Image via WikipediaA major study into US newspapers by the Project for Excellence in Journalism presents a picture of an industry struggling to come to terms with the seismic changes taking place in the media.
As the report highlights:
On one hand, financial pressures sap its strength and threaten its very survival. On the other, the rise of the web boosts its competitiveness, opens up innovative new forms of journalism, builds new bridges to readers and offers enormous potential for the future. Many editors believe the industry’s future is effectively a race between these two forces.
Editors are clearly divided on the potential of the web, and this is to be expected. After all, some veterans may hark back to a mythical golden age of newspapers.
The make-up of newsrooms is changing, with the report finding that staff are “smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web”. But there is a cost, with less experience and knowledge in the newsroom as the older generation take lucrative buyouts.
The section on the influence of the web provides a more detailed look at how digital is impacting newsrooms. There appears to be an acceptance that the web is not the enemy:
Although several editors voiced concerns about the web as a distraction that deflects resources from the print edition, overall, the view of the web appears to be increasingly positive.
At the same time, the study suggests that print remains the primary focus for editors. This is understandable given the importance of print revenues. But it also suggests that print is still considered more important editorially to the web.
Interviews for the study showed that editors felt the growing demands of the web on newsrooms at times sapped attention and energy from the print edition, as reflects in this quote: “The demands of producing more web content are diminishing the print product.”
This suggests that editors still think of themselves as print people, rather than as leaders of a news outlet with different distribution points reaching different audiences. This is the fundamental shift that needs to take place in newsrooms.
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