The complex relationship between news and business in local journalism
The financial dilemma of local journalism on the Internet is much deeper and more complicated than it seems. The gravity comes from the fact that it is no longer a question of just inventing a new formula to increase revenues obtained from the sale of news, but of involving the public in the direct maintenance of journalistic vehicles. Digital reality is transforming consumers of information into partners in news production.
It’s no small feat because it means exchanging solutions such as offering discounts, coupons and even pans or dishes for people to buy news, but also making readers, listeners, viewers and users of virtual social networks co-responsible for the survival of journalistic projects, both in management administrative-financial, as in the production of information.
It is an inevitable evolution because the era in which news assumed the characteristics of a commodity to guarantee revenues and profits capable of making the conventional press business model viable is coming to an end. The internet generated an avalanche of information that reduced the commercial value of news to almost zero, which drastically reduced the revenue of journalistic companies.
This change has made it mandatory to reformulate models, an action that is taking much longer than expected because it involves non-monetary factors such as new attitudes and values. These are two items that take some time to change in the day-to-day life of newsrooms, whose participants are still subjected to strong professional regulation.
In addition to the commercialization of news, the search for new models of journalistic sustainability in the digital era faces the norm of structural separation between journalistic production and paid advertising. Newsrooms have always looked with reticence at the work of commercial and financial departments in journalistic companies.
This is a legacy of the contradictory stance of journalistic companies, which encouraged the discourse of impartiality and the public interests in the production of news, but at the same time depend, structurally, on the commercialization of public attention aroused by these same news. Thus, the obligatory coexistence between newsrooms and advertising ended up becoming a relationship of love (when thinking about salaries) and hate (when an ad stole news space).
Entrepreneurial journalist
But now, the new digital reality signals the need for a new relationship between journalistic and commercial/financial activities. The crisis in the traditional press business model reduced the number of large journalistic conglomerates and exponentially increased the number of news projects created by young professionals or veterans who lost their jobs.
The Brazilian project News Atlas, version 2023, identified an 8.6% reduction in the number of information deserts in the country due to a surprising growth in online journalistic projects. Although the project did not explain the causes of the phenomenon, everything indicates that it resulted in a migration to the internet of professionals who lost jobs in the print media.
Testimonies from journalists who invest in the online platform showed that in addition to adapting to digital technology, the biggest challenge was the need to combine editorial production with financial and administrative management, as shown by the survey Prying Open the Vault — Public and Mission Driven Financing for Local Journalism, carried out by the Revson Foundation, based in New York.
Faced with the impossibility of having larger and more diverse teams, practitioners of local online journalism have no other alternative than to combine editorial functions with financial and administrative management, which represents a break with one of the oldest and most defended paradigms of journalistic activity: dissociation between news and business within an informative project.
It’s a complicated issue because the relationship between financial sustainability and socially relevant information can be quite diffuse (depending on the case) and it will be up to the journalist in charge of the news to make the appropriate integration. For example: When a reporter covers the launch of a new type of computer for educational use, what should he prioritize? The pedagogical impact or the manufacturer’s marketing? Depending on the approach adopted, the news may seem like a sponsored text or a topic for parents and teachers to reflect on.
The duplicity of roles in journalistic entrepreneurship will still generate a lot of discussion because the analogue heritage remains strong both among professionals and the public. The overwhelming majority of journalists maintain the stance that information is something they produce with little or no public participation. At the same time, people still don’t understand that they are as much owners of news as those who publish it.
