Tag: #audiences

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“We don’t like perfect, because perfect is not trustworthy”

The Danish news media Zetland belongs among the few big success stories in European digital media brands. It was profitable three years after being launched, attracts a comparatively young audience and is set to launch a new brand in Finland in January 2025. I spoke to their CEO Tav Klitgaard about how to engage audiences, working business models and the future of journalism in an AI-supported word.    

Tav, interviews shouldn’t begin with praise, but Zetland is an outstanding success story in digital media. Your team founded it in 2016, it was profitable three years later. Today you have more than 40.000 digital subscribers. What do you do that others don’t

An advantage was that we did not have any print legacy when we started. We had the privilege of sitting down and thinking really hard about what does news media mean. Among other things, we found out that it means journalism is an experience. You have the content and then you have the distribution. Those two together create an experience. The value does not lie in the journalism. The value lies in the moment when the journalism becomes an experience that changes something in your head.

But you seem to be very proud of your journalism?

Sure, we are! But existing companies way too often produce journalism from a sender’s perspective. We always try to have a receiver perspective. I would see this as the key reason for our success.

Zetland doesn’t do breaking news but publishes just a few in-depth stories a day, it focuses on explanation and analysis and has offered everything in audio format from the beginning.

Our first principle is that we are our members. This is why we came up with audio, because we asked them and they said: ‘Well, I really would want to consume your articles, but I’ve been looking into a screen for 10 hours today and I’m tired of it.’ We said, then audio could be a thing for you. And it turned out we were right.

In the age of generative AI, converting stuff to audio will be very, very easy. Won’t you lose your competitive advantage when everyone can just press the audio button everywhere?

I believe the last frontier against AI is personality. Audio is awesome at creating an intimate relationship. So, when we create a human audio product, we don’t use an AI robot voice, because the problem with that is that it’s too good. It’s perfect. We don’t like perfect because perfect is not trustworthy. You should not be perfect, you should be a human. And that’s what we are doing in all our products, creating something that is human.

Managers from traditional news outlets envy you because your audience skews young.

We are not a news outlet for young people, but we do have a pretty young demographic. About 50 percent of our audience is in their 20s and 30s. And we believe that the way that you build trust within a younger audience is to be human. It’s a giga trend in the world that that the trust is moving from authorities to persons. That’s also the reason behind the success of Instagram or TikTok. That’s why we always focus on the tone of voice and the storytelling. We imagine ourselves to be your friend and get into the car with you and tell you the story from the passenger seat. The world is super interesting. But there needs to be energy and engagement behind the stories we tell.

Part of your distribution model is people need to pay for a membership, but they can share the story with as many people as they like to. Don’t you fear that many free riders are taking advantage of you?

That’s right, our readers can share everything for free. Actually, the more members share our content, the happier we are. It proves to us and themselves that it has value to them, and it means more people get to know us. Journalism is great when it is discussed, and it should be easy for our members to get someone to discuss it with. It’s also great for our sources that they can freely share what they told us in their own network.

A Zetland membership is pretty expensive compared to other digital subscriptions though. 

Yeah, it costs around 18 or 19 euros per month. I keep hearing: Young people don’t want to pay for news. That is not true. You have to look at the user needs. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because your product is not valuable to them. If you look at, let’s say, a person who is 25 years old. She has a strong need to understand the world. Who am I in this world? What does society mean for me? What do I mean for society? The key is to not require a whole lot of prior knowledge for her to understand the world but to tell her super interesting stories about the world. Younger audiences are underserved by the media, at least in Denmark. If you’re 60 and a doctor and live in Copenhagen, well, you have a plethora of options. If you’re 26 and a nurse working at a rural hospital, you don’t have a lot of places to go to in the media world. So, what happens? You end up at TikTok. The right price is whatever value the product gives to the user. Our average member spends more than seven hours per month with us. I think €18,50 is actually very cheap for seven hours of value.

Are you still growing or have you reached a ceiling with your particular audience?

We are growing very much. On the group level, we will have a revenue growth of at least 40 percent this year and I pretty conservatively project that to be the case next year, too. It’s not a 40 percent growth in Denmark, but it’s a 40 percent for the group which consists of journalism outlets in Denmark and now in Finland. And then we also sell other things, for instance, we sell books and technology.

So, you’re not only a media and journalism company, but also a tech company.

