New Behavior Suggests Less Reason for Pessimism Regarding the Future of Journalism

07/24/2017 - 11h01

Recent moves in the global communication chess game - which generally is a very unequal one - between the media and social networking giants could be turning around.

In the United States, an entity that represents 2,000 publications, headed by "The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Washington Post" is seeking to negotiate collectively with Google and Facebook regarding payment terms for their services. Both digital giants have been sounding out potential partners, with the idea of charging for information.

Recent consumer research in some developed countries has shown that the tendency to use social networks for news coverage may have peaked and stagnated. There is an increasing willingness on the part of young consumers to pay for quality information.

The worldwide scenario may be changing very slowly, but things seem to be looking up for those who believe that good journalism as an essential tool for good citizenship

The rapid pace of transformation caused by the internet in the behavior of the reading public and global economic crises have greatly diminished the amount of advertising and significantly reduced the revenues of news media companies all over the world. Fighting for readers' attention has become paramount.

Social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, have grown exponentially, garnering more and more of people's attention and time by offering a wide variety of services. Google has dominated the tools used in searching for information, benefiting from the content produced by other organizations.

The development of so-called paywalls, where readers begin to pay after accessing a pre-determined number of articles, has opened up a new form of revenue for journalism. Newspapers from all over the world have adopted them.

If print edition subscriptions are continuing to fall, digital subscribers are increasing and this is allowing publishers to envision better scenarios, in which advertising revenue will no longer be the predominant source of revenue for newspapers.

Digital-edition-only readers on the site of "The New York Times" have surpassed 2 million. At the "Financial Times", revenue from digital subscribers has surpassed that of print subscribers to the newspaper.

In the case of Folha, the number of digital subscribers already is greater than that of the print edition. Social networks have increased in importance as an audience for Brazilian journalism, especially what are referred to as "dark social" networks - comprising an audience whose origin is difficult to measure exactly, that shares links through WhatsApp and e-mail or text messages.

It is a world yet to be discovered. A study recently published by the Reuters Institute, pointed to a growing increase in willingness on the part of readers to pay for news online.

Although a general unwillingness to pay for information persists - 84% didn't pay anything last year -, paying readers in the United States went from 9% in 2016 to 16% in 2017, a year in which the market was driven by a Presidential election.

The majority of these new, paying readers are young people, which dispels the notion that they make up a segment that is unwilling to pay for quality news. They are also notable for their left-of-center ideological orientation.

The issue of trustworthiness is crucial as a justification for those who pay for news. Only a fourth of those interviewed believe that social networks are effective in separating fact from fiction. In contrast, 40% of them believe that what are considered to be traditional news media are able to do this effectively.

The data, which was collected in 36 countries on five continents and based on 70,000 interviews, still reveals worrisome tendencies. Highlights include a significant drop in newspaper readership, with a predominance of television and on-line information. In all countries, younger people are more likely to use social networks and digital media as their primary source of news.

In this regard, Brazil, although it has one of the lower levels of internet penetration (68%) has the second highest level of confidence in news (60%) and the second highest percentage of users who pay for online news (22%), after Norway.

The game is still under way but it is possible to perceive that readers attribute value to quality news. As a great chess player once noted, final victory is always achieved through small advantages. In this way, good journalism, through the small gains noted here, appears to have a real chance of survival.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

Read the article in the original language