Week 4: Who will Pay for Journalism?

The topic in brief
The future of journalism has been much worried about especially by traditional journalists. The future of newspapers is smothered by so much pessimism that death seems imminent:

“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” (Greenslade 2008).

The logic behind it seems simple enough to work out -- hello internet, goodbye newspapers. The internet offers news for free and instantaneously while newspapers are usually bought and contain reports on the previous day's events. There are instances where free newspapers are made available to the public and where newspapers come in morning and afternoon editions like the Today newspaper in Singapore. The question to be asked is how necessary is it then for news consumers to pay for journalism if it can be attained for free? It is only reasonable for news consumers to ask why they should pay for the exact news stories which are available for free online. It is partly the journalist's fault for thinking content syndication eases the burden of having to scope out for the latest news stories. While content syndication helps news publications to stay competitive by means of being in the know, it also puts them at a disadvantage by means of replicating a story from the same angle as many other publications. On the surface, competition between paid and unpaid newspapers/news looks like a good start to the investigation of a dying newspaper readership. Actually, it is the age old issue that needs to be reviewed again --  the quality of journalism.


In this week's seminar by Benjamin, Kelvin, and Wei Meng

"We expect the newspaper to serve us with truth however unprofitable the truth may be... He will pay a normal price when it suits him, will stop paying whenever it suits him, will turn to another paper when that suits him" (Lippman 1992).

The quote above was used to open the presentation. It depicts the behaviour of the news audience which is necessary to understand in order to tackle the question of who will pay for journalism. Where money is involved, it becomes a business. The business model for news was examined to look at the key players -- Media, Advertisers, and Audience. It operates in a dual mode: Media sells news to Audience and sells Audience to Advertisers. From there, they talked about how circulation affects revenue from advertising. There was a period of time in the USA where low newspaper circulation did not affect revenue adversely. It was interesting to see the increase in revenue during that time but from 2007 onwards, both circulation and revenue went into a decline. A speculation: Newspapers started to give more space to advertisements so they could sustain financially -- newspapers get thinner in content and thicker in advertisements. That seems to be true. Worse, newspapers now cost more than before, ironically with lesser news content. The conclusion drawn from the presentation is that there is a change in the way we consume news. Plus, journalism did not die out but moved onto the Internet domain.

"The present model - meaning print - isn't going to work" (Buffet n.d. cited in Gunther 2007).

Additional comments by Mr Jimmy Yap
"Newspapers came out post-industrial revolution. The logic suggests that the model that subsides predominates. Take a 50 cents newspaper against $10 newspaper. People would naturally buy the cheaper one despite the quality of the journalism.

"Newspapers online are trading analogue dollars for digital dimes."

The economics of journalism -- "The amount of money from subscribers will not replace amount of money from advertisers."

Conclusion
One of the possible ways for newspapers to survive is by having more focused and valuable demographics. This is easily achieved through a niche. After all, we willingly pay for what we read, especially what we want to read.