The Future of Newspapers

It’s no surprise delegates and panellists at an international journalism festival would agree, again and again, at session after session, that the world needs journalism.

But on Friday afternoon, newspaper editors lining a panel called, “Old media in new bottles?” at the Sala dei Notari in Perugia grappled with the question of whether the world needs newspapers.

“We at The Guardian are pretty committed to our future as digital” news providers, said national editor Dan Roberts, while acknowledging staff are fairly “agnostic” as to what exactly that means in terms of content delivery platforms in the years ahead. “We’re also all fairly dyed-in-the-wool print journalists at heart.”

Newspapers across the board are giving their identities a rethink – a process Roberts suggested can never and should never end, as start-up media outlets are consistently nipping at the heels of the traditional flagship organizations.

For The Guardian, that has meant a list of changes in what it means to be a journalist:

• The Guardian has been hiring “community coordinators,” Roberts said, who go “below the line” and actively engage with readers and commenters on stories. Some days, that role includes fielding impromptu question-and-answer sessions with readers. “We found that’s a very important way of breaking down that barrier between us and them.”
• Working with WikiLeaks in recent months has shown the value of traditional news outlets lowering their boundaries in terms of sharing and cooperating with alternative organizations. Simply put, Roberts said, sharing information isn’t something any organization can do in isolation.
• Good selection and good editing are and should be of value to readers: Rather than thinking the best product is the product that has published every single piece of information available, consider people pay for print copies of the news because that version of news is a targeted, edited, valuable product.
• Thinking outside the box: “If we don’t start making some leaps of faith … we’re all going to get overtaken by people doing small startups.”

Looking to the future, the question may well be whether newspapers are still home to readers who have wide-ranging interests – or will everyone look for news in their own individual silos? Paolo Rastelli, another panellist and online editor of Corriere dela Sera, called newspapers a crossroads of emotions, a part of the community;  La Repubblica’s online editor, Giuseppe Smorto, said readers of his newspaper take that community role seriously, and act as watchdogs in the comments sections themselves, for example.

— Trish Audette

Canadian journalist on study leave at the London School of Economics