Exactly. The day before ChatGPT was launched, we launched our transcription service. That means very early on, we have been working with large language models and generative AI. The number one use case people think about when thinking about AI and journalism is transcription. So, we built a transcription service that for the first time ever has worked in Danish. That is basically contributing almost a quarter of our revenue this year. We also sell our distribution technology. We license the website and app and CMS that we built for Zetland to other media companies. It’s not something that we do to become filthy rich, but we need to be tech-savvy. Spotify is spending a gazillion dollars on tech development, and we need to be able to compete with Spotify.

You are planning to scale the Zetland concept internationally? Tell us about the Finnish project that you made headlines with recently.

The Finland case is super exciting for us. Three or four years ago we decided that we would begin the international journey. My background is within tech and in the tech industry, we always say if you have a product market fit, the next thing you need to do is scale. It’s not as easy as translating something, but we asked ourselves if the concept was replicable outside of Denmark. In the beginning of 2024, we hired a founding team in Finland and tasked them with creating a splash in the market to test whether our assumptions were right: that there is no big difference between Finnish people and Danish people in terms of what user needs they have. We talked about our mission of quality journalism and then said: If you’re willing to pay for this, we’re willing to build it. And that’s what we told them in September and October. What happened was that 10,000 Finns decided to prepay a subscription worth around 100 euros, which was much more than we had anticipated. We got 10,000 Finns to pay for something that does not exist!

When will it start to exist?

We are currently hiring a ton of people in Helsinki, a lot of journalists, and then we will start publishing the Finnish version of Zetland on 15th January.

What will you name it?

Zetland in Finland is called Uusi Juttu, meaning something like “The new thing”. Check it at uusijuttu.fi.

Do you have other markets where you have these kinds of assumptions or is this a Nordic thing? After all, the willingness to pay for journalism is much lower in other regions of Europe.

I think what we have learned to do in Denmark is very usable in a lot of different markets in Europe. It could also be outside of Europe, but it’s going to take us some time, some partners, and some money to be able to prove that I’m right.

Of course, I have to ask you about Germany now.

Well, Germany is definitely interesting, and it’s close to Denmark. If anyone who reads this thinks they want to build that in Germany, please reach out, because it’s also obvious for us that we are not going to be able to do it alone. We would need German partners who agree to our mission and are awesome journalists, tech people, and businesspeople.

Is there still some advice you could give to legacy media, or do you think they’re just lost?

If you have a print paper, you have to really, really think about why do you have a print paper? Most managers say: because it’s profitable. This means they do not focus 100 percent on the future and will innovate at a much slower pace.

What is the future of journalism in the age of AI?

I think there is a golden future for journalism. I think that the user needs that journalism fills are very much there, also among younger audiences. People need someone with feelings and with human intent to tell them about what’s going on. Plus, I believe that besides information, people want community and a sense of belonging. And I think journalism is wonderful at filling these needs. That’s why I believe that that there is a golden future.

So, it will be a golden future for less journalism, a lower volume at least.

Yes, I think that there has been a lot of work within journalism that has really been not super creative and that will go away.

Interview: Alexandra Borchardt

This text was published in German and English by the industry publication Medieninsider on 5th January 2025. 

 

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Nieman Lab Prediction 2025: Newsrooms Reinvent Their Political Journalism

In traditional newsrooms, political journalists tend to be those who call the shots. Even in the absence of statistics, it’s safe to bet that the majority of editors-in-chief used to cover politics before rising to the top job. This has shaped pretty much all of journalism. The “he said, she said” variety of news coverage that makes for a large part of political reporting has pervaded other subject areas as well. The attempt to give opposing parties a voice led to the so-called “both-sides journalism” which operates under the assumption that on the marketplace of ideas and opinions those will survive that serve the people best.

But the past few years have already demonstrated that this kind of journalism is not sustainable. First and foremost, it doesn’t serve humanity well in the case of imminent and severe threats like climate change or attacks on democratic institutions where bothsidesism is not an option. Also, newsroom metrics have shown again and again that audiences tend to be put off by news content that just amplifies opinions and intentions of decision makers without linking it to people’s lives. News avoidance is real and has been growing.

“What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting?”

