The financing of journalism solved, let’s move on to 3 bigger problems
By Espen
Egil Hansen
We have spent the past 20 years struggling with the fundamental question of how to finance journalism. It’s time to move on!
INMA has challenged me to point out three big
problems editors and newsrooms need to solve in the coming years. Shortly, I
will outline my candidates. But since you might not be fully on board with the
idea that we now can consider the problem of financing journalism as solved,
hear me out.
I am not saying the money problem of journalism has
been fixed for everyone. Many newsrooms still struggle. But from being a
life-and-death issue for journalism as such, we have worked out business models
with a better fit in the digital age. It pays to invest in good content.
Journalism has become a product people are willing to pay for — not mainly a
wagon to carry advertising.
Yes, many news organisations are still struggling
to balance legacy platforms such as print, TV, and radio with digital. Yes,
plenty of media companies are too dependent on falling advertising revenue. But
the playbook of transformation is by now well known. It can be learned,
trained, copied, and innovated. It’s hard work, but by and large, we know how
to do it.
Adding to my optimism: We finally see regulatory
measures worldwide that aim to better balance global tech and local media.
Early attempts like the recent Australian regulation might be imperfect (as
Facebook’s Nick Clegg
argues in this blog post).
Still, these attempts represent an almost universal
acknowledgement that the relationship between media and platforms need to be
regulated. This insight will, in the coming years, materialise in better
financing of journalism.
Yet all this optimism comes with a pre-condition:
With the new business models, we establish a more direct relationship between
the audience (they pay us) and the job we do for them. To succeed, we need to
do a better job.
In this article, I present three large problems I
think we must fix in the years to come.
These problems will serve as a framework for
an INMA
Master Class on Newsroom Innovation that
I will moderate beginning on Tuesday, March 9. Nine top editors from around the
world will share best practices and thoughts on strategies to solve them in
three sessions throughout March.
Problem 1: Covering
disagreement in society
Polarisation is a tempting business model. Go with
the crowd, give them what they want, and money will stream in.
Like many other editors, I have been busy finger-pointing at the
platforms. Obviously, Big Tech’s role as global amplifiers for
hate, lies, and misinformation is part of the distrust problem. Scrupulous
politicians found their perfect tool to rally support and, in effect, kidnap
elections and democratic institutions. Along the way, platforms made good
money, too.
Yet there are many sinners in the congregation.
Global tech cannot be the only one to blame for the current miserable state of
the world. For hundreds of years, we editors had a near-monopoly in choosing
which voices and stories worthy of relaying to the public. When the Internet
gave this public a voice on its own, it fired back: The world as we described
it and the world as they experienced it didn’t connect. They still
don’t.
Not all criticism has been fair or well-articulated.
But when they went low, we went too high. For millions of people, we are
not relevant anymore. Rather than being seen as the scary watchdog protecting
people from abuse, many see us as distant birds in a pale blue sky. They are up
there, so what?
Instead of understanding fake news as a symptom of
fundamental distrust in society, we saw it as a lack of facts. Yet four years
of fact-checking Donald Trump’s 30,573 lies as president didn’t stop 74 million
Americans from voting for him again.
Just about every editor struggles with the thorny
question of trust, relevance, and public confidence. Undoubtedly, we have
become better at fulfilling our self-defined mission of holding governments
accountable. Still, despite all of the good work, trust in media is falling.
Over time we need to change this, and it is a job
we have to do ourselves:
- Strategies
to earn higher trust: Neutrality,
objectivity, fairness, and even subjectivity and actionism represent very
different strategies that a news organisation can apply to reach higher
trust. What are the practical implications of choosing one over another?
What works?
- Rethinking
buzzwords: Words like “quality,” “journalistic
standards,” and “fairness” are used so routinely that they lost their
meaning. We have to rethink them.
- The
risk of only becoming relevant for the few: Subscription is a solution to the money problem but may drive
us into an even larger problem: We optimise for those who can pay.
I think a good start is to learn from those editors
who stand in the middle of the furious distrust storms. And this is just where
I want to start the Newsroom Innovation
Master Class on March 9: How do we cover disagreement in
society and the strategies to build trust and handle polarisation?
- Lionel
Barber just published his book The Powerful and the Damned, about his 14
years as editor-in-chief of the Financial Times. Keywords: “Brexit,” the
“financial crisis,” and “social media.”
