If someone asked me, “What’s the state of the news media?” my first response would probably be laughter.
Then, I’d simply mention infamous transgressors like Glenn Beck or the plagiarizing Pulitzer winner Sari Horwitz. Call me critical of my own professional aspirations, but quality journalism just doesn’t make the headlines as often as it should.
But for a more objective assessment, I’d offer the eighth-annual “State of the News Media” report, compiled by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The study, conducted in January and published last week, might sound like a report card for the American news industry. But rather than an internal evaluation, the PEJ paints a more telling portrayal of the outside forces influencing journalism: audiences and advertisers, who were characterized as digital and mobile.
First, the digital aspect: Only online outlets experienced audience growth, 17 percent, and although we’ve heard print journalism’s eulogy for years, Americans have just begun to favor Internet news to newspapers — 46 to 40 percent. It’s also refreshing that cable networks like MSNBC, Fox News and even CNN lost viewers to the Web.
As for advertisers, the report cited a “milestone” the audience numbers already suggested: Online marketing surpassed its newspaper equivalent for the first time.
Obviously, the digital news revolution is linked to advertising trends as well as the changing human experience, and both Internet-bound emigrations decrease delivered news — we must seek it out. But given the option, will we?
Our mobile news consumption tendencies suggest not.
According to the PEJ, 47 percent of American adults obtained “some local news and information” via portable media. But this is falsely optimistic, as the breakdown of smartphone usage illustrates. Forty-two percent of mobile-device owners use them for weather updates, and 37 percent get data about local businesses, but only 13 percent employ these applications for news. Even less (10 percent) actually pay for them.
Mass media might think they’re saving journalism and our society by having an “app for that,” but not if news is the least popular feature. Having headlines in one’s pocket might be convenient for citizens-on-the-go, but you have to want to use your smartphone for that purpose.
Unfortunately, knowing weather forecasts or game scores doesn’t really make us informed members of an increasingly globalized community. The format and environment in which mobile news is consumed significantly diminishes the quality of content and the reading experience.
If the above statistics lack context and analysis, you’re in luck: The PEJ summarized what it all means for the journalism field.
The bad news is downright disturbing.
“Beneath all this … a more fundamental challenge to journalism became clearer in the last year,” the review states. “In the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own future.”
The source-audience relationship — and the revenue flow — has become more convoluted with aggregators, social media, independent ad networks, software programmers and device makers all influencing the newsmaking process.
The PEJ also predicts “the future will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user.”
But it’s not business-as-usual, and the issue is more than structural. Journalism records history in the making and, by deciding what constitutes “the news,” sets the agenda for the past, present and future. The news is also the result of interactions among audiences, headline makers and headline writers, though it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish the three.
If the news industry’s fate — and therefore, ultimate ideological power — is out of its own hands, who’s in control?
Even in our consumer culture, nobody likes paying for stuff. This reluctance to relinquish our money and financial security online is especially acute in an age where information has traditionally been — and, many argue, still should be — free.
But in journalism, you really do get what you pay for.
Kelly Hotard is a 19-year-old mass communication junior from Picayune, Miss. Follow her on Twitter @TDR_khotard.