The result of the 2024 U.S. election and the rise of authoritarian leaning extremists in other democracies should have served as the final wakeup call for political journalism. What if the media’s calling out those who don’t respect democracy and its institutions doesn’t deter people from voting exactly those politicians into office? What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting? And what if newsrooms who complain about political polarization have contributed their fair share to it themselves? Polarization has been a successful business model for journalism after all. These are hard questions that demand answers.

If they want to stay relevant in serving the public, newsrooms will have to double down on studying the impact of their political journalism and think about consequences. Otherwise, they will continue to preach to the converted and fail in their mission to inform people about real threats to their livelihoods. While there is no quick recipe to disrupt and reinvent political journalism, some of the following ingredients might help to develop an strategy and improve the result:

First, studying human behavior. There is plenty of research and evidence out there on how propaganda works, how those in or aspiring to power use the media to amplify it, and how people react to it. If journalists don’t want to be tools in the hands of those ready to abolish press freedom and erode democratic institutions, they better familiarize themselves with these mechanisms. Insights from communication and behavioral psychology should be part of all journalism education and shape newsroom debates. It has become obvious that values and emotions like a sense of justice, pride, shame, and fear shape people’s voting decisions often more than rational choice theory would suggest. Newsrooms must account for that.

Second, chasing data, not just quotes. For political journalists, quotes are data, for other people not so much. They deserve to know what happened, not what someone says they might want to see happening or intends to make happen once in power. Data journalism — increasingly improved by the capabilities of artificial intelligence — provides plenty of opportunities to paint pictures of the real world instead of the world of intentions and declarations. Political journalism can be more interesting when people see how politicians have actually performed in contexts where they were responsible. Needless to say that data journalism needs to be made engaging to appeal to a variety of audiences.

Third, connecting reporting to people’s everyday lives. Politicians have an agenda and journalists are often swayed by it; people are likely to have different ones. Observers might have been baffled that voters didn’t give the Biden administration credit for the strong state of the American economy, but apparently all many people saw before casting their vote was their rising cost of living. Most people care deeply about issues like housing, personal security, the education of their children, health, and care for aging relatives. Only, most of these issues are linked to citizens’ immediate surroundings, their communities. Unsurprisingly, local news tops the list of interests in all age groups when asked for their journalism preferences, as the 2024 Digital News Report revealed. But with diminishing investment in local journalism, many of these topics have been under covered in recent years. A disconnect between political journalism and people’s lives has emerged that needs to be remedied.

Fourth, choosing appropriate formats. Modern newsrooms target different audiences with different formats on the platforms these audiences engage with. Political journalism is still too focused on the audiences that they have traditionally served. It is often made for well-educated groups and decision makers. If newsrooms really want to reach people beyond the community of like-minded news consumers, they need to explore how these audiences can be attracted. There are high hopes in the industry that artificial intelligence can assist in making journalism more appealing and inclusive by transcending formats — converting content to text, video, audio, interactive chat, or even graphic novel by the push of a button. It is too early to tell how this will affect news consumption and audience figures in the real world, but many media leaders expect opportunities for stronger news uptake.

Fifth, learning from other fields of journalism. Political journalists tend to be aware of their importance in the internal hierarchy. Many of them feel proud to do “the real thing” instead of covering entertainment, sports, personal finance, and the like. This might help them to digest the fact that colleagues in other fields score higher in the audience metrics department. But it’s exactly these colleagues political journalists could learn from to improve their own game. They could ask the science desk how to best deal with data and how to break down complex matters in digestible formats. They might get some advice on humanizing stories from those reporting on sports or celebrities. They could learn from investigative reporters how to pace oneself when seemingly sensational material is at hand and how to cooperate with others. And they could practice churning out one or the other service story. In fact, the whole newsroom should be interested in improving political journalism, since at times politics is part of most subject matters.

If journalism wants to maintain its legitimacy, relevance, and impact — particularly in an age when artificial intelligence will make content production ubiquitous — it needs to urgently rethink political journalism. Making it appealing to broader audiences and attracting them to engage with it might be no less than a matter of its survival. Many media leaders are aware of this. Chances are that in 2025 newsrooms will finally rethink the paradigm of political journalism.

This text was published by Harvard University’s Nieman Lab in their Journalism Predictions for 2025 series. 

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AI Labels in Journalism: Why Transparency Doesn’t Always Build Trust

The use of artificial intelligence in journalism requires sensitivity toward the audience. Trust is lost quickly. Transparency is supposed to remedy this. But labeling could even have a negative impact. This column discusses what to do.

