The current media landscape is a dynamic beast for the media companies who sell news as a product. Newspaper and magazine readership is declining, TV audiences are more volatile and fragmented than ever, whilst talkback radio is managing to retain loyal audiences. A common thread is that all of these mediums are attempting to build their online offerings in order to remain relevant. It is becoming virtually impossible for traditional news services to keep up with the relentless and almost instant pace of information online.
Here are just three ways I feel news and current affairs reporting has changed, and will continue to adapt in the future. For better or worse…
The decline of investigative journalism
More often than not I’m informed of major news stories on my Facebook feed before even coming in contact with any mainstream news source. The heavy stream of comments on a particular topic or person are more than enough to get me to Google what is going on, and it’s only after this that I end up on an online news site to read more.
News outlets are in overdrive in an effort to try and cope with the 24/7 news cycle and changing consumer consumption habits. Consequently journalists are often chasing a story generated by the online rumor mill rather than actually breaking any news.
This appears to be to the detriment of any real in depth investigative journalism. What we are more often than not reading is merely bite sized and often sensationalized pieces of content that are consumed quickly and frequently.
The continued rise of opinion
With news content being consumed thick and fast, from a more diverse variety of sources than ever, there is an increasing dependence on commentary and opinion. Traditional media sources face constant pressure to differentiate themselves from each other to stay relevant and desirable to consumers.
It seems that facts have been replaced with entertaining and persuasive arguments, whereby public sentiment is intentionally swayed to be extremely positive or extreme negatively in order to attempt to build popularity for a network, program or title.
An interesting study by Philip Tetlock was conducted where he mapped over 28,000 forecasts from leading public thinkers and commentators with their real-life outcomes across a 20 year period. As it turns out, tossing a coin would have been just as accurate. Not only that, but the better known and more highly regarded the individual making these predictions were, the more likely they were to be wrong. If media organizations continue this shift towards more personal opinions and commentary, the quality of the content may continue to be less reliant on facts, ultimately resulting in the source becoming less trustworthy over time. This could also call into question any bias or agenda’s that may be being pushed by the organisations. It will be interesting to see if consumers react to this.
Part two to be continued next week.
Sam McGroder
Implementation Planner
Starcom Mediavest