George Brock’s Newspaper Issues

No news: the business model in print journalism is gone. And not only in the U.S., that is. Between 2007 and 2013 English newspapers, for example, will experience a further decline of 48% in turnover. Recently we have been witnessing a rising affluence, a growing dominance of a (passive) tv-culture and an explosion of news channels. Developments like these have turned journalism and the news industry upside down.

George Brock, head of the Journalism Department of the City University in London, shared his ideas on the future of journalism with a Dutch audience last friday. His speech on “re-inventing the news” was part of the kick-off for a new Dutch news innovation platform.

Most of what Brock had to say, was unhappily well known to his audience of newspaper managers and researchers. He talked about the lower perceived value of journalism, the relatively easy accessibility of the trade and the way the local accountability has stopped working.

New solutions are needed, Brock stressed more than once, but the process is “like throwing spaghetti to a wall”: most of it will immediately fall off, only a tiny little bit will turn out to be sustainable. With his spaghetti-metaphor Brock puts himself in the tradition of Clay Shirky, who recently said that “nothing will work, but anything might”.

The five main trends according to George Brock:

1. print will shrink even further,
2. sustainable online business models are key: the paywall wars will be fierce,
3. we need a new grammar for story telling,
4. something valuable for society is lost; it needs replacing,
5. few people care about this, because of the news media’s lousy reputation.

Brock didn’t give his Dutch audience many answers or solutions, but his analysis was on target. So was his list of issues we are facing right now:

• do we ask for – and accept – state support?
• will we be able to get back the trust of the audience?
• does the bundle survive?
• how will we be balancing facts and analysis?
• are we aware of the importance of words vs sound and pictures?
• do we accept the fact that training in versatility is needed?
• and that business training is even more important?
• how can we grow from plain citizen journalism to curating as a new job in journalism?

There was time for only one answer: never accept state support, Brock declared quite convincingly. Most important reason: it doesn’t help you. Brock: “With state support you are artificially ’securing’ a business which should be working without support. You’d better put your effort in finding a new sustainable business model. Hang on and hope something happens.”