1.
Back to the future of news
Prof Charlie Beckett
Polis/LSE
@CharlieBeckett

2.
What I said in 2009
• 1. Journalism has never been more plentiful and
of such as high quality
• 2. New technologies are delivering opportunities
for journalism.
• 3. The same forces that offer these opportunities
are also threatening the business model for
mainstream media

3.
• "The social media revolution...is all about the
separation of information from its means of
distribution"
• Your rival is Facebook and everything on social
networks, not other news organisations or
public service broadcasters

4.
2009 Predictions
• MSM when networked will be more valued by the public
• Specialised media will be more valued - eg finance sport etc
• Public sector will sustain
• All organisations with a public role are becoming media
organisations. Government, business, NGOs, unions and
the rest can all now communicate directly with the citizen
and act as a forum, watchdog and reporter.
• 50% of current jobs will go

5.
Structural change I predicted in 2009
• In some shape there will emerge a more semantic web
that understands what you want from the Internet and
seeks to provide it - so it threatens to disintermediate
the editorial function entirely.
• We will be able to tap into the power of connected
online data and networks - but the Internet will be so
vast that we will increasingly operate in separate
clouds within that internet sphere - this has profound
implications for the role of news media organisations
as they shift from institutions to networks to clouds.

6.
What I said you should do in 2009
• In a world where people have instant and easy
access to your rival's work - what are you adding?
• How connected are you to your audience?
• How relevant are you to the consumer?
• How editorially diverse are you?

7.
UK as a news lab
• Two newspapers have died: Independent &
New Day
• 2016 advertising crisis: Brexit or structural?
• Continuing newspaper sales decline after
election boost
• Similar shifts in audience behaviour to US but
a different mixed media ecology

8.
Guardian
• Open model, reach
• Massive losses
• Over staffing
• No editorial business strategy
• Now seeking ‘membership+’ model
• Cross subsidy from capital sales fund

9.
Mail
• Relentless editorial focus online
• Strong paper product
• Reach, global scale
• Advertising
• Profitable but digital revenue growth stalled

10.
Times
• Fairly strong pay wall
• Strong subscription marketing with additional
benefits
• Strong but narrow editorial offering
• Profitable but declining online presence and
where do new readers come from?
• Cross subsidy from Murdoch empire

11.
The Sun
• Abandoned pay wall
• Strong sports video offer
• Ancillary business – eg holidays
• Feminisation
• Humour
• Social experimentation

12.
FT
• Subscriptions now 50% plus revenue
• Digital first
• Global rolling production
• Specialisation
• Community management
• Diverse strategy – newsletters to data viz
• Change in editorial tone and range
• How To Spend It

13.
Digital natives
• Buzzfeed
• Politico
• Vice
• Guido Fawkes
But it’s platforms that are killing it:
• Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp

14.
Local press
• Disinvestment
• Closures
• Consolidation
• Marketing and editorial economies of scale
• BBC partnership
• Emerging hyper local UGC websites
• Trinity bought ‘i’ newspaper
• Johnston Press about to launch new digital
offerings (eg online only titles)

15.
Key goals
• Engagement not traffic
• Branded content
• Diversification
• Segmentation
• Mobile
• Video
• Platform deals: is Facebook your friend?
• Paper maximisation

16.
Predictions
• Brands & bulletins are remarkably resilient but they are not
enough
• Advertising is going through the same crisis as journalism
• Continuing hollowing out of local media – hyperlocal fails to
replace
• BBC not the enemy – the rest of the Internet is
• Plus corporate, government, NGOs, marketers who will fill
the information space
• Value added content is king – community is vital but does
not monetise
• News is dead, long live journalism (esp mobile & video)
• Use data but to an end – get emotional – all journalists
must be marketers
• Ignore America

17.
• Nine Things You Need To Know About The
Future of News:
• http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2016/02/19/futur
e-of-news/