Last week the Financial Times reported that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the biggest media organisation in the world, had posted a $6.4bn quarterly loss, and anounced a 30% drop in its operating income. This didn’t come as much of a surprise: all news organisations, particularly papers, are struggling with the simultaneous advent of dropping advertising revenue, falling circulation, and increasing newsprint costs.
For training journalists, this is not great news. But at least News Corp’s Times is still planning on recruiting a graduate intake this year. The Guardian, Mirror, and Telegraph have all cancelled their 2009 graduate training schemes, leaving just the FT (taking one or two reporters), Times (one or two), Mail, Reuters and PA in the graduate job market.
Ed Roussel, digital editor at the Telegraph, said in a lecture at Sheffield University yesterday that the future for journalism lay in outsourcing most of its news-gathering requirements (the Telegraph has already got rid of some of its subbing work).
According to Roussel, newspapers will survive in a post-credit-crunch economy by employing more ‘premium’ writers (he cited Boris Johnson and Jeff Randall as examples) who give the organisation a brand, while getting the majority of its news content from agencies such as PA, Reuters and AP.
Roussel’s argument ran that while newspapers had a monopoly, they could afford to source and repurpose the majority of their news. But in the network age, the source material could come from the wires, and the repurposing (subbing) could be outsourced.
He argued that if you can get news from these providers, why pay someone else to replicate the service? All a newspaper needs to pay for is its star journalists. Roussel’s audience of young trainee reporters slumped into their seats…
A slide from Ed Roussel's presentation, outlining the future of journalism
Filed under: credit crunch, journalism training, the future of media
Surely it is only a matter of time before the electronic sub program (a highly advanced older brother os Word’s Spellchecker) is invented and replaces journalists with its instant data cross-referencing to create the perfectly informed article. Investigative reporting is becoming ‘uneconomical’ and at this rate journalists will be slowly but surely removed from anything other than sprouting opinions.
I’m not feeling too positive today.
Hi Martin,
The above post and its representation of what I said last week at Sheffield is misleading.
Here’s what I did say:
1. News companies need to focus more resource on creating “premium” content. I defined premium content as editorial that is both scarce and in high demand.
2. I went out of my way to make clear that “premium” is NOT just star writers. A premium writer is any journalist who goes out of his/her way to make their writing exceptionally valuable – whether that’s by writing a great blog or by generating scoops. An example I cited was a Telegraph blogger, Shane Richmond, who now heads all our blogs projects. Shane, a home grown talent, is now a star in his own right precisely because he has worked over a period of years to build a strong rapport with his audience and provide it with excellent analysis of what’s happening in the tech and media industry.
3. Students of journalism need to think harder about how they will make themselves useful to news organisations. What ”premium” do they offer? An example I cited was Ben Hazel, a student from Sheffield University who I hired last year precisely because he had figured out during an internship with us how to make himself indispensable, notwithstanding his relative lack of experience. Ben, who graduated just a year ago, is a “premium” journalist thanks to his grasp of web publishing skills.
4. I never said that news companies will “outsource most of their news gathering requirements” as you state above. What I did say is that there is little value in journalists who write commoditised content – editorial that is widely available and therefore of limited value. News companies are more likely to simply take such content directly from wire services, such as the PA or AP, rather than employ journalists who add little or no value to the wires.
While the harsh truth is that the recession will raise the bar for students of any profession, there will always be a bright career for those who have the skill and determination to figure out how to be the best in the business at what they do.
Thanks, Edward
[...] MEDIA NOTES blog: Ed Roussel and the post-recession news media. — The Telegraph’s digital editor says newspapers will survive “by employing more ‘premium’ writers who give the organisation a brand, while getting the majority of its news content from agencies such as PA, Reuters and AP.” [...]
Hi Edward,
Thanks for your thorough reply. I’m sorry if you think I misrepresented you – I’ll put a recording of the lecture up in the next few days. It was an interesting and inspiring talk, with some key insights, particularly how trainee journalists should be creating their own brands. After the lecture most students rushed out to start up blogs and twitter accounts.
However, there were some themes that were worrying. Most of a newspaper’s content is just that – news. People buy a paper to get the news, in a format they are familiar with and interpreted according to the political/ideological/regional standpoint they can identify with most. This content is mostly what you call ‘commoditised content’ – editorial that is available elsewhere, usually through the wires. But it is this content – the way it is written, the interpretation, prioritisation and analysis, that defines newspaper brands.
Outsourcing ‘standard’ or ‘everyday’ news gathering – that which could be taken from the wires – in my opinion risks what Bob Franklin would call McDonalisation: reducing variety, lowering standards, and creating a shrinking pool of journalistic talent. Hard news reporting needs to be nurtured by leading national newspapers, so that journalistic standards remain high. Basic reporting skills of integrity, credibility and accuracy (getting names right, for example) need to be encouraged and nurtured and not shipped out.
Thanks for engaging.
All the best, BEN SPENCER
Ben,
It seems to me that a fair chunk of your argument is based around the assumption that “People buy a paper to get the news”.
Increasingly, I don’t think this is the case, especially for younger people. Obviously, I can only speak for myself, but I buy the paper to get the opinion and comment of the journalists and editors. If I want to know “the news”, I’ll head online to the wires. To me, papers have long ceased to be a reliable source of fact (which you yourself have written about here http://globalmedianotes.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/the-telegraph-pr-agency-for-proprietors/), and are of use and interest only in such context.
It seems to naturally follow, that if a news organisation (be it paper, website, blog or any other) wants to build itself into something of value, it needs to offer significantly more than, as Edward puts it, “commoditised content”. Whether that value comes from particularly strong opinions, or from exceptionally insightful analysis, or from hardwork finding stories no-one else is covering, it is value derived from something other than widely available facts.
As such, Edward’s assertion seems to me that in order to get on as a journalist you need to offer something different to everyone else seems right on the money. And in times of freely, widely available information, that “something different” requires more work and effort than perhaps it has before.
So far from giving Sheffield students cause to slump into their seats, shouldn’t this be a reason to become even more intensely involved in what you’re good at, what you’re interested in? After all, uniqueness should accrue increasing value in the future, while sticking with the crowd will only dilute your identity.
I disagree, Colin, that newspapers no longer have a news-creating purpose. You may “head online” to the wires to get your news, but it is rare that PA or Reuters actually break big stories. Investigative journalism, for one thing, wouldn’t exist without well-trained newspaper (and broadcast, I suppose) journalists. Look at the Guardian’s current investigation on corporate tax dodging for example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/series/tax-gap
That wouldn’t have happened were the wires the only ones reporting news.
Comment and opinion are interesting, but the most interesting columnists are experienced reporters, who have gathered enough knowledge from years of news-gathering to comment authoritatively.
Thanks, Ben
[...] Interesting post from Ben Spencer on a recent presentation by Ed Roussel, digital editor at Telegraph Media Group. [...]
[...] announced that it would move to this week in a bid to stay its declining fortunes. A recent talk by the Telegraph Media Group’s digital editor also confirmed this [...]
Great article, you must have done a fair amount of research for it eh? Well done on it, really.
[...] Interesting post from Ben Spencer on a recent presentation by Ed Roussel, digital editor at Telegraph Media Group. [...]