In the case of Sports Illustrated, the issue was obvious. When it leaked out that some columns and reports at the renowned American sports magazine were not produced by clever minds but large language models, it cost the publication plenty of subscriptions and ultimately CEO Ross Levinsohn his job. Newsrooms that use journalist imitations made by artificial intelligence are therefore better off doing this confidently; a clear transparency notice is needed. The Cologne-based Express, for example, uses a disclaimer for its avatar reporter Klara Indernach. And even when stated openly, things can go wrong. The radio station Off Radio in Krakow, which had proudly announced that it would be presenting its listeners with a program controlled solely by AI, had to abandon the experiment after a short time. An avatar presenter had conducted a fictitious interview with literature Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska and asked her about current affairs – only the author had passed away in 2012. The audience was horrified. 

Nevertheless, transparency and an open debate about whether, when and to what extent newsrooms use AI when creating content is currently seen as a kind of silver bullet in the industry. Most ethical guidelines on the editorial use of AI are likely to contain a paragraph or two on the subject. There is a great fear of damaging one’s own brand through careless use of AI and further undermining the media trust that has been eroding in many places. So, it feels safer to point out that this or that summary or translation was generated by language models. How this is received by readers and users, however, has hardly been researched – and is also controversial among industry experts. While some are in favor of labels similar to those used for food, others point out that alerts like these could make the public even more suspicious. After all, the words “AI-assisted” could also be interpreted as editors wanting to ditch their responsibility in case of mistakes. 

We also know from other areas that too much transparency can diminish trust just as much as too little. A complete list of all mishaps and malpractice displayed in the foyer of a hospital would probably deter patients rather than inspire confidence. If you read a warning everywhere, you either flee or stop looking. Rachel Botsman, a leading expert on the subject, defines trust as “a confident relationship with the unknown”. Transparency and control do not strengthen trust, but rather make it less necessary because they reduce the unknown, she argues.  

Much more important for building trust are good experiences with the brand or individuals who represent it. To do this, an organization needs to communicate openly about the steps it takes and the processes it has in place to prevent mishaps. In airplanes, this includes redundancy of technology, double manning of the cockpit and fixed procedures; in newsrooms, the four-eyes and two-source principle. When people trust a media brand, they simply assume that this company structures and regularly checks all processes to the best of its knowledge, experience, and competence. If AI is highlighted as a special case, the impression could creep in that the newsroom doesn’t really trust the matter itself.

Felix Simon, a researcher at the Reuters Institute in Oxford therefore considers general transparency rules to be just as impractical as the widely used principle “human in the loop”, meaning that a person must always do the final check. He writes in a recent essay that it is a misconception that the public’s trust can be won back with these measures alone. 

Many journalists also do not realize how strongly their organization’s reporting on artificial intelligence shapes their audience’s relationship with it. Anyone who constantly reads and hears in interviews, essays and podcasts about what kind of devilish stuff humanity is being exposed to will hardly be open-minded about the technology if the otherwise esteemed newsroom suddenly starts to place AI references everywhere. As expected, respondents in surveys tend to be skeptical when asked about the use of AI in journalism – just as a consequence of the media’s reporting. 

It is therefore important to strengthen the skills of reporters so that they approach the topic of AI in a multi-layered way and provide constructive insights instead of meandering between hype and doomsday scenarios. The humanization of AI – whether through avatar reporters or just in the use of words does not exactly help to give the audience a realistic picture of what language and computing models can and cannot do.

People’s impression of AI will also be strongly influenced by their own experiences with it. Even today, there is hardly anyone among students who does not use tools such as ChatGPT from time to time. Even those who program for a living make use of the lightning-fast calculation models, and AI is increasingly becoming an everyday tool for office workers, just like spell checking, Excel calculations or voice input. However, it will become less and less obvious which AI is behind which tools, as tech providers will include them in the service package like the autofocus when taking a picture with a smartphone. AI labels could therefore soon seem like a relic from a bygone era.  

At a recent conference in Brussels hosted by the Washington-based Center for News, Technology & Innovation, one participant suggested that media organizations should consider labeling man-made journalism. What at first sounds like a joke actually has a serious background. The industry needs to quickly realize how journalism can retain its uniqueness and relevance in a world of rapidly scaling automated content production. Otherwise, it will soon have bigger problems than the question of how to characterize AI-supported journalism in individual cases.   

