The extent of the challenge facing news providers in a digital age was today laid bare by Dame Frances Cairncross in her long-awaited report on the future of journalism.
Dame Frances was commissioned by Prime Minister Theresa May to look into the sustainability of the production and distribution of high-quality journalism, and especially the future of the press, in the dramatically changed commercial landscape brought about by the digital revolution.
Her conclusions, set out in a 157-page report published this morning, have been broadly welcomed by the industry, but do not necessarily always make comfortable reading for it.
In particular, the report suggests that the strategy of driving online traffic to support the growth of digital advertising revenues will never succeed in replacing revenues lost from print advertising, and that quality journalism, in future, will need a level of public funding if it is to survive.
“In sum, digital advertising is not, and is not likely to be in the near future, sufficient to fund much journalism. For local-level democracy reporting in particular, advertising revenues are likely to be heavily constrained,” the report states.
“To survive, news publishers will need additional sources of revenue.”
She said publishers had “undoubtedly been successful” at attracting clicks online, but added that this “substantial reach does not appear to have been sufficient to ensure long-term financial success”.
“Publishers’ digital advertising revenue is much lower than they had hoped. The potential is especially dim for smaller and local publishers,” the report says.
And as well as calling into question the objective of driving online traffic as a commercial strategy, Dame Frances was also critical of the impact of so-called “clickbait” on journalism itself.
She wrote: “As editors and journalists can now see exactly how many people are looking at a particular news item at any given time, the pressure to dramatise stories is strong.
“While journalists should think carefully about how to grab people’s attention, there is a fine line between presenting readers with news items that justifiably interest them, and showing them titillating headlines and vacuous stories.
“More pertinently, this propensity for ‘clickbait’ or sensationalist journalism, which is in turn encouraged by the digital advertising market, is having a negative impact on the provision of local public-interest news.”
It is these conclusions that led Dame Frances in the direction of her radical plan for an Institute for Public Interest News to oversee not just an expanded BBC local democracy reporting service in future but a whole mini-industry of reporters providing what it deems as worthwhile journalism.
While publishers have been keen to play up those elements of the report which highlight the importance of quality news, this particular idea is likely to prove extremely controversial.
The arguments against the idea of an external, publicly-funded body deciding what sort of journalism is or is not in the public interest have already been well rehearsed during the long and sometimes tortuous debate over press regulation.
And reading between the lines of today’s ostensible words of welcome, the lobbying campaign against this in the industry has already begun.
Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker said: “Any support must be done in a way that maximises its contribution to local journalism – and this is best done by leveraging the extremely effective and efficient infrastructure already in place in regional publisher newsrooms up and down the country.
“Diverting funds to setting up an alternative news publishing infrastructure or activities that directly compete with existing local publishers would further undermine the business model for quality local journalism and risks not being sustainable.”
Society of Editors executive director Ian Murray added: “Crucial to all of the recommendations for what is really state support for the local media industry in particular, are the report’s insistence that bodies such as the proposed Institute are free from political and other interference in deciding what constitutes public interest news worth supporting.
“The press in the UK has not fought long and hard to maintain its independence and freedom to then find itself regulated by state-appointed bodies, no matter how well-meaning was their original creation.”
Regional publishers will be more encouraged by the call for an expanded local democracy reporting service, although it is likely to fall some way short of the 1,737 additional ‘public interest reporters’ that the industry was advocating.
But as Dame Frances makes clear, her over-riding objective is to sustain quality journalism – not necessarily to sustain the newspaper industry as currently structured.
As she put it: “The goal of the Review has not been to protect news publishing companies themselves, but to advocate measures that will ensure the market in which they operate is efficient, and to defend their most democratically significant outputs.”
It is now over to the government to see how those twin objectives can best be met.
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Frankly, it is not funding much now.
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Well, I bet the big newspaper groups with their teams of evangelical website boffins, won’t publicise this part of the report – which is what many of us have been saying for years.
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This doesn’t appear to be so much about the future of news but the future of the news groups that own the local newspapers.
Perhaps it would have been better to speak to the start ups that are now emerging and see what can be done for them.
