If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, may as well be the catch-cry of Australia’s media outlets. And they’d be right. Australian media sure isn’t broken — it’s decimated.
Over a decade of declining print readership and a slow and sloppy adoption to a digital-first approach has left the Australian news industry chasing their tails trying to claw back readership and revenue in a news industry that is now more competitive — and worth less — than ever before.
The people who are paying the price are, of course, the readers. They’re paying with a seismic drop in quality of news, a merciless 24-hour news cycle that doesn’t leave room for thorough analysis of the forces shaping our society beyond the sensationalism and drama, and an increase in advertising from every direction that leaves the reader more unsure than ever if what they’ve just read is fact or fiction.
The reason the current digital news model is just not working is that the news industry has remained largely the same since the start of the industrial revolution. Despite rapid technological advancements that have completely changed the way people consume absolutely everything, the news industry in Australia and around the world are struggling to stay afloat with what is essentially a revenue model built for the 18th century.
Advertising revenue isn’t what it used to be
When news was confined to a daily, weekly, or even monthly publication and readers were loyal to one or two mastheads at most, advertising space in a newspaper was valuable. Now, the news industry seems stuck in the past when it comes to revenue streams, pouring money into old, broken, ad-centric business models that are failing.
When digital publishing first gained traction, the drop in value of physical advertising wasn’t too concerning, as many people assumed the unlimited pages and potentially global audience of readers on the internet would lead to exponential growth in advertising revenue. But online advertising growth never happened and organisations realised that large numbers of website hits didn’t necessarily lead to larger profits.
According to Roy Morgan Research, the online advertising market is worth $6.8 billion in Australia but digital search engines, such as Google, and digital display advertising, such as Facebook, pull in most of this. For traditional news organisations, digital revenue is not offsetting the decline in circulation and advertising, not least because ad blocker usage continues to increase.
At the same time, the quality and relevance of advertising is falling, with automated exchanges placing ads across hundreds and thousands of sites regardless of their content. Yet the news industry continues to compete for this advertising by lowering the quality of headlines and the articles underneath them so they virtually become clickbait, turning news into entertainment, instead of information.
An alternative method of combating loss of traditional advertising revenue is by selling “native ads” — essentially, branded content dressed up to look like a legitimate article, review or comment piece and written by publisher’s staff, but payed for by an advertiser. This content will have ‘sponsored by…” or “this piece was brought to you by…” somewhere in the article, but for all intents and purposes, this doesn’t matter. A survey by Contently, a content strategist website, and partners, the The Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY and Radius Global Market Research, found that in the US in 2016, 77 percent of readers do not interpret native advertising ads as advertising. This kind of practice threatens publishers’ independence and it causes a great harm to their relationship with their readers who feel deceived by native advertising and ultimately, lose trust in that publisher. Without trust, what’s the point?
Former Twitter Chairman and CEO Evan Williams said in a blog post that “it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet”, which has undermined trust in news outlets.
Williams argues that the news industry needs to reward independent journalists on their ability to inform and enlighten the public, rather than their ability to attract clicks, and move towards a model where journalists are compensated for the value they create.
So are subscriptions the answer?
Well, not really.
The New York Times has had great success transitioning from an advertisement to a subscription-based revenue model, more than doubling its digital business in the last six years.
This success in the subscription model has a lot of other publishers following suit. In Australia, The Australian celebrated five years of digital subscription last year, claiming the move to the model a success, while the Sydney Morning Herald is attempting to make the shift with a subscription model that is scarily easy to get around.
But even if these subscription models are reflecting an uptick in revenue (note this is a rise from a decade of failed advertising revenue, not from the original print revenue) all the model is doing is taking information from the hands of the many, back into the powerful few. When readers make a choice of who to subscribe to — and they have to make a choice, as subscription to several publishers would put the costs of media consumption up to an unaffordable monthly amount — they are limiting where they get their information from. They are going from a theoretically, ‘democratised’ practice of being able to read a plethora of views and opinions, to having to make a choice which ‘side’ they belong to. And let’s not beat around the bush, Australian media undoubtedly makes you choose a side.
Subscription models may be saving a select few media conglomerates, but they’re not saving the news industry.
What about crowdfunded and member-based journalism?
Now we’re getting into a better area.
Start-up independent news outlets are well positioned to reward journalists on their ability to inform and enlighten the public as they can build around reader trust and will not be afraid to ask consumers to pay for the quality, independent content they receive.
De Correspondent, a member-funded journalism platform for independent voices was launched in 2013 with a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign in the Netherlands. They now have 65, 000 members and are working with Jay Rosen to launch in the US.
Here in Australia, the New Matilda also runs off a unique mix of membership, beer-related startups and heavy personal investment.
News reporting and journalism funded solely by members who pay for a subscription because they believe in independent, value-adding journalism is an incredible thing for the industry and it definitely has a huge role to play in setting the news industry back on track. But it’s not the only answer.
No industry can sustain itself indefinitely on donations alone. Even though the idea behind it is that you’re getting news for your money, the fact of the matter is that other people are getting the exact same content for free. It’s less subscription, more donations and can’t be a secure source of revenue, despite being an inarguably great change from the current model.
So what’s the answer?
Well, we don’t know, but we hope we’ll be a part of it. Independent journalism is an indispensable component of society and if an overhaul of the news industry is what it takes to make sure it survives well into the 21st century, then that’s what needs to happen.
InPress aims to give readers the whole perspective. A diverse range of independent voices on issues inside and outside the constrictive 24-hour news cycle. We’re recruiting journalists from across the country — from the small towns of inland Australia, to the outback, into the shiny cities of the East Coast. We believe that news shouldn’t be pumped out from a centralised office in the city. It should come from the people who know the country, know the people and know their story.
And we want to do it in an affordable way, while acknowledging that news should be kept as accessible as possible. Articles will be for sale for as little as 15 cents each, depending on the amount of time and energy that’s gone into it. You read for what you pay for and the journalist gets their fair cut — 70 percent of direct profits — while the remaining 30 percent goes straight back into InPress, to sustain the platform and make improvements that help everyone.
And low-quality clickbait or paid advertising won’t make the cut. You can refund your article if you feel like the journalist has hyped the headline for clicks. And all journalists are transparent in who they are and why they’re independent. So while we strive to publish views from the left, the right and everywhere in between, you’ll be able to check exactly where they come from and make your decisions from a fully informed position, not one clouded over by paid-for articles and writers with a vested-interest.
We need independent news. And you need to be a part of it. Join InPress here.
Interested in learning more about InPress? Jump over to www.inpress.media for all the info you’ll need, plus a free $1 reading material for giving us a chance!