Breaking the News

Digital trans­form­a­tion is break­ing the news.

In this art­icle, I’ll show you why online journ­al­ism must first break to sur­vive in the online media landscape.

As a digit­al strategist, I’ve mon­itored media trends and digit­al trans­form­a­tion for organ­isa­tions for over a decade.

Today, news organ­isa­tions have a choice to make.

Here goes:

A New Model for Online Journalism

In the past, read­ers, listen­ers, and view­ers found the news in either news­pa­pers or tele­vised broadcasts.

However, the news media land­scape of tomor­row will have little to do with news­pa­pers or broad­cast net­works. Our tra­di­tion­al news organ­isa­tions are slowly becom­ing dusty rel­ics of our non-digit­al past.

Change is unavoid­able. But one can­not just take these two types of organ­isa­tions, add digit­al dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nels, and expect them to work. 

We know that news sites and stream­ing ser­vices work, but unfor­tu­nately for many tra­di­tion­al news cor­por­a­tions, these two media plat­forms don’t work in tan­dem; this is why tra­di­tion­al news­pa­pers and broad­cast net­works must first break.

Starting Point: Newspapers

Most news sites aren’t “news sites;” they’re news­pa­pers pub­lished on web­sites.

Producing mul­ti­me­dia news for a digit­al con­text takes years — espe­cially if the trans­ition to digit­al rev­en­ue streams is slow and laden with tri­al and error. 

Also, a news site can­not be suc­cess­ful on its own; it must coex­ist in sym­bi­os­is with search engines and social media platforms. 

Quality is always a factor in report­ing the news, but the trans­ition­ing news­pa­per must build speed and volume.

Read also: Digital-First is the Way

Starting Point: Broadcast Networks

Broadcast net­works gen­er­ally have two sep­ar­ate value pro­pos­i­tions: On the one hand, they pro­duce high-qual­ity news shows, and on the oth­er, they provide epis­od­ic entertainment. 

Daily news con­tent won’t sur­vive if the broad­cast net­work migrates into a stream­ing network. 

Conversely, their epis­od­ic enter­tain­ment won’t sur­vive if they move into the news site model. 

Since both mod­els require a lot of effort, split­ting the broad­cast net­work into two sep­ar­ate entit­ies might dilute the resources needed for the transformation.

Read also: How To Pitch a PR Story To a Busy Broadcast Newsroom

Possible Destination: News Sites

Some news­pa­pers will trans­ition into news sites. 

First, the news­pa­per must build a user-friendly site with a best-in-class con­ver­sion design. 

Second, the news­pa­per must be able to pro­duce video news stor­ies and qual­ity news shows. 

Also, they must trans­ition their ad-based print mod­el into a loy­alty-based online sub­scrip­tion ser­vice — without lock­ing away the actu­al news behind paywalls.

Read also: The Future of Online News: How To Convert Premium Users

Possible Destination: Streaming Services

Streaming net­works have the most straight­for­ward suc­cess strategy in the new land­scape; they provide pay­ing sub­scribers with the highest qual­ity epis­od­ic entertainment. 

To stand out and accel­er­ate growth, pro­duce ori­gin­al con­tent to attract and main­tain audiences. 

The main chal­lenge is a costly game with fierce com­pet­it­ors like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime. Like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, some news shows can sur­vive as a stream­ing format, but these are likely to be few and far apart.

Read also: House of Cards is Changing the Streaming Game

Breaking the News

Tomorrow’s news must evolve into formats com­pli­ant with digit­al-first media logic regard­less of the chosen route.

If com­pli­ance means that most news organ­isa­tions must break, they will be wise to break on their terms.

Read also: How I Want My Online News

PR Resource: Journalism vs Public Relations

Public Relations vs Journalism

PR pro­fes­sion­als and journ­al­ists share many prac­tic­al skill sets. Still, pub­lic rela­tions and journ­al­ism are fun­da­ment­ally different:

Public rela­tions is the effort to sub­ject­ively advoc­ate agen­das on spe­cial interests’ behalf.

A fun­da­ment­al cri­tique against pub­lic rela­tions is that advocacy is an afflu­ent priv­ilege that manip­u­lates the truth.

Journalism is the effort to object­ively report the news on the pub­lic interest’s behalf.

A fun­da­ment­al cri­tique against journ­al­ism is that objectiv­ity is unreal­ist­ic and the pub­lic interest heterogeneous.

But even if both pub­lic rela­tions and journ­al­ism fail to live up to their ideal states at all times, both prac­tices play vital roles in uphold­ing a bal­anced and stable democracy.

Learn more: Public Relations vs Journalism