Tina Brown: "what matters is the journalism, not the delivery"

Posted by Christie Silk on June 2, 2009 at 5:09 PM

In an interview with the Telegraph, Tina Brown expresses her views on the future of newspapers and the professional journalist. The once queen bee of the high-end glossy magazine industry has now completely embraced the digital medium as editor in chief of the New York Daily Beast. Brown is now advising fellow journalists to recognise the need for 'innovative approaches' to the delivery of news and the varying business models to maintain them financially.

Emphasising the 'parlous condition' of the New York Times, and the worrying health of other significant US local papers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, Brown maintained that resources should be placed on preserving the intent and purposes of journalism per se, rather than on saving printed newspapers, "It's more important to preserve journalism than it is to preserve newspapers, frankly."

Such an assertion is hardly shocking in the current environment, as journalists all over the world, although particularly in the US, seek to prove the enduring necessity of their profession and are accommodating to new channels of news provision. The need to do so is largely a result of the financial crisis besieging the print industry, and pushing an increasing number of papers out of print. Thus many publishers have looked to compensate, if not entirely replace, their printed publications with online editions. Yet online projects have yet to yield significant profit, an issue, which dominates debates over the most workable and profitable business models of the news industry. The Daily Beast is consuming rather than producing any revenue at the moment, as it is entirely financed by individual contributions from Barry Diller, the media and internet tycoon.

Brown advocates a creative approach to the choice of business models, 'everything has to be tried' but recognises that the move to web based journalism has risked depriving the profession of resources to perform its original functions. The most noticeable loss, it can be argued, has been to the practice of investigative journalism. There has been an attendant backlash to the decline of investigative journalism and an array of initiatives are being pursued to reassert its role in the centre of news provision. Yet, whilst the professional and ethical incentives for the fulfilment of such journalistic roles are evidently still alive, the financing of the practices remains a great restriction. Thus, given doubts that advertisers would invest in 'riskier' efforts would state support be a viable funding option?

"It's always going to be in the public interest to do that sort of journalism but it's never going to appeal to advertisers" said Brown. "So it may need either some sort of BBC approach to it, or some sort of philanthropic partnership, or some sort of trust; or company sponsorship of investigative work, like sponsoring television programmes. Maybe that's a model. Everything has to be tried."

On the basis that everything is tried, Brown envisages the next ten years future of journalism as inexorably specialised and internet based, "until the generational transition is complete and everyone reads everything online."

Moreover, Brown consider the current operational system of the Daily Beast as a great example of the benefits of exploiting the capacities of the web, "with the Beast, we're creating a sort of virtual newsroom all over the world. When we're covering Mumbai I can suddenly activate five brilliant journalists who know much more about the subject than anyone I can send from head office."

Interestingly, Brown foresees that the time of the professional, career journalist is perhaps coming to an end, as she herself uses work produced by a range of other professionals "I think we're going to get to the stage where a lot of journalists have other jobs as well."

Source: The Telegraph