively here, here, here and elsewhere.)
But the more individual, organizational-level things are worth highlighting in parallel. Just as the climate crisis calls for both systemic and more granular responses, so too with the many challenges facing journalism. The need for systemic change does not mean we shouldn’t think about more individual and organizational-level change too.
That is especially important because large-scale systemic change for the better seems unlikely when it comes to journalism. There is no question policy can make a difference for the better (just as it very visible makes a difference for the worse in many countries when used for e.g. media capture). But will it? These are at best long-term responses, and in most countries face uncertain political prospects. As I’ve said before, I think we need to keep in mind that, realistically, most politicians around the world regard independent journalism at best with benign indifference, more often with rank hypocrisy, and very often with open hostility. Media policy, like all other forms of policy, is made by the politicians we have and will be used by those we get, it is not the exclusive province of the particular politicians each of us may personally prefer. We may hope that politicians will rally en masse to make a meaningful commitment to support journalism (despite the fact that there currently does not seem to be much public support for it). But I don’t think we have fact-based hope that they will.
So I am all for looking at evidence-based options for systemic change.
But, in parallel, I think we need to identify individual, organizational-level examples that can inspire fact-based hope.
* * *
And all around me, I see not just crises, but also evidence for fact-based hope.
The business of journalism second – it’s brutal out there, and few winners, many losers, but increasingly it seems the winners are not only some upmarket legacy titles but also some membership and subscription based digital born news media. After years of pretty unrelenting bad news, we are seeing some new investments in local news too, and some ad-supported popular titles at least in Europe have built huge online reach serving a far more diverse audience than often upper-crust-oriented subscription and membership-based titles. In addition to editorial collaborations, we are also seeing some publishers collaborate on the business side. And while limited and uneven, there is also a growing number of non-profit media and new ideas of how to support them. Finally, it’s also important to see that digitally-oriented titles often invest a far greater share of their revenues in journalism than legacy titles ever did – we can get more journalistic bang even if there may well be fewer bucks.
The public connection between journalism and the people it serves third – the coronavirus crisis has provided a reminder of the importance of trustworthy news. We have seen trust in news overall increase in many countries, we have seen some evidence more trusted brands seem to have grown their online reach more than others, research documents that news has helped people understand the crisis (just as it helps them understand politics). The way some journalists think about this connection is also evolving – with more emphasis on community engagement, a willingness to consider impact a measure of success, and a greater openness to using data to understand the audience. We are also seeing a greater recognition that unrelenting focus only on things that go wrong in the world (“negativity bias”) can turn people off the news, and an openness to think of constructive and solutions-oriented elements to journalism.
More than anything, across all four areas, I draw hope from how I see many journalists find one another in these discussions, whether in informal networks, professional associations, or unions, and face them with courage (insisting on the importance of change), curiosity (even if we don’t always know, in advance, exactly what we want), and community (we need to work together to get to where we need to be).
If we look at all these cases for fact-based hope and ask “will they work for all news media everywhere?”, the answer is clearly no. There is no single capital-S solution and no single capital-P problem.
But if we look at them and ask “will they work for some?” the answer is clearly, demonstrably, evidently “yes!” That provides the basis for hoping they can work for some others in some other places.
If we look at these examples and ask “will all journalists and all news media everywhere want to learn from these examples?” the answer is also clearly no.
Sometimes its because they may be a poor fit. That’s as it should be. Not everyone will want to walk the same paths.
Sometimes it is because, let’s be clear, some parts of journalism and some parts of the news media industry aren’t all that interested in changing. That’s in a way understandable, as long as we are clear-eyed that this is a choice, and that it too has consequences. In journalism as with the climate crisis, action and change can be difficult, but inaction has its own cost.
Sometimes some journalists and some in parts of the news industry want change, but some of their colleagues, perhaps their bosses, don’t want change, or disagree about the direction of change – as I’ve written before, we need to face up to the fact that this is sometimes about power and self-interest as much as about different ideals or hopes for the future.
But we clearly can change, even in the face of the many, serious challenges journalism faces – there are inspiring real-world examples all around us, and I’m so inspired by how the fellows we host in Oxford engage with them, from Adele’s work on collaboration and climate coverage, to Peter’s work on business models to protect editorial independence, to Zoe’s work on diversity, to Ramisha’s work on how journalists can learn from one another and many more.
I think fact-based hope points to many different paths ahead, and I think it provides an antidote to resignation, a position between the equally misleading extremes of facile pessimism and facile optimism. Fact-based hope is not about denying the multiple crises journalism faces. It is about responding to them.
Let me end with a quote from Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement organizing to fight the climate crisis in the United States.
