Three highlights from a weekend spend discussing “The Role of the Fourth Estate in Democracies” at the Ditchley Foundation.
* The problem is not the public – people are interested in the world around them, they use media to explore it, make sense of it, and navigate it, and engage with content and information they find useful and relevant.
* Transitions are hard for news media, but also demonstrably possible – leaders from a range of very, very different kinds of publishers were very clear they think believe much of the current industry is at best in managed decline, but also that they see a range of sustainable paths forward for the business of news.
* Part of that is the useful discipline of having to reach your audience – several participants spoke in different ways about how the shift from direct discovery through channels dominated by news publishers to distributed discovery through platforms while in many ways very challenging has also forced a new, healthy, humility on journalism and the news media by making clear they can never take the public and people’s attention for granted.
All contributions are confidential but under the Ditchley rules we can draw on the substance of it as long as we do not disclose who said what – I was glad that this year’s discussions were much more respectful of the public and more cautiously optimistic about the future of (parts of) the news industry than many such discussions I have been part of over the years.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 