For example should local newspapers be treated like sports facilities, pubs and so on and be treated as a community asset of value instead of being allowed to close with little or no consultation.
That might encourage local entrepreneurs to take them on. It would also help diversify the media scene.
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I’ve been saying from day one that digital wouldn’t work. I was pilloried on here by digital d***heads who thought they were right. Well now an official govt report has vindicated me and many others. Unfortunately 1000s of talented people have been let go. Stop this digital debacle now. Put out good papers that have local news and photos. Use websites only to promote the next edition of the paper. It’s not rocket science!
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The Dead Digital Horse. too true. The massive problem is a lot of papers have dropped as much as 90 per cent of peak sales, with even regional papers that once sold 100,000 plus scraping by with about 10,000 and weeklies dropping from 20,000 plus to barely 2,000. It would be a hell of task to rebuild sales, but preferable to chasing the dead duck that is digital.
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Paperboy.. I totally agree. The problem is that non newspaper types took over and thought they knew how to make money. They saw digital as the way to cut costs on printing, distribution and staff. Accepting UGC phone images for free was great to them but it de-valued the quality of once decent papers. To me digital is a cancer r that is… Well… Turning silk purse papers into pigs ears. The ‘owners’ know nothing about news disemenatuon and believe digital is the easy way out. But after 10+ years they still can’t monetise it. One (digital) size does NOT fit all. If there is no alternative to print then why conto ue to flog the dead digital horse.
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A typical example of digital mismanagement at the start was a manager telling journalists on JP they would be putting stories into a digital box without anyone checking them. When an experienced reporter protested strongly and said this was ludicrous and potentially dangerous he was merely told by an HR manager who knew nothing about journalism :”That’s the way it is going to be. Reporters will just have to get it right first time.” We all know now the folly of it all. The cull began.
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DDH you’re talking rubbish as per. For the umpteenth time, people no longer want their news in paper format. They want it on their phones, and to a lesser extent their computer screens and tablets. The challenge for those of us still in the industry is to deliver what people want while still paying our mortages. The challenge is not to convince people they need to go and buy a paper every morning because they simply wont in the numbers required. Schemes like the local democracy scheme and the entrepreneurial enterprise of both new hyperlocal start-ups and some of the bigger names in the industry are the future. What that future will look like remains unclear but speaking as the owner of a profitable hyperlocal outfit, there definitly will be a future of some kind and, when I lift my head up from battling through a planning agenda or get off the phone from speaking to the council leader about tbeir planned tax rise, I find it quite exciting.
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Er, we know. We have done for some time. So have the so-called management of the larger media companies, but they are in self denial and have been for the last 20 years or so. An editor of my acquaintance, in outlining digital plans for the future, said: “If it doesn’t work, we’re done for” (although he didn’t use the words ‘done for’). OK, we’re done for, and that’s official. Question is: what are they going to do about it? Over to you, Newsquest, Reach, et al,
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Local reporter. It’s quite simple. To run a news outlet you to d advertising. Otherwise you are giving the news away for free. Compare smartphone screen to a typical weekly newspaper. You can get maybe 80 display ads into a paper. How many can you get onto a website. Also advertisers do not like digital ads that pop up on a small phone screen. Add to that the upsurge of ad blocking software and you really don’t have a viable business model. Digital really dosent lend itself well to advertisingng. JP tried to force readers and advertisers onto digital and its been a failure. Its time to force everyone back to newspapers. The digital dream dosent work for news, especially local weekly news. Its been 10 years and still digital hasn’t worked. You can’t deny that! As for me talking rubbish…. I’ll take you seriously when digital news pays for itself. I won’t hold my breath. In many many ways digital is good but it simply dosent work for weekly news outlets for the reasons mentioned above. Give it up and stop trying to make water flow uphill. Stop flogging the dead digital horse!
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What frustrates me is how declining sales is always cited as a reason to shut papers, but never the background into why that was the case.
In 2013 our weekly paper was absorbed into the larger Trinity daily with all staff moving over, ensuring that once proud titles (in fact much older than the daily) became nothing more than weekly digests of the daily’s stories with every page being carbon copy versions of those already published.
