Journalism: what next?

George BrockProfessor and Head of Journalism

City University LondonMarch 2014

What links these men?

…with these?

Or with this…

New bits of journalism landscape

• Jeff Bezos (Amazon + Washington Post)• Pierre Omidyar’s: Ebay + First Look

news sites• Vox• Vice• Buzzfeed

Common denominators• New players without legacy• Serious money• Innovation via experiment • = re-invention• Not easy to embarrass

How this book came about

When you hear people moaning about the future of journalism,

remember…• Journalism’s history was mostly like this:

messy, experimental, improvisational and – quite often – not at all serious.

• People working in mainstream, established newsrooms often don’t see what’s going on at the grassroots.

Late 20th century was unusual

• Plenty of advertising in print• So much in 1990s they thought they needn’t

worry about the internet any time soon• Plenty of advertising in network (terrestrial)

TV• This produced a stability which persuaded

journalists that they had always worked in a well-resourced environment

UK national daily and Sunday newspaper circulation 1950-2000

• Words + pix• Reading/watching habits will change because

people are on the move• Open sourcing• User/reader’s frame of reference is wider

because of instant comparison• Data comes alive

News media re-invent where digital creates news possibilities

There’s a pattern here• Disruption• …is followed by regeneration• But not always immediately• And in the gap between newsrooms close and

jobs are lost• People always notice the loss before the

regeneration

Stop worrying and enjoy digital

• Be clear about what journalism is for• 4 tasks which still require skill and practice:

– Verification– Sense-making– Eye-witness– Investigation

What could still go wrong• Words are needed for ideas at length• Local/hyperlocal: very hard• TV hasn’t yet hit its digital crunch• Metadata: already very dangerous

(particularly to journalists)

Remember what “experiment” means

• Most fail• What happens is not what is predicted• Even if it is predicted, it won’t happen on schedule• Established companies and organisations are at a

disadvantage• Experiments produce winners and winners get

bigger• Look at history: this is what happened in the past

What will distinguish winners?• They have ideas about what journalism is for• Lean and mean• They scale carefully• Pragmatic, flexible and confident with back-end

tech• Combine aggregation and origination• They organise for high-quality experiment• That usually means very good tech back end +

data

•THESE are the companies to work for

• @georgeprof

• www.georgebrock.net

• www.city.ac.uk/journalism