This text was published in German in the industry publication Medieninsider, translated by DeepL and edited by the author – who secretly thinks that this disclaimer might make her less vulnerable to criticism of her mastery of the English language.

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Why climate change should be at the heart of modern journalism

The best insurance against misinformation is strong journalism. Professor Alexandra Borchardt explains how climate journalism and the data and verification skills we need to do this properly can transform our newsrooms.

It is often said that an abundance of questionable information drowns out facts. In climate journalism, the strategy should be to do the opposite: make journalism about global warming, its causes, and its remedies, so pervasive, that everybody everywhere can tell facts and reality from greenwashing and wishful thinking; drown out the misinformation with factual journalism.

This requires rethinking climate journalism from it being a “beat” or “specialist subject” to something that frames all our storytelling, particularly business reporting. This is a tough call, of course. Many obstacles hold media organisations back from prioritising investment in climate journalism. Climate issues often lack a newsy angle. They may be complicated and difficult to understand Coverage may mean expensive travel, and stories can be depressing, politically polarising, and if the journalism is delivered in a less than spectacular way, may fail to attract big audiences. All of which makes the commitment even harder.

Nevertheless, climate journalism is not optional. Journalists have an ethical responsibility, even a mandate to inform the public of threats and help them to make better decisions for themselves, their children, and their communities. Media has the duty to hold power to account and investigate wrongdoing. And a lot has gone wrong. Far too often publishers and broadcasters have kept global warming in the silo of science journalism, rather than at the heart of wider business and news coverage, even though it has been known for decades that the core issues are primarily economic, with powerful interests at play.

The good news is it might help editors and media managers to know that an investment in climate journalism will generate all sorts of benefits for their organisation. Precisely because climate journalism is so complex, the lessons that newsrooms can learn from doing it well can also be applied to other fields. To put it differently: sustainability journalism can make media more sustainable. This is the major conclusion of a report recently published by the European Broadcasting Union: “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact”.

It identified seven such benefits:

  • First, climate journalism is about the future. Today’s journalism is too often stuck in the now. It needs to develop strategies to increase its legitimacy in the attention economy. This is especially true for public service media, which is under attack from various political camps. Who else should have a clearer mandate to contribute to the protection of humankind through better journalism? This way, public service media would also meet the needs of younger generations they are struggling to reach. Above all, it is their future.
  • Second, climate protection needs hope. People only act if they believe they can make a difference. In contrast, today’s journalism focuses on conflict, shortcomings, and wrongdoing. Constructive and solutions-oriented journalism offer a way forward. A project called Drive, in which 21 German regional publishers pool their data, recently proved that inspirational pieces were the most valuable digital content when it came to subscriptions.
  • Third, in climate change, it’s what’s done that counts. Today’s journalism still focuses too much on what has been said. The “he said, she said” type of journalism that dominates political reporting tends to be highly unpopular with users though. Modern journalism should be based more on data than on quotes. Fact-checking and verification come in right here: both need to become second nature for any journalist. Climate journalism is an excellent training ground.
  • Fourth, climate journalism that works approaches a variety of audiences with respect and in languages they understand. It explains. Today’s journalism often elevates itself above its audience in a know-it-all manner. Journalism must become more diverse and inclusive if it is to reach people, inspire them, and move them to action. This applies to formats and protagonists.
  • Fifth, climate journalism must be rooted in the local. In contrast, today’s journalism too often strives for reach, neglecting the specific needs of communities. To make itself indispensable, journalism should reclaim its importance as a community-building institution. Those who use or even subscribe to a media product often do so because it makes them feel they belong.
  • Sixth, climate journalism must have an impact, otherwise it is meaningless. It should therefore reflect on its own practices and use insights from research, especially from communication sciences and psychology. Today’s journalism does this far too rarely. Journalists tend to be curious but often surprisingly resistant to change. Media companies could gain a lot if their managers and employees developed more of a learning mindset and trained their strategic thinking.
  • Seventh, climate journalism benefits from collaboration. In today’s journalism, old-fashioned competitive thinking still dominates far too often. Yet so much potential could be leveraged through cooperation. This applies to networking within organizations among desks and regional bureaus, as well as to devoping links with external partners from within the industry and beyond. The journalism of the future is collaborative.

