Newspapers: The future of journalism

One of the factors we must consider when studying the decline of the newspaper industry is the importance of news and journalism to society. 

We've got some excellent video resources to work with on this topic. Both of our videos refer to the 2016 Best Picture winner at the Oscars - Spotlight. This is director Tom McCarthy's film based on the true story of Boston Globe reporters investigating widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church. We highly recommend you watch this film as part of your work on newspapers.

John Oliver on journalism
British comedian John Oliver presents a show called Last Week Tonight on HBO in America. In a previous episode, he put together a report on the decline of journalism in America and its replacement by 'clickbait' stories rather than real news. Watch it here:



Clay Shirky on news: don’t build a paywall around a public good
Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU (New York University) and a worldwide expert on digital and social media. He's a named media theorist for A Level Media and he makes a compelling argument for the role news plays in society. Interestingly, he argues against paywalls - the subscription model that some newspapers use to make money in the digital age - and says that news is a 'public good' that is vital in a healthy democracy. 

Blog tasks

Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. 

1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?

 "...publication of that article to the worldwide pressure of the Catholic Church is now under, to both account for its past and alter its behavior in the future. Which...makes it clear what’s at stake with what Professor Jones calls accountability journalism. This is a classic example...of the iron core of journalism and in particular the investigative journalism category, where three reporters are dispatched for a long period on a story that may or may not pan out.

"The other input to that ...besides accountability journalism mattering in this way, is that newspapers’ ability to produce accountability journalism is shrinking."

"One, why it is I think that newspapers’ ability to produce accountability journalism is shrinking, and why I am convinced that those changes are secular, monotonic, and irreversible, rather than being merely cyclic and waiting for the next go around. And then two, I want to talk about the features of a journalistic ecosystem that I think we’ll have to obtain in to get anything like the accountability journalism we’ve been used to out of the current media landscape."

2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?

"first thing to recognize about the commercial structures of the newspaper industry is that it is not enough for newspapers to run at a profit to reverse the current threat and change."

"20th-century newspapering was that the advertisers were not only overcharged, they were underserved. Not only did they have to deliver more money to the newspapers than they would have wanted, they didn’t even get to say: “And don’t report on my industry, please.” There was a time when Ford went to The New York Times during the rollover stories and said, “You know, if you keep going on this, we may just pull all Ford ads in The New York Times.” To which the Times said, “Okay.” And the ability to do that — to say essentially to the advertiser, “Where else are you going to go?” — was a big part of what kept newspapers from suffering from commercial capture. "

" This is Bob Garfield‘s thesis from The Chaos Scenario, which is — it’s not just that advertisement is moving from the analog world to the digital world, but that advertising in the digital world is not inherently connected to other kinds of media. Advertising can be media in ways that improve both the advertiser’s outlook and the public’s. So the ability to tell the advertiser, you have to keep advertising with us even though we’re covering your industry is going. "

"The New York Times is being torn apart right now by its own readers. The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience."

3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?
"overpaying, underserving, and the incoherence of the print bundle in a web of content "

"people are interested in bulk sources, and they are interested in expert editorial judgment, and they are interested in serendipity. But they’re not interested in omnibus, single omnibus publication. The New York Times is being torn apart right now by its own readers. The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience." - People want to see further views and sources on the article than one perspective and digital media allows this

4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?
"The worldwide audience of millions of Catholics got that story because it was forwarded and forwarded and forwarded. The audience created the public"

"..the ability to reuse and republish that material was a huge part of the battle. The ability to take that material and put it in databases like the Bishop Accountability Project, the ability of SNAP to have itself found, because anytime anybody read about it, Google put it one hop away from wherever anybody heard about it. All of those things ...created an enormous amount of the value of that article."

5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 
"a paywall damages general news and benefits financial news. And it is no accident that the three great models of pay walls — The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist. Because although they have general interest sections, they are all..publications for traders and business people."

Shirky argues against paywalls - the subscription model that some newspapers use to make money in the digital age - and says that news is a 'public good' that is vital in a healthy democracy. 

6) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
'Social good' - Social good is typically defined as an action that provides some sort of benefit to the general public. Today, social good is about getting people to engage in pro-social actions that benefit society, often by harnessing the power of technology and social media in particular. It is about engagement, shareability and bringing people together to change the world for the better. (https://www.socialchangecentral.com/what-is-social-good/)

7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?
Shirky believes that, "newspapers are irreplaceable in their production of accountability journalism".

8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
What is institutional power? 
Institutional power is the power wielded by entities such as governments, churches, and corporations to control people and direct their behavior through the use of rewards and punishments.

'Technology moves on and industries evolve - but newspapers have traditionally played an important role in holding governments to account, exposing corruption and keeping the public informed about the world they live in.'