Answer: Depends who you ask.
Last night, a group of media types filled a lecture theatre at UTS to examine this question. Speakers included Liz Jackson and Peter McEvoy from ABC, Dylan Welch from SMH Online and Catherine Lumby from the University of Sydney.
Having digested what they all had to say, let me summarise the 100 minutes worth of talking with a few points:
According to Welch, Journalism may be so broadly defined as to include the guy who runs down the street and tells you there’s a fire
According to McEvoy, a YouTube video of someone ‘coming out’ in an edited piece to camera is so powerful that it stands as evidence that online media isn’t necessarily dumbing down anything.
According to Jackson investigative journalism has been under threat since the move to 24 hour news cycles (think CNN) and online media represents more pressure on that aspect of journalism.
As an online journalist at a company that still prints newspapers, Dylan Welch seemed best positioned to talk about newpapers vs news websites, at least for Fairfax. He talked about the weekday audience for SMH online doubling the paper’s audience (ie. 500 000 online readers vs. 250 000 newspapers sold), but only achieving 5-10% of the newspaper’s ad revenue.
The ability to accurately measure exactly what articles are being read was also a focus of Welch’s presentation.
What has happened to newspapers could be summed up as follows: once upon a time newspapers were sold as three course meals, and no one really knew what was being eaten – the entré, the main or the dessert (or all three?). Now we can measure readers, it turns out most people are just interested in the dessert. So does that mean you just focus on desserts and stop making nutritious mains? Or does it mean you have to work harder to make the mains more appetising?
It seemed to me the room last night was full of people that just love to eat vegetables. They know how good vegetables are for them and they’ve acquired a taste. Now they’re nervous – if people are only eating dessert, what does that mean for the health of democracy? or ‘public discourse’? And more importantly, if we’re the only ones eating vegetables, who’s going to be paying for them?
Should I feel bad that I’ve ‘dumbed down’ an intellectual debate to the point where it is about vegetables vs. sweets? Because I don’t.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Katie Chatfield // Oct 18, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Nice summary Tim. I’m a slow food girl myself.
It seemed to me that what was missing from the debate was any real vision of how the online medium might advance the essential offer of journalism: ‘originality, credibility, analysis’
The focus of the panel seemed to be on how online effects the economic model of a news masthead and then how that relates to the resources that are given to journalists in order for them to deliver their craft.
I do wonder if a more relevant and useful topic might be ‘What is the role of a newspaper in a paperless environment?’
I’m into the notion that in the current explosion of data there is a valuable role to be played in an offer of synthesis of information, contextualisation with authority and transparency of agenda. In this scenario a newspaper might be seen as an umbrella brand with its journalists becoming brands of their own. The role of the newspaper is then to facilitate and add value to the relationship between the content created by the journalists and the audience.
An example of this might be a meme/topic tracker so that you can follow issues as they unpack over time or visualize how silos of news interact with each other (a finance story and a policy decision or a gossip piece and a media merger).
The ability of the online medium to tell stories and to allow journalists to create new ways of creating understanding and describing the agenda seems to be lost in the contemplation of dwindling revenue.
In response to “Shaft or Save?” I come down on SAVE, so long as there is a willingness to innovate.
Oh and the best quote of the night?
Mobile cameras democratise media technology and create a pornograhpic archive of war.
Thank goodness for those eroticist photo journalists then….
2 Tim Longhurst // Oct 18, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“The ability of the online medium to tell stories and to allow journalists to create new ways of creating understanding and describing the agenda seems to be lost in the contemplation of dwindling revenue.”
Well said! This idea of “synthesis of information, contextualisation with authority and transparency of agenda” is exactly what audiences are looking for. It wasn’t a particularly visionary feeling event and maybe a better topic question would have lifted the content?
3 What is the role of a newspaper in a paperless environment? « Get Shouty // Oct 20, 2007 at 3:06 pm
[...] I won’t summarise what was spoken about as Tim does a great job here. [...]
4 Treffyn // Oct 22, 2007 at 2:10 am
This issue was also touched on by John Hartigan from News Corp in this years Andrew Olle Media Lecture.
In short, he was of the view that online media allowed diversity of new outlets, as well as accessability to old media overcoming distances of countries. However that the only downside of this was that while consumers have more sources than ever before, they don’t have the time to watch and aggregate them all. (And why is it that when i use the word ‘aggregate’ i always assume i’m talking about online news readers?) But because of this, there was increased demand for distinguished, trusted or reputable sources to deliver content. And from what i could gather, he thought that while this could mean a drive back to a fewer range of institutions that already have a form of this credibility or distinction, he thought that there was no reason this could not happen online. In fact he promoted a native, but not exclusive online presence from established media outlets, and thought that this would be the new big demand for such organisations.
Although this is taking it on a tangent, In a sense i agree with him in that ‘web 2.0′ has largely manifested itself into a particular source or killer app for a particular need. eg. flicker, google etc.. Their model for this is however to be the killer app by aggregating all others content. While this is not to say they don’t try and rank it or give some more credibility over others. I feel that in regards to news and media, there will be a slight return to singular trusted sources that aggregate and create content that they are happy to publish under their trusted name. But that the difference there from current online situations is that google, for example, is a search engine, it amasses and organises others content. And say the SMH, doesn’t amass as much as write and create. Thus in essence the difference and perhaps middle ground. Is an organisation that both creates and amasses, yet publishes according to standards associated with their name. However, having said this, I realise I haven’t explicitly addressed the notion of dumbing down content for the medium, and am not necessarily advocating this type of media formation, only questioning there is any real difference in an organisation I have outlined from the current, and if so, if this is a possible future form that will address anything of what people are currently feeling in regards to this topic.
5 Jess Leitch // Dec 11, 2007 at 6:15 am
Sounds like an interesting lecture!
Everytime I saw the cover of the Tele during the election campaign it made me want to hurt someone…
Perhaps online media is dumbing down our traditionally paper based news sources because they are attempting to replicate their paper based product in an online market desperate for hits, which if you check out the most read stories, is achieved by Britney rather than Kevin.
But here’s a thought: the people who only read the dessert pieces online may have bought the paper based product previously and only read the sweet treat articles – we just couldn’t track their clicks through…
Fortuntately though there are is now the outlet for journalists – and readers – unhappy with the direction of the mainstream paper in the form of online newspapers and blogs.
Additionally, some news sources such as the omnipresent economist continue to deliver in both the online and paper based format..
I love the economist..
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