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New Media, Old News: Journalism And Democracy In The Digital Age
With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy. In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, this book explores how technological, economic, and social changes have reconfigured news journalism, and the consequences of these transformations for a vibrant democracy in our digital age. The result is a piercing examination of why understanding news journalism matters now more than ever. It is essential reading for students and scholars of journalism and new media.
- GenresJournalism
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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September 1, 2014
This is a really interesting look at how to understand the media. I’ve become very interested lately in the relationship between the media and social policy. There are, of course, many schools of thought, as is explained in on of the last chapters here, “In democratic theory, three broad schools of thought have emerged: elitist, deliberative, and pluralist.” Page 193 Other books I’ve read lately basically pick their favourite and then try to make the world fit that – always a good idea. This book reports on research into the journalistic field that challenges lots of the things we currently ‘know’ about media.
So, what are the things we know about the media? Well, the big thing is that the internet is killing newspapers. Well, except that newspapers have been in trouble for a very long time, “the decline in circulation, so often attributed to competition from the internet, obviously predates the digital age. Circulation of national dailies peaked in 1951 - many years before the first web browser.” Page 48 It isn’t that the internet is having no impact on newspapers – quite the opposite, but in part the problem is much more complicated and, at least in part, due to our certain belief that no one reads newspapers anymore.
One of the things not really discussed here, but that ought to be remembered, is that newspapers don’t really sell content – they sell audiences, or rather access to audiences to advertisers. There is another myth that we have become much more global in our tastes – but really, the vast majority of people are mostly interested in ‘local news’ and read that in their local media. Even when reading on-line people tend to rely on information from established news outlets, and these tend to be the ones historically associated with their town or city of residence.
“There is still a very healthy appetite for news and while much is made of the internet’s transformation of the news environment, only 6 per cent of the UK population identify the internet as they main source of news in contrast with 65 per cent who opt for television and 15 per cent for newspapers.” Page 49 And what might be even more interesting here, given so much talk about media only providing us with what we want – that is, audience driven models of media content: “There are indications of greater levels of disconnect to the content of news. Some 55 per cent of people agreed that much of the news on TV was not relevant to them, up from 34 per cent in 2002.” Page 73 What is also interesting is that, “British national dailies were very much more right-wing than their readers in terms of party preference in every general election between 1979 and 1992.” Page 32
Now, this might make it sound like the internet revolution has done nothing to the news – and that would be completely wrong. The promise of the internet was that it allowed many-to-many communication, where previous media ‘revolutions’ were one-to-many. However, while this affordance clearly exists – I can write book reviews, people I’ve never met can comment on them, I reply and so on – this could not really be said to be the dominant feature of the internet. In fact, the vast majority of internet users have never posted anything anywhere.
There has been a blogging revolution – and we do get told over and over that the Arab Spring showed the power of the internet and social media. What generally doesn’t get mentioned is that governments can (and do) use social media to track the protests and protesters organised against them. Not all mirrors are one-way. It is also interesting that very few of the journalists here said they ever really got very much information worth having from blogs. The problem being that the information contained in blogs is often produced by some random person who may know next to nothing about the topic they are getting insanely worked up about. Gossip and vitriol are all great reads, but reprinting stuff like that in a national daily, for example, would probably only get the newspaper and journalist in trouble, rather than the blogger. Rule one – sue the guy with the money.
And talking about money, that really is the problem. People might be reading their local newspaper online, rather than buying the actual newspaper, but they certainly don’t like paying for the privilege, and the newspapers also don’t get the same revenue from advertising online that they did from newspapers. As one person says here, they exchange dollars for pennies with each reader that shifts. In Australia a recent report showed that newspapers receive about 70% of their revenue from advertising. This has much to do with both the economics of internet advertising as it does from downturns in the economy. Both of which are hard to separate out from each other so as to be able to tell which one is the most important current factor. While the whole world is telling you the internet is killing advertising revenue for news sites, it might actually be that the GFC did the killing and that once there is a recovery then advertising might spring back again, as it has done in the past.
The real problem with money that isn’t likely to go away is that advertising on the net isn’t nearly the same as advertising in newspapers – and it is mostly money from advertising that pays for newspaper content. The ‘public sphere’ idea (think Habermas, with modifications by Nancy Fraser) is often portrayed as being best exemplified by ‘media’ giving voice to the voiceless and providing the public with the information they need to be active in a democratic society. The way the system has worked up until now is that newspapers have sold audiences to advertisers – the advertisers have had much more say over what gets put into newspapers, than the ‘audience’ – hardly surprising, really, do you pay more attention to the wants of the person buying or the product being sold? As a cow how that works next time you are in the local butcher. And then newspapers and other media recycled some of this money back into content to retain their audiences to sell them anew next time. The problem is that advertising on the web doesn’t go to newspapers as much as it goes to search engines – that is, to people who provide no content at all. But while everyone complains that the public isn't prepared to pay for content, when was the last time you heard someone complain that Google doesn't provide any?