“The biggest mistake we all make”, she says, “is in trying to jam hope down each other’s throats without giving the space and time for us to feel the full embodied response of what is happening.”
“Hope honestly comes from the action that I both see myself and those around me taking on a daily basis.”
“Hope”, she says, “lies in action.”
Prakash is not oblivious to the (climate) challenges we face. But she knows that hope is a necessary part of facing them.
I think that goes for journalism too. And I think we have evidence to support fact-based hope.
The 2021 Reuters Institute Digital News Report is out now. I’m so proud to be part of this teamwork. We cover 46 markets that account for more than half of world’s population, including six new countries in the Global South.
The report is always a flagship for us, and the further international expansion is a big step for us, and I think it is important.
As I write in my foreword,
“We are particularly proud to be able to include more countries in the Global South, primarily because we hope the data and analysis we present are useful for journalists, editors, and media executives there, but also because we strongly believe their colleagues elsewhere can learn a lot from the situation in countries where news media have long faced political attacks, financial precarity, and internet users heavily oriented towards mobile and social media – some of the realities journalists in historically more privileged parts of the world increasingly have to deal with.”
The report is available as HTML, in PDF, and there are more resources including a massive 192 slide deck. All of it meant to be used.
The moment we press “publish” is not the end for us, it’s just the start of the next stage, the conversation with journalists, editors, media executives, policymakers, and academics across the world who engage with our work.
Follow some of that conversation on Twitter where we are using the hashtag #DNR21, at the various discussions of the report at launch events across the world, or read some of the country reports our amazing country partners have published.
In this post just five highlights from me.
FIRST, trust in the news has grown.
Across 46 markets, 44% say they trust most news most of the time, up, on average, by six percentage points in wake of Coronavirus pandemic (back to 2018-levels).
No similar growth for trust in news seen on e.g. social media means that the “trust gap” with platforms has grown.
SECOND, trusted brands have often done better in terms of increased online audience reach.
Most news media saw a surge in audience during pandemic and lockdowns, but news fatigue is also setting in and the surge is in many cases levelling off – who can they retain increased reach as the situation evolve?
We looked at how many brands have a significantly higher reach in early 2021 than early 2020, and find more trusted brands have often done better.
THIRD, distributed discovery is growing ever more important.
The pandemic has accelerated the move to more digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment.
And despite trust gap and concerns over misinformation, various platforms continue to grow in importance for news discovery.
Just 25% of our respondents say going direct to a news site or app is their main way to access online news.
FOURTH, platform ecology growing more complex, especially among younger users
As Facebook, while still important, is less used for news, a slew of other platforms are growing in importance, especially among younger people.
This is a promising but also tricky space for news publishers in many ways – for example, on growing networks such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, influencers and alternative sources seem to command more attention than mainstream media and journalists.
FIFTH, the business of news remains winner-takes-most
There is some increase in payment for online news in a few rich countries, but the overall percentage of people paying remains low.
And in most countries a large proportion of digital subscriptions go to just a few big national brands, reinforcing winner-takes-most dynamics. Only in Norway do we see a large number saying they subscribe to local news online, and only in the US is the median number of digital news subscriptions now 2 (often a big national plus either a niche supplement (sports, opinion, etc.) or a local one, very rarely both).
Thus, while platform companies and some, often big, publishers are doing well, many commercial news media are struggling.
Those are just five highlights from me.
It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to work with Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Anne Schulz, Simge Andi, and Craig Robertson on the analysis and writing, with invaluable input from our amazing country partners, support from the whole Reuters Institute team, and backing from 16 different funders.
It takes a village and I’m so happy to be part of this particular one.
Finally, if you like the Digital News Report – and the institute’s work more broadly – please consider giving a donation to our Journalists Under Pressure Fund. It helps journalists operating in difficult conditions join our fellowship program. Click here to donate.
Do we need a “New Deal” for journalism, a concerted set of policies and commitment of resources to secure an enabling environment for the freedom, funding, and future independent professional news reporting need to do its important job today and tomorrow?
I recommend reading the whole report, written for the Forum by Sameer Padania and a team of rapporteurs, based on desk research, tons of interviews, various submissions, and input from the working group.
My foreword is pasted below in case of interest, and I have summarized key points in this Twitter thread.
TL;DR – (1) Independent journalism is facing serious challenges around sustainability (as well as media freedom), especially at the local level and in terms of historically underserved and marginalized communities. Journalists and the news industry are leading on finding ways ahead on sustainability but (2) policymakers can help create a more enabling environment, if they are willing to move beyond talk and commit real resources, (3) whether we do this is a political choice, not a policy conundrum – blue sky thinking and new ideas are always welcome, but let’s not forget we have a number of existing policy options with proof of concept. Ignoring them is a bit like trying to combat climate change solely by risky bets on, say, geoengineering while ignoring the panoply of tools we already know can make a difference if we choose to use them. We should judge policymakers on their actions more than fine declarations, nice speeches, or lavish conferences, and always remember that inaction is a choice too.
