The Holy Grail of a viable press

"C"-words tend to be either dreaded or distasteful, and this trend certainly follows suit with the "C"-word currently in vogue: "crisis". Invited to contribute a column on the future of the news media, my thoughts immediately turned to "crisis". Everyone in journalism, media education and political science, is talking "crisis" on this subject. The crisis in journalistic standards, the crisis in moral standards, the crisis in trust, but what has really pumped the pessimism recently is the circulation crisis.

At a 2009 Athens conference on New Media and Information, I heard sob story after sob story about plummeting readerships. And it wasn’t just European papers. The situation is typical of post-industrial countries, with the notable exception (but how long can it last?) of newspaper-crazy Japan. 

Thankfully, there is also online news and no one is suggesting decline on that front. On the contrary, it is flourishing, in Britain as elsewhere. The Oxford Internet Institute has reported a substantial increase in online-newspaper access even since 2007. Its latest large-scale survey, The Internet in Britain 2009, confirmed that Internet users—70 percent of the population now—rate the Net as the most important source of information, above television, and far above newspapers and radio.

The basic problem, however, is that the Net generation is currently not prepared to pay for online news. There are many factors at work here: the libertarian ethos of the early user community, up-front costs involved in getting online, excellent websites at the BBC and other public service broadcasters, the rise of the blogosphere, the deterritorialised nature of cyberspace, and the sheer volume of comparable information sources - the majority of them utterly free.

At present, frankly, it is very difficult to see a quick financial fix for news organisations. In Athens, the cry went up for a "new business model", but, like the Holy Grail, no one was able to locate it. Everyone in the trade is agreed that advertising income is not going to be sufficient. Some, not least Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation, are therefore experimenting with charges for online access, but the prospects are hardly rosy. People aren’t suddenly going to pay for information they can get elsewhere for nothing. Rational economic man, cultivated by apostles of ultra-capitalism like Murdoch, just doesn’t behave that way. Even micropayments, touching consumers for a tiny sum and hoping for a correspondingly huge takeup, are unlikely to save the day.

One glimmer of hope lies in the success, broadly speaking, of the periodical industry. Subscriptions for many magazines are still strong. People seem to be happy to buy a weekly or monthly print product, something with high production values that they can read at leisure, and perhaps even keep. Although the circulations of great Sunday papers like the Observer have been as badly hit as the "quality" dailies, some weekly newspapers, such as the children’s paper, First News, are flourishing. I can imagine a situation where people catch up with the daily news online, for free, but relax at the weekend with a voluminous paid-for print product.

Perhaps that is an initial way forward. In the long term, though, a more sustainable solution will need to be found. If we value quality news, if we believe in investigative journalism, if we want a vigorous "fourth estate" fighting for democracy, then we must be prepared to support institutions that provide these goods, or build new such institutions. In so many realms, new technology has left our social values trailing behind, with perplexing and often unpleasant consequences. It is through "reloading" the norms that used to sustain us—liberty, a sense of fair play, even brotherhood—that the society of the future will find its answers.