Amid last night’s awards and celebrations, media commentator Roy Greenslade gave a fantastic keynote speech which balanced nostalgia for print journalism with the realities of a modern media world: “Even those of us with print in our veins” must recognise that newspapers are doomed, as print is a “dying business model”. While the basic premise of the speech was simple – that newspapers are a dying medium – the speech drew on many wider issues to support its conclusion. 

 The current economic climate can only expedite rigor mortis in the industry with revenue streams drying up at an alarming rate. As Greenslade, rather bluntly, put it: “[Visual advertising] has gone off a cliff in the last six weeks”. 

With the growth of citizen journalism and interactive media channels we are currently in a “transition” period. Traditionally top down news reporting, for example, is being challenged by the growing force of bottom-up citizen journalism. No longer do we (the audience, the citizens) passively accept those accounts fed to us by publishers but, enabled by technology, we choose to publish our own accounts ourselves. This ‘new media’ is eroding the “mini-god-like status” the press formerly held. 

Significantly, Greenslade did not stop with his frank assessment of the status quo, but went beyond to illustrate two ways in which news brands can adapt and thrive in the modern world where everyone is, or can be, a journalist.

First he spoke about ProPublica – the philanthropically funded, non-profit newsroom – which describes itself as providing ‘journalism in the public interest’ or, as Greenslade put it, writing stories “of moral force”. Notable is the fact that newspapers can use resources like this to offset overheads in the face of lower revenues. 

Each story we publish will be distributed in a manner designed to maximize its impact. At the outset, at least, that means that many of our “deep dive” stories will likely be offered exclusively to a traditional news organization, free of charge, for publication or broadcast.

The second is Spot.Us, which allows people to promote stories they deem important. Like ProPublica, Spot.Us is funded through public donations allowing a small pool of journalists to generate news which can be used across the media world.

Spot.Us is a non-profit project of the Center for Media Change. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed.

These sites outlined are excellent examples of how bottom-up journalism can be effectively leveraged to have a positive impact on publisher’s bottom lines.

In conclusion, Greenslade very simply stated: “New media is the future”. The challenge for us all is to find new and better ways to use it.

  *Photograph of Roy Greensldae by Johnny Greig (http://gallery.johnnygreig.com/)