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The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Emily Bell, Editor-in-Chief of guardian.co.uk in the UK.

View all the interviews in this series here. (including The New York Times, Financial Times, Fairfax Media...)


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We're not doing that already. We changed our names last year from Guardian Newspapers Limited to Guardian News and Media, so we're moving away from defining ourselves as a newspaper company.
But we are still news. We are news-oriented, we are a news media company.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I 100% disagree with that statement. 2014 is so close, of course there will still be print newspapers; it is ridiculous to suggest that. Will there be fewer print newspapers in 2014 in certain parts of Western Europe, the US, etc? Yes, most definitely.

But clearly the futurists in Davos haven't looked at newspaper markets in emerging economies like India, etc. where print products are proliferating. They are increasing faster, in basic circulation and number of titles, than they are declining in markets with more mature print readerships. It's a sweeping and very narrow generalization, which is wrong.

We will definitely have a printed product in 2014. If you said 2024 or 2034, who knows, I would say that's far too far away to guess, and it's possible not. Don't forget Arthur Sulzberger said: "I can conceive of a time when we will no longer produce the print paper." Whether he retracted it or not, it's clearly crossed his mind.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief here, said he could foresee a time when we will be mainly a digital company and that we don't have a printed product. He actually said that the last printed presses that we bought would be the last ones that would ever be bought.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

It's a complete break. Not so much what happened with the advent of the Internet, but much more what's happened with various programming protocols since, what you would know as Web 2.0, which is the ability to allow the uploading of information by the local generation.

Flickr, blogs, etc. have completely changed the game, because it means all matter of information is exposed and is available to be manipulated, uploaded, reported on, etc. by a whole set of people who are no longer in control of a distribution bottleneck. Actually, what we were doing ten years ago was exploiting a Web publishing bottleneck, which was that we had the money to have the server space, the rack space, the designers - anybody can do that now.

That's completely different, it's not just another slight development of an existing cycle.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Yes, the participation of users in news is inevitable. It is growing and is welcomed. It is a massive opportunity for professional journalists to enhance what they do. The closer you are, the more authentic you are, and the more knowledgeable you can be, then the more purchase you have with the community that will come to you, tell you things and point to your work in certain areas.
I think if you don't have that, in the future as a journalist, you probably don't have much of a future.

'Threat' is a good thing. It's not so much a threat. Now you've got the news event itself, and an immediate set of breaking news competitors like wire services, the BBC, or SkyNews in the UK.
There's another band of capability roundup, people who are actually experts in the kind of events that are happening and who bring knowledge and insight and can communicate near the professionals - the professionals' job is (still) to communicate the stories and make them relevant and understandable. I don't think that's going away.

But what's happening is that there are now other people who can answer who might not be professional journalists - they might be professionals working in the world that you're writing about. It's Dan Gillmor's phrase, "There's always someone better placed in the story than yourself."
If I'm a media journalist writing about what's going on at the BBC... somebody who's inside the BBC, who's not part of their press operations, could be writing with more authenticity, because I can only ever have the view of the outsider.

However, the person who's inside the BBC might not really have the requisites and right perspective to be able to draw the conclusions that perhaps an outsider might have. So I think there's some kind of a blend of insights and knowledge which skillful and professional journalists ought to be able to meld together.

The threat is journalists not being good enough at that. I think it's entirely healthy that there are specialist bloggers who are pushing journalists to be better at what they do.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I think it's going through a difficult transitory period. The funding now available for people to concentrate for long periods of time on single subject stories, which may or may not come to fruition, has been greatly undermined by the restructuring of professional media.

When I see institutes in the US that are funded specially for investigative journalism, those things are slightly depressing. The idea that news media can't sustain expensive investigative journalism is disappointing.

But it's not all over, there's a vacuum at the moment around serious disclosure. There are not as many (investigative) stories gaining traction, but I think in the future the tools are all there. One of the things that electronic media does is make it harder to hold onto an exclusive, because bits and pieces of the story tend to emerge from all sorts of different sources (ie: the Enron story initially broken by a Time journalist).

Once bits of the story were out there, it gathers momentum much quicker than it used to. So the value of the investigative story, as in keeping it as a brand-defining element, becomes harder and therefore a lot of businesses tend to say, "It's hard for us to keep control of the story, it's even more expensive to dig out, therefore why don't we step down our investment in it."

But there are organizations like ourselves and others such as The New York Times that are absolutely committed to making sure that doesn't happen.