My foreword below.
Less talk, more action?
“Quality, clear, and truthful information is essential for a democratic society based on the values of honesty and respect, fairness and justice, freedom and dignity.”, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeausaid on World Press Freedom day this year, thanking journalists everywhere who “give us the facts to make better sense of the world, contribute to our communities, and lead freer, richer lives.”[1]
This is more than just words. While journalism is imperfect, and sometimes problematic, years of research has documented how independent, professional journalism helps people stay informed, take part in political processes, and engage with their local communities, just as it can help hold power to account and reduce corruption and malfeasance in both the public and the private sector.
But journalism’s ability to do this is threatened on several fronts today, by powerful people all over the world waging war on journalism as media freedom erodes, and by the inexorable decline of the traditional business of news as people abandon print and broadcast in favour digital media and platforms, a challenge sometimes compounded by journalism’s unwillingness to reckon with its own shortcomings or adapt to a changing world.
If governments want to do more than talk about the value of journalism, and actually help the journalists and news media who are leading on forging new ways forward for the profession and the industry, they will need to step up and take real action.
Whether this is a priority is for the public and its elected officials to decide, but one thing is clear. Speeches alone will do little to help journalists. They need action, and the reality is that, at best, most governments have done little or nothing.
What can governments do? One place to start is with existing policies that have proof of concept, command broad-based support in the countries where they are in place, and are oriented towards the future of journalism. Blue-sky thinking is always welcome, but it should not distract us from proven tools already at hand. This report identifies a range of the most important steps governments could take – right now – to help ensure the freedom, funding, and future that journalists need to do their job. None of them are perfect, but all of them are practical, and all can be structured so they avoid simply privileging incumbents or lining the pockets of proprietors and shareholders.
They include, perhaps most importantly—
Supporting private sector news media through indirect forms of support such as tax exemptions, direct support specifically tied to investment in professional journalism and structured to prioritize local media and media serving minorities, and supporting innovation, without tying these forms of support to increasingly marginal forms of distribution like print, is one option, as demonstrated in Denmark.
Supporting public service media with a clear remit and ability to serve the public across all media, not just broadcasting, strong insulation from political pressure to ensure their editorial independence from government, sufficient funding to deliver on their mission, and a clear focus on serving those communities least well served by private sector media is a second option, as demonstrated in the United Kingdom.
Supporting the creation of non-profit news media by easing the creation of journalistic non-profit organizations, whether from scratch or by converting legacy titles, and creating incentives for both individuals and foundations to support non-profit news media, is a third option, and non-profit media are already making important contribution in some countries.
Supporting independent news media globally by committing at least some Official Development Assistance to journalism in other countries is a fourth option, whether done bilaterally or through joint vehicles. We can all benefit from stronger journalism, not just at home, but also abroad – if anyone need a reminder that our futures are tied together in an age defined by the climate emergency and intertwined economies, the coronavirus pandemic has certainly provided it.
None of these policies are silver bullets, but they can all make a difference for the better, as long as they are deployed within a framework of fundamental rights and respect for free expression and media freedom (otherwise they can quickly turn into instruments for state capture).
They all also come with proof of concept, and avoid the uncertainty of betting on opaque arrangements that can entrench dominant players and risk primarily benefiting a few large publishers who are often already doing relatively well.
All these policies, and more reviewed in the report, can offer inspiration for governments who are serious about supporting independent journalists and news media as they carve out a new sustainable future for themselves. They offer a chance to break with years of inaction, and an opportunity to reform inherited arrangements tied to waning media like print or broadcast.
A few countries already have some of these policies in place, many countries at least a few of them, but no country has done all it can to help ensure journalists can continue to do their indispensable work, so central to the functioning of democracy. The United States, for example, has long been an outlier among democracies in terms of how little it does to actually support independent news media, and of course also illustrate the vitriol with which some politicians attack news media who seek truth and report it. President Biden has at least changed the tone. But will he and other political leaders around the globe who recognize the real public value of journalism take more tangible steps news reporting at home and abroad?
If governments are seriously committed to creating an enabling environment for independent professional journalism, they will commit real resources. Journalists – and the public they serve – don’t need comforting speeches. They need concrete steps. This report identifies some of what can be done. Now it is up to elected officials and the public to decide if they want less talk, and more action.
Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, and chair of the working group on the Forum on Information and Democracy Working Group on Sustainability of Journalism.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 