News 2.0can journalism survive the internet?A re-assessment

A/Prof Martin HirstJuly 2012

News 2.0: what next?18 months after publication of News 2.0 what’s

changed?

A reassessment of the seven theses of the book

A look at recent developments

What are the new questions

Are there any new answers

News as conversation Journalists no longer control the distribution of

the content they produce.

This is a very scary thought for many journalists, but the reality is that once something is published (usually on Web sites), it belongs to the audience of readers and becomes part of a conversation about the news.

This observation – first raised by Dan Gilmour – is obviously true today.If anything journalists have less control than they did 18 months ago

News 2.0the news industry is seen to be failing our

democratic ideals

journalists are low on international surveys of people we trust

the professional ethos of journalism is under threat from UGC

the commodity form of news is no longer providing the profits it once did

These general points about the state of the news industry globally still hold

Phone-hacking says it all?The phone-hacking scandal demonstrates the

basic thrust of News 2.0 A crisis of trust and credibility Journalists stuffed up badly

But it is also an economic crisis caused by a failure of management Journalists were encouraged into hacking in

pursuit of profits Ethics goes out the window in favour of money-

grubbing and base motives

Thesis 1: news is a universal human need

news has been around for thousands of years

because of market forces the mainstream media has let down the public

pursuit of profits has led the MSM down market

we are living in a sick celebrity culture that distorts our self-perception and slowly drives us all insane

We are consuming as much as we did, if not more news today, but not in the same way we used to.News is coming to us from a variety of sources and we are consuming in more mobile ways.

Thesis 2: digital technologies are changing

how we consume newsglobally, television is still the dominant news and

entertainment media, but for how much longer?

news is going mobile and it's being condensed

the 140 character text message and “tweet” could be the future of news

The curating of news – what Axel Bruns calls ‘gate-watching – is now much easier and more widespread.

Apps like storify, pintrest, paper.li and instapaper make it much easier to collate ‘bricolage’ and curate MSM and other materials to re-publish to friends and networks.

Thesis 3: the singularity of convergence has

changed news forever professionalism has become a trap for journalists - they

are tied into a corporate culture that is losing its shine

perhaps, as Robert McChesney suggests, journalists have to become "unprofessional" in order to reconnect with audiences

D-I-Y & UGC news via social networking is on the rise

we are no longer reliant only on MSM for news.

There is no going back.There is almost universal agreement that the ‘daily’ newspaper will soon be an historical artifact

Thesis 4: the crisis in the news business is not the

same as the crisis in journalism

they are related, but different

a crisis of trust and credibility and a crisis of profitability

we are now in a critical juncture and the global financial crisis is a further threat to the political economy of the news business

The GFC hasn’t gone away, but perhaps it has receded a little – in Australia anyway.

My analysis has shifted a little. I now think there is a question to be asked about the timing and extent of newspaper closures in the USA.

There was a spate of them in 2009, but the rate has not accelerated. I wonder it it was GFC hangover, rather than a sign of imminent collapse.

Thesis 5: new online business models are not yet

provenadvertising – most likely in market economy

user pays – subscription model

public service broadcasting – not politically supported

online only publishing – unknown quantity

public trust model – expensive to establish

philanthropy – peanuts really

Who pays the piper? Paywalls are becoming more common.The curtain – pay to play /premium content

The filter – free for a while, pay after ‘x’ downloads

Thesis 6: there are positives in social

networking and Web 2.0some parts of the world are more connected than

they’ve every been

the collective nature of trust and verification is a key element of peer-to-peer sharing of information and can apply to news

we need to position journalism as the collective wisdom of the public interest and speaking truth to power

Social networking is booming along with mobile apps and connectors.

Journalists are learning how to harness social mediaAmateurs are pushing their own UGNC through social media channels

Thesis 7: Can journalism survive the Internet?

what happens to “journalism" when the economics of the news business are no longer working?

if news is a universal trait of human society (thesis 1) then a method needs to be developed of continuing to provide reliable and common news-like information from trusted public sources

This question has not been definitively answered.

The news industry is far from being ‘over’ its crisis of profitability

We know that people want news and ‘journalism’, but what will be available and what will be trusted?

Who has the answers?

What happens next?

The slow decline of newspapers will continue

Time-shifting and on-demand will continue to grow for video content

Daily news will be largely web and broadcast based

Newspapers will need to become more like magazines to survive

My (biased) assessment is that the general theses of News 2.0 and my analysis is still relevant and timely.

The change has been quantitative not qualitative since News 2.0 was published