The news business has long been in a state of flux. It’s easy to look back and see that 35 years ago, there was no Times Now, no NDTV and certainly no World Wide Web. The paradigm shifts that have beleaguered media companies over the last decade have been well documented. Still, they were difficult to predict, making it a challenge to identify the developments that will influence the news scape over the next 35 years.
Every bit of what it means to be a journalist is being redefined by the technologies that shape today’s society. Stories are delivered through a media model that is still in its infancy. Straight reporting is being augmented by multi-Screen adaptations and delivery. Social media channels are shifting the focus of the news conversation. New business models continue to emerge that change how reporting can be funded and how news distribution is monetized.
Meanwhile, emerging generations are causing seismic shifts in the way news is consumed. Today’s younger and middle-aged audiences are acting differently than their predecessors. They are not nearly as avid in their news interest and they spend less time than older people watching, reading or listening to news. And while they may not become heavier news consumers as they age, they are still engaging with news, albeit in shorter bursts. Social media tools like Twitter have become their front page.
While legacy news organizations may have seen disruptive technology as an anathema to their businesses, many journalists thought leaders now see the upside to how technology can enhance news reporting – using technology to create new ways to tell stories and explain what is happening around the world.
A review of latest research in this area points to the following five emerging trends that will influence the news business for years to come.
- Growth of Citizen Journalism
A wide range of technologies from cell phone cameras to social media feeds has empowered public citizens to play a more active role in gathering, analyzing and disseminating the news. Gone are the days when readers’ input to the News process was limited to the letters section. Instead, News organizations are actively courting insights and information from their audiences; The Guardian, for instance, has an app for people to submit photos and videos or to act as primary sources for news developments.
This doesn’t mean that news organizations are being usurped by user-generated content. Instead, it marks a shift in the way breaking news information is being sourced, as journalists are as likely to scour Twitter as they are to pound the pavement in search of interviews. And it changes how readers locate information, giving them access to the same primary sources used by reporters while also letting them engage with curated copy coming from the mainstream outlets.
Consider who as involved in locating and reporting breaking news today. Frontline coverage may come from people on the street sharing photos and video from their smartphones, generating real-time crowd-sourced accounts shared via social networks. Public Information officers may begin tweeting about the event, broadcasting facts to the public that previously might have only gone to the media. Subject matter experts can immediately weigh in via their blogs and networks. Reporters, meanwhile, can track these conversations and organize the different accounts into a cogent news narrative.
Citizen journalism also has its dark side, as crowd-sourced information on social networks can fuel false rumors, identify incorrect suspects of treat innuendo as fact. Still, many believe we’re still early in the era of citizen journalism and tools will be developed to harness the power of citizen journalism and steer it toward truth and accuracy.
- Emergence of hacker journalists
Newsrooms will be seeing new levels of collaboration between groups that formerly considered themselves separate entities with few common goals the newsgathering and IT departments. The result: new methods of digital-era storytelling driven by this cross-disciplinary co-creation. Coders and programmers sitting next to columnists and critics and working with shared purpose is new in the history of news.
“Snow Fall,” 3 multimedia narrative created by The New York Times about a deadly avalanche in Washington State, won a Peabody and Pulitzer this year. The six-part story was accompanied by interactive graphics, video and character bios, making the HTMLS programming a key part of the Story development. its success has become a template for future multimedia journalism projects at the Times.
Another example is Keeper, an app created by Niemen fellow Hong Qu, a one-time developer at YouTube. The opensource keeper is designed to help journalists separate good sources from bad while following breaking news on Twitter. It uses natural language processing and social network analysis to surface topics, eyewitnesses and amplifiers when a big news story emerges.
Meanwhile, a number of universities in the USA are experimenting with ways to enhance this new collaboration.
Northwestern University’s Knight Lab is a joint initiative between the college’s engineering and journalism schools, teaming technologists, journalists, designers and educators to come up with original ways to tell stories and report the news in a digital-first environment. Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford’s School of Engineering are partners in The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, underwritten to increase the connection between journalism and technology.
- Management of multi-screens
News has moved from the daily paper and the nightly broadcast to the 24-hour on-demand cycle that we consume today. The next challenge for news organizations is managing consumption across the devices and media that their audiences use — desktop, smartphones, tablets and soon wearables like Google Glass. It’s a constant transition driven by audience habits for getting the information it Needs. That’s where the publisher needs to make it accessible across the full range of platforms – read on the phone, see on a tablet, watch on desktop, read the newspaper and optimizing the experience for all those platforms.
What has changed is the sources that consumers use for their news. They no longer depend on a handful of media, but rather access a range of outlets. Headlines may come from Twitter, with details available from a mainstream news site. News updates may be part of a friend’s Facebook feed. Local news may come from hometown media or social media. Apps like Flipboard are gearing up to deliver and package news and content from these seemingly disparate sources in a consistent flow.
- Development of not-for-profit news
In the shifting journalism landscape, non-profits will continue to emerge as an important source of news and information and will increasingly become a critical part of the mix. Many are funded by independent foundations, including big names such as the award-winning investigative newsroom in the USA, ProPublica. Most have increased their revenue, some significantly, and many are building a diverse set of revenue sources that go beyond tapping into donors to include sponsorships, events and syndication. Their long-term sustainability, the report notes, may be dependent on their ability to create the organizational infrastructure that enables them to innovate as they build social and economic value
- Arrival of the age of the individual
There have always been “name-brand” reporters and columnists, but their ability to publish often depended on the Support of an established media organization. But today and into the future, they may be building their reputations and leaderships independent of larger concerns Think of them as turbocharged bloggers.
