Document details

Challenges and Opportunities for News Media and Journalism in an Increasingly Digital, Mobile, and Social Media Environment

Council of Europe;Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016), 39 pp.

Contains bibliogr. pp. 37-39

"This report reviews challenges and opportunities for news media and journalism in today’s changing media environment. It documents that we are moving towards an increasingly digital, mobile, and social media environment with more intense competition for attention. More and more people get news via digital media, they increasingly access news via mobile devices (especially smartphones), and rely on social media and other intermediaries in terms of how they access and find news. In this environment, a limited number of large technology companies enable billions of users across the world to navigate and use digital media in easy and attractive ways through services like search, social networking, video sharing, and messaging. As a consequence, these companies play a more and more important role in terms of (a) the distribution of news and (b) digital advertising. Legacy media like broadcasters and especially newspapers by contrast are becoming relatively less important as distributors of news even as they remain very important producers of news. They are also under growing pressure to develop new digital business models as their existing sources of revenue decline or stagnate. The general response from legacy media has been a combination of (a) investment in pursuing digital opportunities, (b) cost–cutting and (c) attempts at market consolidation in pursuit of market power and economies of scale. Because of the competition for attention and advertising, and the limited number of people who pay for online news, there are very few examples of legacy media that make a profit from their digital news operations—despite twenty years of often substantial investments and sometimes significant audience reach. It is not clear that the new environment is significantly more hospitable for digital-born news media organisations. While they often have a lower cost base and can be more nimble in adapting to change, they face similar competition for both attention and advertising and so far represent a small part of overall investment in journalism." (Executive summary)
1 Introduction, 7
2 Technological and market development, 8
3 Media responses, 17
4 Legal and policy responses, 27
5 Conclusion, 34