Rolling News in the Face of Print Newsroom - Essay Example

Topic: Rolling News in the Face of Print Newsroom Rolling news has changed the face of regional print newsrooms Introduction News creation and distribution has seen an evolution from print based to new technologies such as radio and television. These media avenues have been changing the readership habits long before the emergence of internet and in recent year’s news access has been internet based for a majority of the world population, (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2010). This has seen the decline of newspaper readership, advertising and classified revenues hence affecting the print industry in most countries especially the United Kingdom. After what can be termed as years of success in news print profitability, newspaper publishers are now facing stiff competition from free dailies, internet, multiple television and radio sources in terms of news dissemination and advertising too. Advertising being the main source of revenue for such media has seen the print media decline in revenues, titles, circulation as well as a decline in readership. Some of the economic crises that have been observed originating from the developed countries trickling down to the developing countries too have amplified the downward development of the print media too, (Trager, 1974). In the period between 2004 to 2007, the global newspaper market has seen negative to almost zero growth and a further zero growth has been observed in the years after 2008. General, regional and local press have been affected where they year 2009 was forecasted as the worst with the largest declined in the united states, the united kingdom, Greece, Italy, Canada and Spain. The larger declines in online and offline revenues can be attributed to the economic crisis which created additional problems for most print media where some of the dailies have ceased operation. Worse still, some of the print companies were forced to close down and shredding of newsroom staff in some countries where structural factors were compounded by cyclical factors. Many countries saw the employment decline in the newspaper industry since 1997 in many countries and this further intensified since 2008 particularly in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain. It is clear that newspapers and other formalised news outlets are experiencing threats and challenges to their more traditional business models from the internet and hence they need to revolutionise and adopt technology in propelling their business to generate revenue that will sustain newspaper distribution (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2010) Trends in the traditional newspaper industry affecting print newsroom For a long time the traditional role of newspaper publishers has been to be the midpoint between content producers such as journalists and the information users, advertisers and others in the industry seeking the services and attention of interested readers. Observed in the stylised newspaper value chain were main stages in the form of content creation, manufacturing and distribution which have been instrumental in analysing the economics of a majority of the established print newsrooms. Their mode of income generation has been for a long time by selling newspaper copies to readers and advertising space to advertisers, cross-subsidising the production of news with the sale of advertising. Other media conglomerates are large enough to incorporate newspapers and other commercial activities as part of their ventures in a bid to diversify their revenue source to avoid closure. From a revenue perspective, the global newspaper publishing market derives about 57 per cent of its revenue from advertising and the rest 43 per cent from newspaper sales which shows that definitely the business would not be fully sustainable if it depended entirely on news. The reliance on advertising is very high in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries such as Luxembourg and Canada while on the other side has been considerably low in Japan, Denmark and the Netherlands. Advertising as a share of newspaper revenues has been growing even before the onset of the economic crisis and have been on the rise in many countries significantly between 2004 and 2008 due to its ability to sustain other newspaper ventures. Nevertheless, the share of advertising going to print newspapers has been declining in the last decade in most countries including the United Kingdom due to the decline in offline and online advertising growth since 2000. In the on-going recovery of the economy, the outlook for online advertising revenues for newspaper organisations is very positive and hence this is giving a better picture to the print newsrooms and its revival. When focusing on the cost, precedence takes on editorial work in the form of costly purchase of raw materials. According to Ulanoff (1977), the other major costs that come with print newsroom and the dissemination of the news are maintenance, administration, promotion and advertising as well as the distribution aspects of the newspapers to get to the intended audience in the target market. This makes the organisations that are generally print newsrooms be more vulnerable in times of downturns such as an economic crisis and less agile in reacting to the online news environment. Online news development on print newsrooms Print newsrooms are being overtaken by online news avenues that are being rolled out day in day out where the drivers of this online news utilise technological advances being invented. According to Kaye & Quinn, (2010), these drivers of online news include technology, changing media use, new business models and new internet intermediaries that are in the advertising business as well as news dissemination. Other social factors such as increased mobility and participation in the creation of online content through blogs and social media such as facebook and twitter have played a part in the demise in preference of print newsrooms. Technology for news production and digital content management has made it possible for the editors to produce content directly in various formats and to adapt to increasingly integrated newsrooms where information is shared at the click of a button, (Fox, 2001). Other rapid advances in mobile technologies, wireless networks and news reader interfaces have enabled mobile news delivery and the introduction of smartphones e-readers possible at the comfort of your seat. These and other similar multimedia devices and business models have enabled the reader drift away from using the print media as a form of information and news, (Franklin, 2008). This is because these media devices have the ability of constantly accessing updated and interactive news in real time and further offer the reader the option of giving feedback and reflection of his thoughts. This is done within a global internet enabled context and hence empowering a targeted news experience, (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2010) The future of print newsrooms The impact of changing media landscape on news are pulling in to different directions as on one hand is the demise of the traditional media and the other the development of new forms of more decentralised news. One extreme is that online platforms that tend to liberate news seekers from partisan news monopolies that have not been receiving many criticisms in their reporting as well as style. These platforms have tended to be more concentrated and to dominate the production and access to news wherever the readers might be, (Anderson, Ogola & Williams, 2013). The other extreme is the demise of the traditional news media majorly as a result of the emergence of internet and with it an important foundation of democratic societies is at risk. In short, some of the countries have been forced to put in place measures to ensure that the struggling print newsroom industry is not faced out such as financial support to finance some of the operations. Other governments are still debating on the best approach to assist the print media without putting its independence at stake as another question is whether and how the production of high quality all rounded news content can be left to market forces alone. On the other hand, the print newsrooms have been in the verge of trying a hand on online platforms to ensure an update is given out to supplement the print newspapers and journals already issued. Audiences need information as it happens and the print venturing into online platforms to break events as they happen maintain their clientele base in making sure there is a follow up on stories they write. It also offers the advantage of maintaining out dated and historical news in records that can be used for future references in paper as opposed to online platforms that have news but do not have archives for the same records years to come, (Darnton & Roche, 1989) Hence the general consideration is support measures and topics such as maintaining high quality independent news in a changed context and improvement of existing state policies in support of a democratic media. References Anderson, P., Ogola, G. & Williams, M (2013). The future of quality news journalism. 1st ed. London: Routledge. Darnton, R. & Roche, D. (1989). Revolution in print. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press in collaboration with the New York Public Library Fox, W. (2001). Writing the news. 1st ed. Ames: Iowa State University Press Franklin, B. (2008). Pulling newspapers apart. 1st ed. London: Routledge Kaye, J. & Quinn, S. (2010). Funding journalism in the digital age. 1st ed. NY: Peter Lang. Trager, R. (1974). Print media. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Ulanoff, S. (1977). Advertising in America. 1st ed. New York: Hastings House Wunsch-Vincent, S. & Vickery, G. (2010). News in the Internet age. 1st ed. Paris: OECD Read More