In an interview with The Telegraph this week, Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker spoke about the future of news delivery and, more importantly she believes, journalism.
She said that as newspapers were fast disappearing, especially in America, it is now time for the debate to move on from 'how do we save newspapers?’ to 'how do we save journalism?’.
Brown, who now edits curated news aggregation site The Daily Beast , emphasised the importance of what newspapers deliver, over how they deliver it. However, she admitted that web-based journalism may lack some of the resources for serious investigative journalism and suggested a public-private partnership may sponsor certain kinds of journalism. She said “It may need either some sort of BBC approach to it, or some sort of philanthropic partnership, or some sort of trust; or company sponsorship of investigative work, like sponsoring television programmes. Maybe that’s a model. Everything has to be tried.”
Brown also predicted that the days of journalists being just journalists are over, commenting: “I think we’re going to get to the stage where a lot of journalists have other jobs as well.” Still she doesn’t believe this should dissuade budding young journalists, as long as they’re prepared for a “lean” five years.
Tina’s comments come amidst further bad news for the newspaper industry. Group M, a media-buying group, this week predicted that the newspaper industry will see advertising revenue fall by 26 per cent year on year in 2009 and said weaker titles would be seriously under threat.
The newspaper industry is now seriously considering how it can monetise its internet offering, through means such as subscription models and charging for certain content. Some publications have tried a subscription model, but against the competition of free content from online rivals have quickly had to shelve the approach. Publications which do charge for their online content operate in a niche area, for example the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. If newspapers did begin to charge for their content online, they would also be competing with free content from the BBC. There is a concern that should paid-for content models emerge, there would be a mass migration to the BBC.
Speaking at the quarterly results for News Corporation in New York recently, Rupert Murdoch, though, was optimistic. He said “All our great technological resources are being concentrated on developing new business models which will return trusted journalistic enterprises to long-term profitability.”
Sarah Wray
Jun 4, 2009
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