Rupert Murdoch thinks the key to newspaper survival in the 21st century is the provision of “news you can trust”.
He said people now were “hungrier for information that ever before” and that papers have an edge over bloggers and other newcomers because they are more trusted by readers.
“Readers want what they’ve always wanted: a source they can trust,” Murdoch said. “That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future.” …
if papers provide readers with news they can trust, we’ ll see gains in circulation — on our Web pages, through our RSS feeds, in e-mails delivering customized news and advertising, to mobile phones,” Murdoch said. … Murdoch cited two of his most prestigious newspapers, The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal, as examples of how newspaper brands can win large online readerships.
Murdoch’s article raises the question of what exactly the phrase “news you can trust” means. There are several possibilities. One definition is news you can (to some extent) collaterally verify. The other definition is a news product which retrospectively holds up as being gathered in good faith. In other words, quality news will have many of the attributes of quality intelligence. But if so why do so many current newspapers — which are declining — fail the test?
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10 Comments
1. Alexis:Part of the problem is that established newspapers often don’t respect their own employees. A newspaper that bullies its paper carriers isn’t likely to keep the loyalty its customers in the long run. After all, paper carriers are part of the larger community and they do talk. The newspaper industry is getting affected by the old adage — “Be nice to people on the way up because you’ll be meeting them on the way down.”
Nov 17, 2008 - 2:18 pm 2. Zim:The lack of trust of the press is symptomatic of peoples’ general lack of trust in anyone anymore. We don’t trust our political leaders, ministers, priests, teachers, neighbors or even our wives or husbands like we once did. Which is as it should be.
Won’t be fooled again.
Nov 17, 2008 - 2:21 pm 3. cfbleachers:News you can trust is based upon facts that are facts. Distortion is not news. Half-truths are not news. Propaganda is not news.
When digging for the truth becomes the end game instead of shilling for a singular point of view, then the product becomes worth something. As it stands now, you can get pretty much the same crap from Kos as from the NY Times and from Huffington as the Washington Post. Only…you get it for free…without the ink stains.
If you want your facts distorted toward leftist pap and you want your opinions premasticated and half-digested regurgitated back to you from the jackals mouths…you might as well get it without paying for it…and at any time of day, you can get an update (upchuck), if there is one…and not have to wait until tomorrow for another feeding.
Nov 17, 2008 - 2:52 pm 4. ricpic:I read Murdoch’s NY Post regularly because it’s lively and somewhat right of center on its editorial page and choice of op-ed columnists. But the liveliness comes first. I think, by the way, that the zombie-like quality of the NY Times, Washington Post or any local (Gannett) paper that relies on the execrable Associated Press to deliver lefty “news” is no accident. Anyone or any organization that has swallowed the multi-culti PC pill becomes a zombie. Not clear enough? To be Left is to be dead, walking but dead. So, circling around, it’s no accident that the Post’s liveliness is tied to its somewhat right of center stance.
Also, for people of my generation, nothing substitutes for the morning paper with your bagel and coffee. As that habit dies….
Nov 17, 2008 - 6:26 pm 5. Mike Sylwester:There’s always room at the top. The very best newspapers, journals and broadcasting news programs will still prosper for a long time.
Nov 17, 2008 - 6:34 pm 6. Insufficiently Sensitive:We don’t trust our political leaders, ministers, priests, teachers, neighbors or even our wives or husbands like we once did. Which is as it should be.
That’s largely the doing of the MSM itself, whose paramount self-seen duty is to ‘afflict the comfortable’, particularly the Bush administration. We’ve had eight years of nonstop emphasis on combat deaths (every day our losses are lovingly presented, with surrounding text on the ‘incompetence’ of the operations), government ‘failures’, business and religious perfidy, economic doldrums (despite the generally good economy) and carefully selected anecdotes showing ‘ordinary’ citizens in distress.
Positive achievements are wholly omitted, or shrunk into the 64th paragraph of a depressing story.
That presentation of ‘news’ did indeed convince the public that the Bush administration was the worst ever seen. Its unintended consequences included dropping the approval rating of Congress to even murkier depths than that of the President.
But the poisonous thinking of the editorial rooms has also been perceived by news readers, though on a perhaps subconscious level. And until that poison is gone, and we are provided with honest news which doesn’t place top priority on bulldozing public opinion one way or another, the media deserve every setback they get.
Nov 17, 2008 - 7:03 pm 7. anton:I see the problem with newspapers being two-fold;
Nov 17, 2008 - 7:14 pm 8. HobbesDFW:First they must re-discover factual reporting and confine opinions to the pages labelled as such. Errors I can live with, but lies, innuendo and spin I can get anywhere.
Second they have to find some way to become topical without being shallow. Internet news gets updated on a minute to minute basis, newspapers on a daily basis.
Breaking news is TV and Internet, in-depth analysis is weekly magazines, where do newspapers fit in? The current wire services are better imagined as propaganda outlets, so where does a paper go to find stories that are fresh but detailed and accurate? And how can they afford idependent reports (using AQ as stringers hasn’t helped credibility)? Long term it doesn’t look good.
Perhaps the paper could focus each day of the week on a specific area of interest, either geographically or thematic. This would give the reports time to get their facts straight and do a little background work before they have to hit the page with the story. This would also allow reporting teams do develop some sort of background knowledge of their field so that they could give a new story the “sniff test”. The Beauchamp mess would not have gotten past anyone at all familiar with our military. But that would require that publishers commit to finding independent minds and keeping them on staff.
The local news and sports fluff could carry on as is.
I am afraid that most of the dead-trees are too committed to their ideologies to make the change.
Your question begs an answer, and it appears that Murdoch has thoughtfully provided one. Or at the least, it dovetails very nicely with the questions you have raised. I hope I’m not violating any policies by embedding the link; but the article would be difficult to summarize, as Murdoch enumerates several reasons why so many newspapers “fail the test”.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10098194-60.html
Nov 17, 2008 - 8:17 pm 9. John Moore:The fundamental problem with the local dailies is that their business model is dead. It doesn’t matter if they give us the truth or the current leftist pap. Their main revenue was classified ads and the internet has destroyed that – with Ebay and Craig’s list, for example. Notice how Murdoch was talking about international papers with a large web presence.
Blogs also grow into reliable brands in some bases, but most blogs lack the original news discovery and investigation capability.
OTOH, I’ll be perfectly happy when the left wing media, especially TV including NPR, dies.
Nov 17, 2008 - 11:01 pm 10. JGreer:Why do so many current newspapers fail the test?
- Little or no budget for hard research
- Focus on a story’s entertainment value over actual news
- General trend away from basic journalistic discipline
The same trends are also impacting broadcasters. Murdoch is basically stating that MSM’s competitive advantage over the PJ crowd is their ability to afford/perform real research. Few do this well, and more and more are relying on bloggers to do it for them.
Nov 18, 2008 - 6:51 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.