MODERN newspapers face some tough decisions, but there is still a bright future for those that remember why they exist in the first place. The Australian passionately rejects the view of the London-based weekly, The Economist, that newspapers face bleak prospects. On the contrary, good newspapers that know how to break news, are clear in what they stand for and have the confidence to challenge and provoke debate, can expect to prosper. This is why, when many newspapers are cutting staff and losing sales, The Australian continues to grow in content, stature, sales and profitability. Other newspapers that see no option but to surrender to the fashionable thinking that they must lighten up or dumb down to survive are busily undermining their own foundations.
Media as an industry has a sorry history of pro-cyclical panic, accelerating trends that then become self-fulfilling prophecies. The Economist, which long-standing readers will note has shrunk by more than 50 per cent in pagination during the past decade, is a clear example. The challenge facing newspapers is to respond properly to doomsday thinking by relying on their traditional strengths and reject research that tells editors the future lies in infotainment.
Newspapers that allow themselves to be seduced away from the bedrock of good journalism do so at their peril. The "fridge door" journalism of lifestyle inserts that confuse entertainment with news will find it difficult to compete with the endless stream of similar material available elsewhere. Content is king when it comes to media, and newspapers are the genuine drivers of news breaking, largely because most metropolitan papers have more journalists than a whole national television network. On this, we agree with The Economist. At their best, newspapers hold governments and companies to account, trying them in the court of public opinion. They set the news agenda on which other media outlets – radio, television and internet sites – feed.
There is a popular view that news-gathering will be taken out of the hands of journalists and taken over by networks of internet bloggers or computers using complex programs to compile information from the internet. Under Googlezon, a scenario put forward by internet company Google, newspapers will cease to exist on March 9, 2014, as a result. While on-line communities and technologies may produce an impossibly vast bank of information, it will mostly lack credibility and therefore authority, and it will overwehlmingly not be news. It ignores the crucial point put forward by Philip Meyer in his book Vanishing Point, which gives newspapers a bit longer than Google – until the first quarter of 2043. Meyer's book is really making a much bigger and more significant point: that the real advantage newspapers have over their competitors is influence. Societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is. It is a commodity hard to build, and easy to squander.
Good journalism costs money, is inherently parochial and is often against the wishes of those being reported on. A belief that online competitors to newspapers have the capacity to faithfully serve all areas in which they circulate is not realistic, just as the view that all readers want is infotainment and easy journalism is short-sighted and wrong. But there is growing evidence some newspapers have been captured by the idea that celebrity news is somehow real news, and that restaurant awards create an informed public. It is a short-sighted trend that has precedents of failure. The death of Australia's afternoon newspapers can be traced in part to the abandonment of their traditional beat of police and court reporting in favour of becoming a sort of companion publication to the popular television soap operas of the day. It was a move that only speeded their demise. And yet today we see new afternoon commuter papers being launched around the world, including News Ltd's MX in Sydney and Melbourne.
Newspapers are not alone, however, in the media's new crisis of confidence. Free-to-air television is showing all the signs of having surrendered, and TV stations are making decisions against their long-term interest. The Nine Network, faced with declining ratings, has cut back its spending on journalists and put the squeeze on news and current affairs. Under James Packer, the once flagship Sunday program has been drained of resources and given a more chatty, informal format. This is something his father, Kerry, would never have done. He recognised that the core advantage of Nine over its rivals was its strength in news and current affairs to give the network authority and drag viewers into its other programs. The cutbacks are an example of cyclical behaviour through which long-term strengths risk being squandered. The Seven Network is catching up by accentuating its local news commitment.
In print, Fairfax has, according to its latest media campaign, staked its future on fridge-door journalism to entice an organic food-eating, New Age-thinking reader demographic with names like Wilhemina, Finbaar and Mifanwe. Fairfax chief executive David Kirk has announced the company will rebrand as Fairfax Media to take the emphasis off its newspaper products. He says the company is adapting to consumer preferences driven by technology and lifestyle, and thinks some people may even want a chip implanted in their head to receive the company's products. As a consequence, Fairfax last year sacked 55 journalists and reported a 9.7 per cent fall in earnings.
In contrast, The Australian today enjoys enduring circulation and rapidly improving profitability. We say unambiguously that newspapers confident enough to recognise and build on existing strengths have a good future. In the end, a newspaper has to stand for something and know its market. Always taking the middle ground or attempting to be all things to all people are sure recipes for irrelevance. This does not suggest partisan reporting, but rather robust debate. The Australian will endure because it understands that editorial quality is the key to a newspaper's profitability and longevity. It is the responsible thing to do. The Economist has thrown in the towel too early.