- Maria
Ressa was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her outstanding
courage and results as a journalist, editor, and founder of the
Philippines’ news site Rappler. She has repeatedly been arrested,
convicted, and threatened as a result of Rappler’s critical investigative
journalism.
- Folha
de S.Paulo Editor-in-Chief Sérgio Dávila in Brazil stands in another
crossfire off attacks by populist President Bolsenaro and supporters.
Problem 2: Getting
the newsroom onboard
No other problem keeps editors more awake at night
than this: You built a great digital strategy, but so many things — from
newsroom traditions to lack of resources — stand in the way. The problems seem
endless and intertwined. When you decide on a solution for one problem,
five new ones pop up.
Do you build specialised digital teams or go for an
“everyone onboard-strategy?” How do you secure necessary digital resources
without losing the quality of your print paper — still loved by thousands of
your subscribers? How do you get the product, marketing, tech, and newsroom to
work together on solving fundamentals?
Getting a newsroom onboard with data
and other necessary changes takes creative and strong leadership.
And when you bring data into the newsroom to lead a
more fact-based discussion on what editorial quality looks like, the room falls
silent. There is no open opposition, but you can see the crossed arms and hear
the mumbling in the corners. This doesn’t feel like a winning newsroom. In
fact, you know it’s not.
It’s essential to fix the problem of getting the
newsroom on board because it will end your news brand if you fail. In digital,
competition is absolute. Your brand name and print revenue could give you a
short-term advantage, but not for long.
As editor-in-chief of Schibsted’s Aftenposten and
VG Nett in Norway, I emphasised the different aspects of newsroom transformation
in my leadership. I looked for inspiration from colleagues and even leaders in
various industries: tech, banking, retail, academia, start-ups. (Don´t tell
anyone, but the problems are the same. We are not that unique). This convinced
me that digital transformation is not a technical issue. It is a mindset.
In advising companies and editors on
transformation, I have found the most effective way to move the mindset of a
newsroom is to have a systematic approach along three dimensions:
- Leading
and communicating the transformation: Top editors need to spend most of their energy on leading and
communicating the transformation. This could mean the editor has to spend
less time in public debates on today’s big story and more on internal
newsroom discussions. Not all editors feel comfortable in leading the
nitty-gritty of change themselves. As an editor, you can organise and
delegate in multiple ways. Still, no organisation will genuinely succeed
without the top leadership, showing they are “all in” and willing to get
dirt on their hands.
- Tear
down the silos: Leaders need to tear down the
silosbetween departments and professional groups in their company. When
organising resources, try to take your readers and subscribers’
perspective and ask: What job do we do for them? Most departments in a
news company are there for an internal reason. Successful media companies
I’ve studied find ways to align resources from different professions —
reporters, product, marketing, and reader revenue — around solving the
most significant problems on behalf of their audience,.
- Work
culture: Finally, culture is the sum of all the
small and big things we do — not what we say we do. Work culture is,
therefore, not something a CEO or an editor can decide. It has to be owned
by everyone in the company. Still, successful companies find ways to work
consistently with the culture fundamental for the business. Let’s learn
from them.
These three dimensions are the framework for the
third session of the INMA Newsroom Innovation
Master Class, on Tuesday, March 23, focused on how to transform your
newsroom:
- Central
to The Washington Post Managing Editor Kat Downs Mulder’s leadership is
forming teams with members from different departments to solve problems
and develop ideas.
- As an
experienced leader, having been the editor-in-chief of Dagens Industri,
Bonnier News Editorial Director Lotta Edling knows what works with culture
and digital development across multiple successful brands in
Bonnier.
With a personal strong digital foundation,
including having helped launch Huffington Post in Munich, Handelsblatt
Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Matthes’ job is now to bring the German legacy brand
into the digital age.
Problem 3: Engaging
the audience through compelling storytelling
This problem shouldn’t be a problem. It should be
to the core of what we do: great storytelling as the basis of great journalism.
Sadly, it’s not.
Twenty years after we started experimenting with
video, audio, live coverage, interactivity, dynamic graphics, and data, many
newsrooms are still doing just that: experimenting. Although we daily see great
digital storytelling examples, most journalism is still presented similarly to
how we did it 50 years ago.
The reasons for this are complex. Partly it has
been a problem of competence and having the right people. Partly it has been
about technology, tools, and how to use them. Partly it has been a cost
problem. And partly it has been about pure tradition in the newsrooms.
It is essential that we move to a better place for
journalism. In print, we could build a strong reader habit by daily filling the
newspaper with text and pictures. In digital, we should let the story decide
the format. Meanwhile, in choosing formats, we have to be much more mindful of
the audience’s situation when consuming our content.
