“Popular newspapers, the mass newspapers, are dying and will die. They have no future whatsoever. I’m sad to see newspapers go. I worked on them for 40 years.
(Roy Greenslade, Future of Journalism summit, Sydney, May 2008)
Once able to lead – indeed, to form – public opinion, papers such as The Australian now appear hardly able to follow or comprehend it. Those whom Jay Rosen has referred to as “the people formerly known as the audience” (2006) have begun to look elsewhere for news and informed opinion, or have begun to create and publish their own reports, commentaries, debates, and deliberations on news and current affairs, especially in the online environment.
To some extent, this shift is one of journalism’s own making, as the industry’s failure to update its products for a new, Internet- and convergence-driven environment has alienated younger audiences. Journalists’ inability to remain politically and commercially independent has been highlighted by the utter failure of mainstream journalism in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere, to debunk the unsubstantiated Weapons of Mass Destruction claims. These claims were used as a pretext to start the war in Iraq, by cases of preferential treatment for major advertisers, and by the growing conflation of news and entertainment content especially in television broadcasts (Lowrey and Anderson, 2005).
Newspaper readership and credibility has fallen to record lows. Newspapers started Australia’s major commercial news organizations and the culture of these companies are continually influenced by the press’ ethos, as they become unmistakably entertainment driven, continually investigating new technologies, means and methods of communication. The fact that the majority of today’s society is fairly technologically advanced has heavily impacted the consumption of the traditional newspaper. News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch, states that in regards to new technologies and the newspaper, journalists “are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity” (Murdoch, 2008, Lecture 3).
Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corporation, confessed that his giant media conglomerate were slow when it came to recognizing the importance of the internet. He now states that even with the internet, newspapers will still survive, “unlike the doom and gloomers, I believe that newspapers will reach new heights. In the 21st century, people are hungrier for information than ever before. And they have more sources of information than ever before” (Murdoch, 2008, Lecture 3).
There is little indication that this trend in print and broadcast news is likely to be reversed any time soon. Like other informational industries from software to music, the news industry in print and broadcast is operating under a business model which no longer suits the emerging cultural and economic framework (Jenkins, 2006). Both print and broadcast proceed from an industrial logic which is founded on the twin assumptions that their means of production are expensive and concentrated in the hands of a small number of major operators, and that access to their channels of distribution is tightly policed and therefore scarce. Neither assumption, however, still holds true in a post-industrial, Internet age.
There is an overall shift from passive consumption to active participation in our societies (Jenkins, 2006; Benkler, 2006; von Hippel, 2005). This poses a key challenge to a journalism industry built traditionally on a conception of its audience as passive consumers, and – as The Australian’s editorial documents – most of the industry has yet to develop strategies for addressing this challenge effectively.
References:
Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
NYU Press.
Lowrey and Anderson. 2005. The Journalist Behind the Curtain: Participatory Functions on the Internet and their Impact on Perceptions of the Work of Journalism. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Comunication. 10(3).
Murdoch, Rupert. “Lecture 3: The future of newspapers: Moving beyond the dead trees.” ABC Radio National. 16 Nov. 2008. 7 April. 2011. <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/stories/2008/2397940.htm>.
Rosen, Jay. 2006, 27 June. The People Formerly Known as the Audience. PressThink: Ghost
of Democracy in the Media Machine. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html (accessed 10 Aug. 2007).
Warren, C. (2010). Life In The Clickstream II: The Future Of Journalism. Redfern: Media Alliance.
Warren, C. (2008). Life In The Clickstream: The Future Of Journalism. Redfern: Media Alliance.
