Presentation to the editorial board of The Conversation UK 2014

1. News in the digital age
George Brock
Professor and Head of Journalism
City University London
Editorial Board, The Conversation UK
April 2014

2. Circulating information
• Humans tell eachother about what is beyond
the direct knowledge of one party to the
exchange
• Ways of circulating what we can’t see with our
own eyes and ears is regularly disrupted…
• …by technology, law, society, economics

3. Disruptions
• Writing (harder to check than face-to-face)
• Printing (harder to check than handwriting)
• Fast rotary presses
• Railways + kerosene lamps
• Telegraph
• Radio
• TV, followed by satellite and cable
• Lastly … the internet

4. Journalism
• We structure information to make it useful
• “Journalism” starts to be a recognised full-
time activity mid-19th century (first printed
reference 1830)
• Idea that it was to do with truth
independently obtained only creeps in
gradually
• Joined by idea of impartiality and objectivity
in 20th century

5. Newspapers
• No sooner were they mass than radio arrived
• High modern period of print really didn’t last
very long
• Late 20th century – with advertising revenues
floating print and (some) broadcast news –
was historically exceptional
• Every other period from (English) Civil War
onwards: experimental, improvisational,
volatile and often disrupted

6. UK national daily and Sunday
newspaper circulation 1950-2000

7. Total daily paid newspaper circulation as % of
households: UK, USA, Canada 1950-2010

8. Journalism next
• We won’t go back to the past
• Print won’t disappear, just shrink
• Business models will appear
• Screens will more like paper
• Journalism will be more plural, varied and less
universal
• People will choose and compare, rather than
live in “filter bubbles”

9. Which is where The Conversation UK
comes in…
• Which is where The Conversation UK
comes in…

10. Telling this story is how this book
came about