Podcasts are one of the most popular
platforms on which audiences enjoy news content. NRC will discuss its podcast
success during the upcoming Master Class.
For example, the podcast has proven to be an
effective channel for reaching a younger crowd used to plugging in their
earbuds. But not anything goes. You need to produce and format so every second
brings value to a specific audience group. Be a bore, and the listener will
never return. Be relevant, and you have a loyal user with engagement minutes
you can only dream of in text-based journalism.
In the past 25 years, we learned how to digitise
print newspapers. Now, the most significant opportunity is in digitising audio
and video. The objective would be to secure a position in a bigger pie of
attention. Ultimately, people spend more time on audio and video than on
text-based media.
Creativity, imagination, and spontaneity are
trademarks of great storytelling. But to get to the next level of storytelling,
newsrooms need a more structured approach.
This will be the focus of the the second Newsroom Innovation
Master Class on Tuesdays, March 16. I have invited three
editors, all successful in what they are doing. Their subject will be very
different storytelling formats: podcast, visual- and data journalism, and live
video. Still, they share a structured approach to storytelling we can all learn
from when developing our newsrooms:
- Amanda
Farnsworth, head of visual and data journalismat BBC News, will focus
on where you need professional teams and where you can provide tools and
training that enable all reporters to do visual and data storytelling.
- Alexandra
Beverfjord, editor in chief of Norway’s Dagbladet, has successfully made
breaking news video core to the tabloid newspaper’s strategy.
- Harrison
van der Vliet, deputy editor-in-chief of NRC in The Netherlands, will talk
about podcasts and how they are formatted to build strong reader/listener
habits.
If these are problems facing your newsroom and you
are looking for solutions, join INMA for this unique dive into an under-covered
subject for the news industry. You will walk away with practical advice from
peer editors from around the world — from our faculty and from our
audience.
Looking forward to seeing you soon at the INMA
Newsroom Innovation Master Class!
About Espen
Egil Hansen
Espen Egil Hansen is founder of
Fyrr.no, Navigating Digital Transformation, and former editor-in-chief of
Aftenposten, a Schibsted news brand based in Oslo, Norway. He can be reached at
espen@fyrr.no.
How to practically solve
the most demanding challenges facing journalism today: polarisation and trust, quality
and engagement, and newsroom transformation
Polarisation and
trust
Quality and
engagement
Newsroom
transformation
Solving 3 momentous challenges facing editors today
At no point in the
history of journalism have we had more tools to do quality reporting that makes
a difference. At no point have newsrooms had more options in developing a
deeper relationship with its audience. And at no point have editors faced more
complex challenges in leading its brands.
In this INMA Master
Class, we will take a deep dive into best practices and innovations in the
context of three momentous challenges facing editors right now:
Polarisation and
trust: How to report on disagreement in society and remain a trusted
brand when under attack from populists? How to breach the gap between
propaganda and information? Fact-checking didn’t do the trick alone. What are
the best practices and pitfalls in building trust?
Quality and
engagement: As media business models increasingly have moved to digital
subscription, newsrooms need to deliver journalism in formats that
differentiate, build habits, and appeals to a younger audience. How do you do
it, and how do you choose the right tactics to stay relevant for a specific
audience?
Newsroom transformation: How do you go
from strategy to execution when it comes to leading the newsroom? How to break
down silos between departments and foster a newsroom culture more oriented
towards innovative ways of fulfilling the editorial mission? Build specialised teams
or train everyone?
Topics
Podcasts,
newsletters and digital storytelling: what are the world’s best formats right
now, and why?
How can we
differentiate our journalism from misinformation?
You have built a
great strategy, but how do you get the newsroom onboard with the new ways of
working?
How to reach a
younger audience without dumbing down?
Explanatory
journalism: what works?
Content and content
formats that work to get a more diversified audience
The tone of voice:
strong views vs. an ambition to build a more in-depth understanding?
Rethinking
engagement: readers’ involvement in stories, seeking feedback, readers as
experts, in-person events with journalists and readers
The role of
audience data in the newsrooms: What are the right metrics from a journalistic
viewpoint, and what are the pitfalls?
Journalism that
helps the audience solve real-life problems
Content library:
fewer stories with higher quality vs. many stories of general interest?
Tactics to
differentiate from competitors and fake news
How to build a
ninja team that supports an editor-in-chief in her/his transformation
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