“Display advertising, in which news incumbents generally have an advantage, amounts to only 21 per cent of the online share; classified, where incumbents are investing heavily to challenge pure-play internet sites, accounts for 20.8 per cent of the market; while search, 84 percent of which is monopolised by Google in the UK, dominates online advertising with 57.6 per cent of the total share.” Page 45
This means that most news sites have been forced by economics to move to new models of content delivery. Not only by economics, either – but the affordances of the new media makes it much more likely that journalists will become what is referred to here as ‘churnalists’. There is a lot more cannibalism going on with journalists (for want of a better word) repackaging material and then putting their byline on it. This can’t be blamed on them (often their byline is put on articles they didn't write by their media organisation, much to their own chagrin), as, like the rest of us, they are being performance managed to within an inch of their lives. The problem is that most real news – that is, new content – comes the way it always did – through connections with real people. But journalists are increasingly tied to their desk. Why would you need to go see someone to get a report when they can email it to you? Why would you go have coffee with someone if you can text them? And companies and governments have their own media units that provide copy – normally produced by trained journalists – that is infinitely easier to reformat into your house style than starting from scratch. And then there is the problem of having to produce lots and lots of copy for news media organisations that have lots and lots of space to fill with fewer and fewer people. There is virtually no time to check the accuracy of any of this copy that will have your name on it. So, you are forced to rely on ‘reliable’ sources – and those tend to be people with titles, rather than the great unwashed.
And because most journalists are terrified they will miss ‘the news story of the day’ there is a hyper vigilance that involves them seeing what everyone else is doing, and this involves them reformatting their stories to fit in with everyone else’s too - particularly TV news - tails and dogs, again. And here is the next paradox – the internet provides infinite space for new copy, and yet what we get is all the same. “This provides rather more texture to the figures provided in research by Cardiff University suggesting that only 12-20 per cent of stories are generated ‘entirely by reporters who write them’.” Page 92
As we are reminded: “George Orwell got his inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four while working at the BBC.” Page 76
This book makes the point that economics isn’t necessarily the only issue that will impact on the changing face of the media. There are benefits to being able to control what populations think and cannibalism only works while there is still flesh to eat. People are still keen to ‘know’ what is going on in their world – being able to tell them what to think and how to behave is something no one is going to give up just because it cost a little. You know, Murdoch’s The Australia has been making a loss for years, and it is never likely to become profitable. But he won’t be closing it down anytime soon because, as our current Prime Minister said, it was largely responsible for electing John Howard's government and if that is true of Howard, it is triply true for Tony Abbott. Economics has much to recommend it – but never underestimate the power of politics.
So, what are the things we know about the media? Well, the big thing is that the internet is killing newspapers. Well, except that newspapers have been in trouble for a very long time, “the decline in circulation, so often attributed to competition from the internet, obviously predates the digital age. Circulation of national dailies peaked in 1951 - many years before the first web browser.” Page 48 It isn’t that the internet is having no impact on newspapers – quite the opposite, but in part the problem is much more complicated and, at least in part, due to our certain belief that no one reads newspapers anymore.
One of the things not really discussed here, but that ought to be remembered, is that newspapers don’t really sell content – they sell audiences, or rather access to audiences to advertisers. There is another myth that we have become much more global in our tastes – but really, the vast majority of people are mostly interested in ‘local news’ and read that in their local media. Even when reading on-line people tend to rely on information from established news outlets, and these tend to be the ones historically associated with their town or city of residence.
“There is still a very healthy appetite for news and while much is made of the internet’s transformation of the news environment, only 6 per cent of the UK population identify the internet as they main source of news in contrast with 65 per cent who opt for television and 15 per cent for newspapers.” Page 49 And what might be even more interesting here, given so much talk about media only providing us with what we want – that is, audience driven models of media content: “There are indications of greater levels of disconnect to the content of news. Some 55 per cent of people agreed that much of the news on TV was not relevant to them, up from 34 per cent in 2002.” Page 73 What is also interesting is that, “British national dailies were very much more right-wing than their readers in terms of party preference in every general election between 1979 and 1992.” Page 32
Now, this might make it sound like the internet revolution has done nothing to the news – and that would be completely wrong. The promise of the internet was that it allowed many-to-many communication, where previous media ‘revolutions’ were one-to-many. However, while this affordance clearly exists – I can write book reviews, people I’ve never met can comment on them, I reply and so on – this could not really be said to be the dominant feature of the internet. In fact, the vast majority of internet users have never posted anything anywhere.
