What happens when one of the world’s greatest democracies loses most of the journalists who deliver its “civic journalism”? Here in Australia, we’re about to find out.
Last night, Media Watch devoted its full program to journalism’s epic elephant-in-the-room issue: who’s going to pay for the journalism that holds power to account in Australia when, over the next year or two, it is no longer viable?
The two biggest commercial employers of civic journalists, News Corp and Fairfax, declined to participate in last night’s program. So it was left to one-time independent publisher Alan Kohler, a few industry observers, and me, to openly debate this depressing but incredibly important subject.
This should be a public, not covert, story because it’s about one of the underpinning planks of the Australian democratic ecosystem.
And it’s not a complicated story.
Independent journalism is a core pillar of democracy — it is the main pillar (alongside parliaments and the judiciary) that holds power to account. Ever since the late 19th century that journalism has been owned and produced by commercially funded newspapers. Twenty years ago, however, the internet began to replace newspapers as the primary platform for the audiences who consume journalism and the advertisers who paid for it. That process is nearly complete; printed newspapers are becoming commercially unviable.
The problem for journalism in that process is that most general news websites are almost as unviable as most print newspapers. That’s because although advertising revenue has almost fully migrated from print to digital, most of that revenue has bypassed news publishers — who fund journalism — and found its way into the pockets of Google, Facebook and classified sites like Seek and Realestate.com.au — who produce almost no journalism.
This has forced newspaper publishers to ruthlessly cut costs. Several thousand Australian journalists are estimated to have lost their jobs in the past decade.
The reason this is a crisis in Australia is market size. Most of the resources of civic journalism — covering government, business, courts, the professions, the suburbs and regions, culture, crime and civic society — reside in the hands of a few big newspapers (and the ABC, which has its own funding challenges). Many of those journalists have already been retrenched, and many hundreds more will depart when their newspapers stop printing and revert to digital only.
It’s not hard to understand why the two big news publishers feel uneasy about confronting the story of the collapse of the civic journalism they have owned for decades. Even though they aren’t responsible for the structural demise of their business model, and even though both publishers are fighting to keep it alive, they prefer to keep the subject away from public discussion because it’s an embarrassing story for them.
Which sounds awfully like denial at the precise moment in history when everyone who cares about the essential role of journalism needs to elevate and openly debate this subject.
Before it morphs from a news story into an obituary.
Eric, last night’s discussion on Media Watch was a good one, and the refusal by Fairfax and News Corp to participate was revealing. The question must be: how do we maintain a viable public interest forum when traditional sources of revenue, such as advertising, are disappearing for the print media? Although you do not mention it in your article, it was raised last night, and that is to have a publicly funded print media, free from political control. The devil as always will be in the details. But the present trajectory is clearly unsatisfactory, and worse, posed a very real threat to the notion of having power held accountable.
Of course, the failure of the msm to perform that role properly is one of the reasons their readership is going south at a rate of knots.
“classified sites like Seek and Realestate.com.au” and you could add to that carsales.com.au – Fairfax could have had them all, but those in charge at the time were totally clueless. Which frankly makes you wonder what the likes of Fred Hilmer teach at the AGSM, and why Turnbull’s gift of $50b to big business is a waste of money – big business doesn’t innovate and Fairfax is a classic example of that – a once big business on it’s way to oblivion.
I’d like a communication from Fairfax (or a public meeting in Hamer Hall) explaining this situation and upping the cost of The Age to a reasonable fee. How much is needed to make it viable? If we pay $5 -$10 a day for coffee how about that for decent investigative journalism?! Let’s not weep crocodile tears when it’s gone.
Agreed. A decent media is like good health ie: you take it for granted for years then realise how invaluable it was in its decline. By then its too late to resurrect…at any price.
A lot of The Age’s problems seem to be with distribution, lack of, in Tasmania at least. If you can buy the paper, then surely that is added revenue which I gather is their problem.
An important question that has been answered by the MSM’s dereliction of duty over the past decades. While some individual journalists, mainly trained by the ABC, have held governments to account on occasion, the agenda of the Murdoch press and radio/TV has dominated. Who has held Murdoch and his managers and journalists to account? No one has had the power.
I weep crocodile tears for journalists caught in the digital revolution who gave no sympathy to others when it happened to them.
“I weep crocodile tears…”.
Exactly. What’s happening to journalists is what’s been happening to the rest of us for the last 20 years.
Welcome to the future…
With only Murdoch and Fairfax in the game, and Murdoch having not a jot of interest in holding power to account, other than when it doesn’t suit them, and Fairfax sacking the great majority of their quality journalists, I’m not sure that the field hasn’t already been vacated.
The SMH is not much more than a graphic novel these days, with less gravitas than the average comic. I’ve had enough and the online version is no better.
I’d pay dearly for a weekly or monthly of quality opinion and research pieces. I already pay much for the Saturday paper and rejoice that at least one publication isn’t bought and sold by big (dumb) business. An Australian New Yorker perhaps? There must be something out there, or being thought of. I like print, and don’t care much if it is in a magazine or a newspaper, but the current model is dead, dead, dead.
Only the Editors and proprietors aren’t aware.