This blog post was published in March 2023 by the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative.

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Getting climate journalism right means getting journalism right

Many newsroom look at expanding climate journalism as a duty, but not as an opportunity. This might be one reason why just a few media houses have a climate strategy. At the Constructive Journalism Day 2022 organized by NDR Info and Hamburg Media School, I talked about why climate journalism holds great potential for bringing journalism as a whole into the future. 

In November 2022, many people took in another big dose of climate journalism. For some, it may have felt like an overdose. The climate summit in Sharm-El-Sheik dominated the headlines for days. And we learned from the media: it was a disaster. “Less than nothing” had been achieved, was the title of a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In addition, there were the protests of young people who, in their rage, stuck themselves to streets or destroyed works of art. This, too, has been reported on in all its facets. Is that good?

It’s important, yes. But the debates about the protests, or even the big splash at events like COP27, obscure the fact that there are many reasons to be confident about the climate issue, too.

  • Researchers say the energy transition is no longer a technical problem, nor is it a price problem. It is a political problem – tricky enough.
  • New solutions are being invented practically every day, and a vibrant start-up scene has sprung up around green technologies, products, and services.
  • Most industries are intensely engaged in climate innovations, funds are shifting their portfolios, polluters are switching to climate-friendly technologies, even aircraft engine manufacturers have a climate strategy.

Only journalism does not. For the EBU News Report of the European Broadcasting Union – the world’s largest association of public service media organisations – we have been researching for months, interviewing editors-in-chief, researchers and other experts. We found that up to now, just a handful of newsrooms have strategically addressed the issue.

When you argue this way, you hear critics saying: What other industries are doing is often just greenwashing. That may be true in some cases. But if you want to be nasty, you could say that journalism often doesn’t even get greenwashing right.

When it comes to the climate, journalism lags other industries. Why is that?

  • Journalism is afraid of being perceived as partisan, activist. A small, vocal minority of skeptics sets the tone. Editors underestimate their audience. The majority has long since moved on, as surveys show. Most people know the problem – at least intuitively – and would like to see something happen.
  • There is little pressure. Many publishers are medium-sized, broadcasters are structured under public law. Newsrooms are not listed on the stock exchange, pension funds cannot withdraw money if the media botches on sustainability. Other things take priority, and cost pressure adds to the problem.
  • Climate journalism is misunderstood as one topic among many. Yet the protection of our planet’s livelihoods must be the frame under which journalism operates – just as it is with democracy or human rights. The climate must not only be an object to be observed and described. It must be the backdrop against which life plays out. It should define all storytelling.

The topic of climate is an opportunity for journalism because it exposes its major shortcomings:

  • Climate is about the future. Journalism is stuck in the now. The focus is on the quick news, the daily business. Surveys show: Too much is reported, too little explained.
  • Climate protection needs hope. Today’s journalism focuses on drama, omissions, failures. This is also expressed in language. Journalism warns, threatens, scares.
  • In climate protection, what counts is what is done. Today’s journalism focuses on what is said. The overproduction in “he said, she said” journalism often leaves people confused, empty, bored.
  • Journalism that works approaches people at eye level in a language they understand. Today’s journalism often arrogates itself above them in a know-it-all manner – especially when it calls itself quality journalism.
  • Journalism that wants to be effective respects its counterpart and relies on diversity, also in addressing the audience. Most of today’s journalism is still grounded in the age of mass media, where one size had to fit all.
  • Journalism that wants to have an impact reflects on its own practices and makes use of research. Today, many newsrooms almost pride themselves on ignoring academic knowledge. Yet there is a lot of knowledge about how communication affects people.

But can journalism that doesn’t have an impact be strong journalism?

To have an impact, you need to engage with your audience. What’s interesting is that the formats that win journalism awards don’t necessarily resonate with audiences – and vice versa. The impactful formats don’t win awards.

So, what is effective climate journalism, what do we know from research?