There has been a blogging revolution – and we do get told over and over that the Arab Spring showed the power of the internet and social media. What generally doesn’t get mentioned is that governments can (and do) use social media to track the protests and protesters organised against them. Not all mirrors are one-way. It is also interesting that very few of the journalists here said they ever really got very much information worth having from blogs. The problem being that the information contained in blogs is often produced by some random person who may know next to nothing about the topic they are getting insanely worked up about. Gossip and vitriol are all great reads, but reprinting stuff like that in a national daily, for example, would probably only get the newspaper and journalist in trouble, rather than the blogger. Rule one – sue the guy with the money.
And talking about money, that really is the problem. People might be reading their local newspaper online, rather than buying the actual newspaper, but they certainly don’t like paying for the privilege, and the newspapers also don’t get the same revenue from advertising online that they did from newspapers. As one person says here, they exchange dollars for pennies with each reader that shifts. In Australia a recent report showed that newspapers receive about 70% of their revenue from advertising. This has much to do with both the economics of internet advertising as it does from downturns in the economy. Both of which are hard to separate out from each other so as to be able to tell which one is the most important current factor. While the whole world is telling you the internet is killing advertising revenue for news sites, it might actually be that the GFC did the killing and that once there is a recovery then advertising might spring back again, as it has done in the past.
The real problem with money that isn’t likely to go away is that advertising on the net isn’t nearly the same as advertising in newspapers – and it is mostly money from advertising that pays for newspaper content. The ‘public sphere’ idea (think Habermas, with modifications by Nancy Fraser) is often portrayed as being best exemplified by ‘media’ giving voice to the voiceless and providing the public with the information they need to be active in a democratic society. The way the system has worked up until now is that newspapers have sold audiences to advertisers – the advertisers have had much more say over what gets put into newspapers, than the ‘audience’ – hardly surprising, really, do you pay more attention to the wants of the person buying or the product being sold? As a cow how that works next time you are in the local butcher. And then newspapers and other media recycled some of this money back into content to retain their audiences to sell them anew next time. The problem is that advertising on the web doesn’t go to newspapers as much as it goes to search engines – that is, to people who provide no content at all. But while everyone complains that the public isn't prepared to pay for content, when was the last time you heard someone complain that Google doesn't provide any?
“Display advertising, in which news incumbents generally have an advantage, amounts to only 21 per cent of the online share; classified, where incumbents are investing heavily to challenge pure-play internet sites, accounts for 20.8 per cent of the market; while search, 84 percent of which is monopolised by Google in the UK, dominates online advertising with 57.6 per cent of the total share.” Page 45
This means that most news sites have been forced by economics to move to new models of content delivery. Not only by economics, either – but the affordances of the new media makes it much more likely that journalists will become what is referred to here as ‘churnalists’. There is a lot more cannibalism going on with journalists (for want of a better word) repackaging material and then putting their byline on it. This can’t be blamed on them (often their byline is put on articles they didn't write by their media organisation, much to their own chagrin), as, like the rest of us, they are being performance managed to within an inch of their lives. The problem is that most real news – that is, new content – comes the way it always did – through connections with real people. But journalists are increasingly tied to their desk. Why would you need to go see someone to get a report when they can email it to you? Why would you go have coffee with someone if you can text them? And companies and governments have their own media units that provide copy – normally produced by trained journalists – that is infinitely easier to reformat into your house style than starting from scratch. And then there is the problem of having to produce lots and lots of copy for news media organisations that have lots and lots of space to fill with fewer and fewer people. There is virtually no time to check the accuracy of any of this copy that will have your name on it. So, you are forced to rely on ‘reliable’ sources – and those tend to be people with titles, rather than the great unwashed.
And because most journalists are terrified they will miss ‘the news story of the day’ there is a hyper vigilance that involves them seeing what everyone else is doing, and this involves them reformatting their stories to fit in with everyone else’s too - particularly TV news - tails and dogs, again. And here is the next paradox – the internet provides infinite space for new copy, and yet what we get is all the same. “This provides rather more texture to the figures provided in research by Cardiff University suggesting that only 12-20 per cent of stories are generated ‘entirely by reporters who write them’.” Page 92
As we are reminded: “George Orwell got his inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four while working at the BBC.” Page 76
This book makes the point that economics isn’t necessarily the only issue that will impact on the changing face of the media. There are benefits to being able to control what populations think and cannibalism only works while there is still flesh to eat. People are still keen to ‘know’ what is going on in their world – being able to tell them what to think and how to behave is something no one is going to give up just because it cost a little. You know, Murdoch’s The Australia has been making a loss for years, and it is never likely to become profitable. But he won’t be closing it down anytime soon because, as our current Prime Minister said, it was largely responsible for electing John Howard's government and if that is true of Howard, it is triply true for Tony Abbott. Economics has much to recommend it – but never underestimate the power of politics.
March 11, 2011
This book explores how technological, economic, and social changes have reconfigured news journalism and the consequences of these transformations for a vibrant democracy.
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May 30, 2014.: Stockholm Syndrome :.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews