Journalistic sustainability depends on people valuing the news
A quick review of most public opinion polls around the world reveals that an average of more than 70% of people interviewed expressed their willingness to not pay for news. There are many reasons for this attitude but the one that affects the sustainability of the press is the lack of relevance of journalistic news in the daily lives of millions of people.
The fact that news products are seen as irrelevant shows people’s lack of awareness about the value of information and serves as a warning sign about the future fragility of journalism organizations' financial survival.
There is growing evidence of the need to think of news as a social value that needs to be increased so that it becomes part of individual budgets with a level of importance similar to that of education and entertainment. This is a task that journalists are best placed to perform because, more than anyone else, they know the value of news, so much so that they depend on it to survive.
Research also makes it quite clear that the relationship between news and the public will be marked by distance and unpredictability, as long as journalism and the press do not realize that people still do not see information as something indispensable to their social performance. With a household budget marked by the periodic absence of surpluses, people are increasingly starting to treat news as something disposable.
This situation makes it extremely difficult for both self-employed individuals and companies to plan future journalistic activities. Without a minimum of predictability and stability, news production becomes an adventure constantly subject to setbacks and financial frustrations.
Until now, the main concerns of the press have focused on technological updates, marketing, and the search for formulas for survival as a profitable business. Little or almost no attention has been paid to the fact that news in the digital era is part of a complex paradox: while it has lost commercial value, it has become an essential tool to identify valuable items in the information glut generated by the internet.
Paradigm shift
We are entering an era in which knowledge is a basic condition for economic and scientific dynamism, in a society that increasingly depends on innovations. We are therefore faced with an environment where the perception of the value of news or information has become essential for the survival of journalism and the press. But this is a challenge for which most professionals and executives of the media are unprepared because they still live in a culture of distancing themselves from the mass of readers, listeners, viewers, and social media users.
Until now, the prevailing idea has been that the press knows what people need to be good citizens and good consumers. This attitude has led people to feel inferior and dependent on journalists. It turns out that the avalanche of information published on the internet has broken this pattern of conduct by giving the public an unprecedented protagonism, which has ended up generating the need to review behaviours, rules, and values in journalistic activity.
The fundamental issue has become identifying the information needs of ordinary people as an obligatory initial step in developing new communication and information strategies. Research conducted at several North American universities, such as Montclair State and Northwestern, has shown that to understand real demands, it is first necessary to identify the main sources of information for the target audience. In other words, to understand the local information ecosystem.
There are two main types of public perceptions about social reality: those conditioned by mainstream media, where the interests of their owners predominate; and those resulting from the history and experiences of ordinary people. This difference is clear in research on the public agenda and is essential to discovering what the public wants and needs.
A complex process
Knowing what readers, listeners, viewers and social media users are looking for makes it possible to produce news that makes people realise the importance of information in their daily lives. The concrete experience of the benefits of information in tune with local reality tends to generate credibility and loyalty, through a process in which journalism plays an irreplaceable role.
Experiences conducted in the United States and some European countries indicate that the revaluation of news on social rather than primarily financial grounds is a slow and complex process because it forces journalists to review their mindset and the standards of relationship with the public.
The main direct consequence of the revaluation of news is the establishment of a relationship between journalists and the public, where both parties become jointly responsible for the financial sustainability of information projects.
