George Brock on journalism, paywalls, and the future of news media

Brock recognizes that much of the "debate about news is almost exclusive doom-laden" with dwindling advertising revenue, newspaper closures, and the lack of a business model that works. Although all of these point to the impending demise of news, Brock believes traditional journalism and the news can be saved. But, first it is necessary to ask what journalism is and whether it adds any value to society.

Changes in communications

In the past decade and a half, Brock explains that technological developments have fuelled a shift in human communications. Firstly, this has increased the quantity of information that is available for consumption and spread them through the most remote corners of the developing world. Secondly, the advent of the Internet has allowed information to be constantly altered, and this has led to an inevitably loss of "authority, clarity, and coherence" in journalism.

Lastly, and most importantly, news has become decentralized. The production and consumption of news has been decoupled from its previous sources of income. In addition to that, news production itself has been taken up by anyone, which has caused a "lot of authority - not to mention social status and sense of identity among journalists" to evaporate.

Citizen journalism, pictures taken with low-quality cell phones are becoming important in breaking news, has also taken on a central role because of this decentralization.

This has all led to a crisis in how to even define the changing nature of journalism today.

"News may not be over but it doesn't reach you in the same way and the way it is assembled is also altering. But it is equally true and important that buried inside these changes, something essential needs preserving."

Helping journalism

If journalism is to be valued - and perhaps even to be paid for - that worth has to be clear to those who are not journalists.

Journalists need to start by accepting that they do not automatically hold a powerful place in the new information system. Brock criticizes journalists who speak of their work as if it were the most vital feature of democracy and that it is up to society to provide a route out of their current problems.

Brock suggests that journalists narrow down the elements that make up what they do. This would include verification with reliable information, sense-making accompanied with exciting and interesting commentary, experienced eyewitness reports, and investigation. These would be the four pillars of trust of journalism.

However, all of these things are now being done by thousands of others who "neither count themselves as news organizations or journalists."

And this is why it is important to tighten the boundaries of what is journalism.

"The bait of using old media is wearing off, and the young are not picking it up"

For Brock, gradual changes - from the advent of broadcast journalism to free newspapers on your subway ride - started the long process of the hollowing or thinning of news. Journalists are now expected to produce up to three times more material than they were 20 years ago.  Competition for attention has become tough.

At the moment Brock believes we function in a mixed news economy, part industrial old mass media (printworks, terrestrial broadcasting, and so on) and part a networked digital information economy. Consumer loyalties are inevitably divided: "affection for a favorite newspaper or the appointment with the evening news doesn't decline just because the business model is going to run out of steam."

But what is more alarming, and what according to Brock, can be a bitter pill to swallow for journalists, is the "fall in the perceived value of what mainstream news organization produce." Not only are people answering that they are not impacted by news on nationwide surveys, but it seems as though mainstream news just aren't as interesting as they were before.

The solution to journalism's woes: neither tablets nor paywalls, but philanthropy and media experiments

As news consumption gravitates toward mobile devices, - including the iPad and other devices with similar touch screen - Brock believes it will be audiovisual content, and not the written word, that will reign supreme.

To ensure that the written word is here to stay "there's no avoiding any longer the issue of how we make this pay" but believes the approaches many established media companies have taken is not the right one. Many companies have not created the proper demand and he believes many of their incursions into paid content will not work.

And although many large media companies, like News Corp, are embracing paywalls, Brock does not support them.

"It seems unlikely that putting a paywall around an entire paper, as the Editor of the Times has said he plans to do, can work."

But, if paywalls aren't the answer, what is?

Brock admits that he is unsure and that he does not have the answers, and it seems that most of the community is uncertain as to what the best strategy is.

However, Brock believes the best attempts at getting the right answer are going on through local media experiments. He talks about some local news initiatives, like one in the Czech republic, started by an Insurance company in coffee shops. This hyperlocal reporting, he explains, is balanced out by a newsroom in Prague.

But, it seems that "the more experiments, the more discoveries, the more journalism sustained. There may be no single, magic-bullet formula for success. There may be several or many."

Like, philanthropy for example. Philanthropy has already proved to be a valuable source of funding for investigative journalism. ProPublica is one example.

Could public funds be the answer?

Brock believes that there is very little reason to justify public spending on journalism, but leaves the door open for this to take place in the future. In some countries, like France, the government has been subsidizing journalism for years.

Times of crisis are also times of opportunity. Although journalism has been confronted with many disappointing news over the last couple of years, a new and successful business model may be around the corner and the magic bullet may lie in the many media experiments that journalists are engaging in today.