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Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age

George Brock

Kogan Page, 2013

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Can journalism thrive in the digital era? The answer, British media scholar George Brock suggests, lies not with one business model but with many – including paywalls, sponsorships and philanthropy. Legacy media organizations can learn from online start-ups, which nimbly experiment with formats and funding models. Innovation fueled journalism from its beginnings, as Brock demonstrates in a comprehensive look at the history of the news. Brock, who writes from an English perspective, devotes two of his 10 chapters to how the British phone-hacking scandals damaged media credibility. He issues a stern warning to media executives: Organizations that fail to innovate will not be part of journalism’s future. getAbstract recommends his historical overview to those in and out the news business who believe that a free society prospers when journalism does.

Summary

Centuries of Experiments

How will journalism deliver the news in the digital age? Who will pay for it? How will the definition of “journalist” change and, for that matter, the definition of “news”?

Many mainstream news organizations won’t survive today’s digital transition, but journalism itself will endure. In Europe and America, journalists are experimenting with new business models, new formats and new technologies. As some succeed and some fail, experimentation is shaping journalism’s future just as it shaped the industry’s past.

Most of journalism’s conventions – such as usefulness, independence, impartiality and timeliness – grew from centuries of experimentation. In the 1500s, printers discovered that distributing packages of news and advertising boosted their cash flow. Stories about which ships had docked at various ports and with what cargo were particularly valuable. Today’s media watchers would call that information “market-moving” news.

In England, the spread of Protestantism in the late 1600s encouraged literacy and fueled ideas about individual autonomy and the right to form individual political opinions. Newspapers began to stress eyewitness...

About the Author

George Brock heads the Graduate School of Journalism at City University London. A former reporter and editor at the Observer and The Times, he serves on the board of the International Press Institute.

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Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age

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Centuries of Experiments

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