Our broken view of news affects how we view its future
The World Wide Web is now comprised of more than 1.7 billion websites, an explosion of expression beyond anything we have ever seen or could have fully imagined. The internet exponentially expanded both the marketplace for information and the marketplace for ideas. It has brought extraordinary value to our societies and introduced new challenges — to our institutions, to our politics, and yes, to journalism itself. The challenges are important to address because the profession of journalism matters. The news it provides matters. When I turned 16 my dad bought me a used car through the classifieds of the local newspaper. Today, you’d go to Craigslist, Kijiji or AutoTrader.ca. The Sunday paper was where my mum went to get recipes and cut out coupons. Today, specialists sites like Epicurious are where people turn to. I found my first job in the listings of the Washington Post but today people go to Workopolis.
As a result, the revenue generated by classifieds, sales ads, and job listings is no longer what it once was. And it was that revenue that supported the serious journalism. Hard news in general interest newspapers has never been a major draw for advertisers. Some media companies have invested in or acquired new online businesses. In Australia, NewsCorp owns RealEstate.com, the largest real estate listings site. In Germany, Axel Springer owns Stepstone, the largest job site. But these businesses are separate. They’re on different balance sheets. They no longer subsidize the creation of news on The Australian or Bild.
That does not mean, however, that providing quality journalism cannot be a successful business. And we are beginning to see what the future of news will be. Look beneath the dust and smoke of disruption and one can see the bright, healthy seedlings of the future of news.
In Canada, Village Media created a successful news business built around supporting the demand for news in Canada’s smaller communities. As traditional newspapers shut down in places like Guelph, Barrie and Orillia, Village Media launched Guelph Today, Barrie Today and Orillia Matters along with nearly a dozen online-only news services for small communities in Ontario.
Today, Village Media is growing and its news sites are generating more site traffic than the traditional news outlets that once serviced these communities. It’s hiring local journalists and editors and it’s turning a profit in the business of delivering local news in Canada.
Trust is critical to the relationship news organizations develop with their communities. To that end, there have been more efforts to draw attention to accurate information and proactively combat misinformation. Over the last four years, Google has helped enable an ecosystem of independent fact-check modules. They are now being created by news organizations, independent fact check groups, and the medical community.
But it goes further than that. Four years ago, I helped found the Trust Project, an effort of the global journalism community to build a better framework of trust that helps fact-based reporting earn the credibility it deserves, and that might help readers distinguish fact from fiction.
Last fall the Trust Project announced their initial framework of trust indicators. Trinity-Mirror in the United Kingdom put them in place resulting in an 8 per cent increase in consumer trust. Trust matters. Trust has real value, including economic value.
Journalism is about giving citizens the tools and information they need to be good citizens. A journalist’s role is to help us understand our world, help us know how to think — without telling us what to think.
It is also the responsibility of all of us who perform the act of journalism or who support the role of journalism, including technology platforms, to hold each other to account and to help the societies we serve understand the role and ethics of journalism.
None of us involved in this pursuit should assume someone else will play the role of educating our societies about journalism’s purpose, of maintaining the ethics of the profession, and above all, maintaining the trust of the citizens we serve.
That responsibility is on all of us who care about a future for quality journalism in open societies. Every one of us. Every day.