View the other interviews in the Future of Journalism series here.

Source: Emily Bell, editor-in-chief, guardian.co.uk

For its relaunch, the Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Mike van Niekerk, Editor-in-Chief of online at Fairfax Media in Australia.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company?

We don't define ourselves as a newspaper company anymore. Fairfax renamed itself last year and is now called Fairfax Media: it's now a media business, not just online, but in all formats. We've diversified into radio recently as well. Whereas Fairfax was once defined by its two main newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, it is now much more. Not only because of its new assets, but also philosophically.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I disagree with that. Newspapers will be around for a long time, although they may not continue to be in the in same format. The economics of newspapers will certainly change, but the significant components of the current print business (such as weekend editions) will be around for at least 20-25 years - though definitely not in same form. Don't underestimate the capacity for innovation that newspapers have. Print will continue to be an important technology for transmission of information for a long time. Newspapers will continue to be printed way past 2014 - don't forget they're still launching newspapers in some markets.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

It's part of the continuum. If you look at the introduction of the telegraph in the 1800s, it also changed the format of journalism, the way people wrote stories, the speed and accessibility of information, and its distribution methods. But I think digital journalism is based on the same skills, which are still useful and important to the way we work on the Internet: it's about telling stories and tracking down the people to tell those stories. Old school journalists who are learning to work for the Internet are delighted to learn that they are extending skills they already have.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Both. It's a great opportunity to become closer to the community and serving it better. At the same time, we must remain skeptical at what information comes and how you treat it and not saying that it's all wonderful. It's like anything, it's a relationship and you treat it with respect. For individual journalists, it's great to have that immediate contact and feedback from readers. But we must be careful not to allow our better instincts drowned out by what one thinks the audience wants. For example, stories about Britney Spears are regularly highly rated on our websites. Those kinds of stories can be a temptation, but we must be careful about upholding our brand values

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I have to be very cautious with this answer. The economics of new media make it very difficult to fund investigative journalism in the same way it once was. If you're talking about the kind of journalism that keeps governments and corporations at check, I am concerned about its sustainability in the future.

Stay tuned for the next interview in our series with Financial Times managing editor Dan Bogler.

Source: Mike van Niekerk, editor Fairfax online

An excellent initiative by The New York Times: between Nov. 26 through Nov. 30, web editor Fiona Spruill will be answering reader questions on the paper’s website, as part of its ongoing ‘Talk to the Newsroom’ column.

        The print press has given lots of attention to Minnesota Star Tribune’s former editor (1983-92) and publisher (1992-98), Joel Kramer, since he announced the launch this fall of an online-only, non-profit news publication, MinnPost.com. Both print and online news organizations will be watching its first steps to answer their own existential concerns. How can editors adapt their ‘print journalism’ to make it work online? Is it streetwise to focus on quality coverage and less so on multimedia? Can the online-only, non-profit business model be sustainable?

Publishing group Pearson, owner of the Financial Times (FT), registered a strong 19% growth in annual profits, up to £502 million, for 2006. Pearson chief executive Marjorie Scardino also seemed to indicate that FT.com would keep its paywall, after discussions over its possible removal.

Most newspapers’ online editions give user free access to their content, relying strictly on advertising to generate online revenue. Among the notable exceptions are The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times (FT), but the latter is considering reform.

The widespread availability of broadband internet has upped the ante adding much variety to what internet users can view, hear, in short consume, online. In such a climate, video is set to become one of the key new requirements for newspaper websites.

UK regional daily The Hull Daily Mail began offering video news reports on its website in November after six of its journalists completed a diploma in videojournalism, comprised of three weeks of intensive practical training, organised by The Press Association and taught by David Dunkley Gyimah, senior lecturer in Digital Journalism at The University of Westminster.

The Editors Weblog interviewed David Dunkley Gyimah and Paul Hartley, assistant editor at the Hull Daily Mail, asking them about the diploma in videojournalism and the implications of online video for newspaper websites. Both agree that online video will soon be found on most newspaper websites.

Accompanying the increased integration of what NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen dubs "the people formerly known as audience" into the news process, are demands for more transparency from mainstream news organizations. Two developments this week in the National Security Agency leak issue broke by the New York Times in December put these demands in perspective, raising interesting questions of how transparent a news organization can be before its journalism starts to be negatively affected and showing the troubles the MSM is having in adapting to new pressures for transparency brought on by the blogosphere.