Future of journalism lies in quality reporting

Valerie | 02 Jul 2009, 07:14


ABC: file photo

As the newspaper industry continues to grapple with its biggest crisis of confidence, the head of Australia’s largest newspaper company, John Hartigan, has delivered an optimistic verdict on the future of journalism, shifting the debate from how to save newspapers, to how to preserve journalism.

Speaking at a National Press Club event held in Canberra, Hartigan argued that in order to survive, newspapers would have to change by aligning themselves more closely with the needs of readers and writing more relevant stories.  Talking aim at the blogosphere and “citizen journalism”, he also challenged that bloggers lacked the resources, training, skills and contacts to produce reliable news.

His comments come as the news industry considers its digital future, with investigative journalism “expanding to include individual and group blogs, community crowd sourcing, citizen journalists, non-profits and hybrid models of all of the above”.

Tina Brown, former Vanity Fairy editor and founder of news website The Daily Beast told Radio 4 last week that the web has undoubtedly become “the information delivery system of the future”, but on being questioned about whether the reporting function is in danger, she argued that the cost of investigative journalism was prohibitive but that this would change over time as news sites matured and monetization happened.

Echoing this optimism for the digital format, Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post told attendees at the Guardian Activate conference that the internet serves as a “countervailing force” against entrenched interests and, addressing the concern that the internet has led to the spread of rumour and disinformation, argued that the internet plays an important role as is a self-correcting system.

It seems that it is content monetization that lies at the heart of the print vs. digital media debate, as the newspaper industry looks towards new business models such as charging for specialist content for survival.  News Limited is just one of many organisations that is actively exploring charging for online content and Hartigan believes its success is firmly rooted in quality reporting:

“People will pay for it if it is good enough. People will pay if it is original, exclusive, has authority and is relevant to our audiences.”