The next year will be crucial to the future of news
Coming in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, the bottom line of this year’s international Reuters Institute Digital News Report matters much both to the future of journalism and the business of news.
Its conclusion is a statement of uncertainty that rings all too true for journalists and news executives, who are rightly apprehensive about the future of news. Who pays for quality and information is now a daily and existential challenge.
“The next 12 months will be critical in shaping the future of the news industry,” concludes the comprehensive report, considered to be the world’s largest annual comparative survey of major trends in global digital news consumption. This year’s illuminating survey questioned 80,000 people on six continents, in 40 markets, including Canada.
The report, compiled by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, points to some heartening good news — the fact that the coronavirus crisis has increased the demand for news around the world, making clear, “the need for reliable, accurate journalism that can inform and educate populations.”
Also, key for me among the report’s “signs of hope” is this conclusion: “The creativity of journalists has also come to the fore in finding flexible ways to produce the news under extremely difficult circumstances. Fact-checking has become even more central to newsroom operations, boosting digital literacy more widely and helping to counter the many conspiracy theories swirling on social media and elsewhere.”
The bad news about the business of news overrides this good. The well-documented reality is that as the economic shutdown has seen advertising revenue plummet to new lows in many markets, including Canada, ongoing questions about the funding of distinctive, quality journalism that serves citizens become even more critical.
“Journalism matters and is in demand again,” states Nic Newman, the institute’s senior research associate in the foreword to the 112-page report. “But one problem for publishers is that this extra interest is producing even less income.
“It is too early to predict the full impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the news industry, but it is almost certain to be a catalyst for more costcutting, consolidation, and even faster changes in business models,” the report states.
The uncertain path ahead most certainly requires engaged news audiences to pay for news through digital subscriptions and other payment models, underscoring the importance of the Star’s ongoing digital news subscription priority. It tells us that just 13 per cent of Canadians now pay for news — compared to the current 20 per cent in the United States. Still, that is a Canadian increase from nine per cent last year.
Encouraging readers to pay for journalism requires more engagement with news audiences and greater need than ever for distinct, quality news that provides value to readers and to the greater community.
As Reuters senior research fellow Richard Fletcher states in a section on how and why people are paying for online news: We “see subscribers weighing up personal benefits, such as distinctive content, convenience, and value, with perceived benefits for society — such as having a strong and independent media able to hold politicians to account.”
This report also provides an important annual check-in on global media trust, a measure I have followed closely in recent years and hope to explore more fully with these renowned researchers in fall when I am scheduled to begin a journalism fellowship at the Reuters Institute.
Once again, trust in news overall is down across the board with fewer than four in 10 survey respondents (38 per cent) reporting that they trust most news most of the time. While that number is higher in Canada, with overall trust at 44 per cent, the eight-point drop in trust in news in Canada in the past year is double that of the overall global fall.
And while more than half of Canadian respondents (53 per cent) now get news from social media, and the smartphone has surpassed the computer as the most used device for news, trust in news on social media in this country is just 19 per cent.
Unsurprisingly, the report finds high levels of concern about misinformation, with Facebook seen as the main channel for spreading false information: “Even before the coronavirus crisis hit, more than half of our global sample said they were concerned about what is true or false on the internet when it comes to news,” the report says.
A good news aspect of that was the finding that trust in traditional news sources’ coverage of COVID-19 was relatively high at the outset of the pandemic. But as these difficult months have passed, and the way forward in regard to both our health and the economy become issues of often polarized debate, that seems unlikely to hold.
“Any ‘trust halo’ for the media may be also be short-lived,” the report states.
Indeed, as always, and even more important than ever, journalists and news organizations depending on news audiences to help fund the survival of news, must make clear the trustworthiness of their news.
The uncertain path ahead most certainly requires engaged news audiences to pay for news through digital subscriptions and other payment models