Staff were prohibited from writing any stories for the weekly so dozens of good community stories were dropped overnight as they didn’t fit the daily, then digital remit. Loyal readers continued to phone in with stories and passed from pillar to post as they had no-one to turn to any more.
When it comes to closing (which can’t be far off), I bet this won’t be mentioned.
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We have squeezed about 30 ads on to our site, plus google ads, and have various other tie-ups that bring in some cash. Doesn’t make for a particularly pretty site but it’s a decent read keeps the kids in shoes.. getting water to flow up hill would be easier than trying to make people buy newspapers again.
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There is no vindication here – the report says digital display advertising is unlikely to fund much journalism, not that digital journalism has no future. At the moment, display advertising is the primary source of digital income for most publishers, but the whole point of the Cairncross review, and the goal towards which we should all be working, is to find an alternative model that supports good journalism. Whether you like it or not, digital is the only future that exists – people simply will not buy printed papers in the numbers needed to sustain journalism.
Saying that digital doesn’t work while continuing to flog the dead print horse gets us nowhere. All that attitude achieves is to hinder the efforts of those of us who want to acquire and engage with readers, which, regardless of any model that may emerge, has to be at the heart of any news operation. I dread to think how many trainees come to this site, read the comments and think they’re representative of the industry.
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“Use websites only to promote the next edition of the paper. It’s not rocket science!” – that’s hilarious.
So kill off the revenue you are getting from digital to try and prop up an ailing print industry? That’ll work..
OK it might not be the revenue you want and it won’t keep the whole industry going, but it keeps some people going and its not unsubstantial.
Do you really think people will visit the website to see something saying ‘go and buy tomorrows paper’ or have a few pars of story and people will go ‘oh yeah I’d better wait until tomorrows papers out and I’ll go the newsagents and buy a copy’ or do you think they’ll just visit another news source of which there are many ??
I’m afraid DDH as much as you don’t like it the genie is out of the bag and has been for about 20 years.
What does need tackling is how poor regional newspapers have been in using digital, their tactics have been boring and risk averse – which is why companies who have taken risks and who have looked into the future like google and facebook and who put their money where their mouth is are gobbling up the vast majority of digital ad spend whereas newspaper groups have always been catching up – they’ve always been about 5-10 years behind when it comes to tech..
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Well-made points webmonkey. The whole ‘promote the next day’s paper thing is proven not to work, I think as far back as 2000 – well before Facebook and smartphones!
DDH, despite our disagreements, I do admire your dedication to the cause, but you cannot force people to buy something they don’t want or need.
We all know that the historic print revenue drivers of homes, cars, jobs and classifieds have all moved on to bespoke digital platforms away from the hands of traditional publishers – and they ain’t coming back!
So, digital is not a dead horse. I think Zoopla, Rightmove, Autotrader, Indeed, Ebay, Gumtree and Facebook are all doing quite nicely, thanks.
When it comes to the display advertising that’s left, changes in consumer behaviour and technology create an issue. Before digital, when a patch had competing newspapers, advertisers might have paid to appear in both as they usually reached a different audience. Online, advertisers only need to pay to go on one competing website because they all effectively reach the same audience.
Local newspapers doing digital has never been the enemy of print. Digital entrepreneurs and changes in customer habits have though and that will not change back.
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I love these discussion, with lots of … ‘people want this..’ ‘people don’t want that’.
This is the curse of the newspaper industry. People who think they know what people want without ever actually doing anything to find out.
Here’s a good one from localreporter:
“For the umpteenth time, people no longer want their news in paper format. They want it on their phones, and to a lesser extent their computer screens and tablets.”
Says who? Perhaps they don’t want to PAY for it in paper form. Perhaps they don’t want to make the effort to go somewhere and pick it up.
You don’t know, I don’t know.
I think what we can be sure of is that if digital was all it is cracked up to be, there would be no point in having the newspaper. It would make no sense. So clearly the revenues are nowhere near where they need to be.
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