It’s sustainability!!!! guys!!!
The statement is purposefully challenging because there is a growing belief that the future of journalistic information depends on the discovery of new models of financial sustainability for printed and digital publications, whether in text or audiovisual format. If we do not find formulas that guarantee the economic survival of journalism, it tends to lose importance amid the news chaos generated by the advance of information degradation and infotainment. (1)
There is no point in thinking about new journalistic projects aimed at combating disinformation, information polarization and fake news if most of these initiatives tend to disappear in three or four years due to a lack of financial resources, according to research data on regional and local journalism. Each failed project increases the level of frustration both for those who tried to innovate in the journalistic field and for people who believed in the possibility of access to reliable news.
It is a challenging problem because our future as citizens and as a democratic society depends on information flows that feed our ability to make decisions suited to our needs, problems, and desires. Access to reliable news and information is necessary for us to be protected from the effects of facts, data and events being formatted by the ideology of those who produce them and not by their social meaning.
The sustainability of newspapers, magazines, radios and even TVs has not been on the list of common people’s concerns for decades. At most, it was an object of curiosity. This is because the failure of a journalistic project is attributed to a simple issue of poor management. Later, we were lulled by the dream of free news distributed over the internet. All this cultural burden, formed by habits and values, now comes up against the harsh reality that any news has a financial cost, and someone will have to pay it. But this someone will not be the classic capitalist entrepreneur because the news no longer gives the expected profit, although it continues to provide political prestige.
Result: we journalists, and little by little the public, began to realize that sustainability is also an essential component in news production. And more than that, it is already clear that the public is an unavoidable part of the search for a solution to the problem since people are no longer mere buyers of newspapers. They are the ones who will tell communication professionals how and when they will be willing to contribute to the maintenance of a journalistic project that helps communities survive amid the process of news desertification (2) underway around the world.
The informational degradation
We are immersed in a process of informational degradation as the main digital platforms encourage ideological polarization, as is already visible in the case of X, formerly Twitter, and in the growing trend in the traditional press towards infotainment and biased news bias as tools for new sources of revenue to survive the crisis in its business model.
Information is a necessity for all of us. Therefore, we need organizations that provide us with reliable information, which creates a new type of relationship between the media and the public. The traditional press needed people to obtain advertisers who would make revenue possible for the publication of news. Today, journalism needs revenue to meet people’s information needs.
This unprecedented reversal of priorities also signals a change in the list of mandatory tasks in the practice of journalism. Just as professionals had to change conduct, rules and values when dealing with digital programmers to adapt to added information and communication technologies, both will now have to create a new relationship with ordinary people in the search for a financially sustainable partnership.
Few have ventured into this field so far, but the analysis of experiences, such as those of the Center for Media Engagement, at the University of Texas, in Austin, shows that the search for results will be long and overly complicated because people still have a commercial perception of journalism. The audiences still do not feel part of the problem, but are merely spectators of someone else’s challenge.
Existing models no longer guarantee sustainability because they are based on the logic of profit in the commercialization of news. The search for a new model involves exploring an entirely new reality, which will require a lot of effort, creativity and innovation. The main challenge will be how to include the public in this search.
(1) Infotainment — Anglicism used to define news formatted according to journalistic standards, but with content aimed at promoting commercial entertainment.
(2) News deserts — expression that indicates cities with less than one newspaper, radio, magazine or TV.