  • Effective climate journalism focuses on the here and now rather than the distant future when describing the problem. It anchors the issue where people live.
  • Effective climate journalism paints the possibilities of a good future, shows: What will be gained, instead of always emphasizing what will be lost, what will have to be sacrificed. It’s about developing a sustainable economic system. Climate journalism expert Wolfgang Blau calls it the biggest transformation since World War II.
  • Climate journalism works when it is constructive and solutions-oriented, instead of always painting the apocalypse on the wall. If you want to engage people instead of making them run away, even humor works better than constant alarm. Scientists are already looking at the effects of comedy in climate communication.
  • Climate journalism can work if it gives people agency instead of making them victims, or at least “those affected”, as is almost universally done in the news.
  • Effective climate journalism serves different audiences in a way that makes them listen. It takes note that the messenger is often more important than the message itself. At best, the ambassador is a person with high trust and credibility ratings. It also takes into account that an abundance of facts does not replace empathy.
  • Effective climate journalism is powerful journalism. Editors should not be too preoccupied with incidental details. A corset of language is not needed. What is important: depth, research, factual accuracy, strong images – especially strong images of solutions. What never works: Images of “men in suits,” as one Norwegian editor-in-chief put it.
  • Effective climate journalism needs a credible foundation. Media organisations should do their homework, work on their carbon neutrality. And that is possibly the biggest challenge. But anyone who writes flaming commentaries but does not live climate protection in a credible way is quickly exposed as a hypocrite.

Mark Hertsgaard, co-founder of the Covering Climate Now platform at New York’s Columbia University, said, “If we don’t transform the media industry, no other industry will be transformed.” You might hear some hubris in that. But the truth is that only constant public pressure will spur everyone involved to finally tackle the issue.

Climate journalism has what it takes to push journalism into its best future. It is high time to seize this opportunity – for journalism and for the climate.

I gave this keynote on 29th November 2022 at the Constructive Journalism Day in Hamburg, organized by Hamburg Media School and NDR Info. The research for this project has been funded by the news committee of the European Broadcasting Union. 

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Climate Journalism – What works?

While the war in Ukraine and the pandemic have taken up a lot of space and energy in newsrooms recently, there is hardly any issue that will define our future more than the climate crisis: how it’s reported and received by audiences worldwide and how journalism can spur the debate on how to rebuild our economies in a sustainable way. 

I’m lead author of the upcoming report “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact” – that will be published in full in Spring 2023. Working with me on this have been Katherine Dunn from the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, and Felix Simon from the Oxford Internet Institute. The report will look at how to craft journalism about climate change that is likely to have an impact and to resonate with audiences and how to restructure newsrooms accordingly. It will also include best practice case studies and Q&As from thought leaders and influencers on what actually works.

These are some key preliminary findings that we presented at the EBU’s annual News Assembly on 12th October 2022:

•    Facts alone don’t help. More facts are not necessarily more convincing
•    The messenger is often more important than the message. It is a matter of credibility with the audience.
•    It is important to make climate impact part of all the beats in a newsroom – rather than confine it to a dedicated climate desk. All journalists need basic climate literacy.
•    There is no one-size-fits-all model for newsroom organization, language to be used or visual policy. Everyone has to make it fit their resources, values, culture.
•    Images matter a lot and the formats need to fit the particular audience
•    Leaders experience little resistance when implementing climate strategies. When leadership doesn’t make the topic a priority, a climate desk might flourish but the rest of the journalism will stay the same. 
•    The media has a hard time living up to their own standards when it comes to measuring carbon footprints or making newsrooms more sustainable. Travel is a pain point. 
•    There is a lot of material out there on how to communicate the climate challenge successfully, particularly from the field of communication studies. Newsrooms just haven’t used it yet.

Academics doing research on climate communication have discovered: Stories are more likely to work if they are related to the here and know instead of to the distant future, tied to a local context, convey agency, are constructive or solutions-oriented, and envision a sustainable future instead of emphasizing sacrifice, crisis, destruction, loss, and disaster. While doom scrolling might capture attention for a brief moment, it also risks to drive people into news avoidance.   

We also uncovered some indicators on how climate change and the environment resonate particularly with younger audiences – and how focusing on sustainable issues could help public service media speak directly to this audience and solve some of their own problems in the process.

Interestingly the same focus also appeals to young staffers – and attracts young talent – in newsrooms themselves. And there is evidence that these topics energize veteran news reporters and help promote overall diversity. They make journalism broader, more constructive, and help to break the dominance of the “he said, she said”-type of political reporting that hasn’t served audiences too well anyway.  

We will cover all this and more in the next News Report. But you don’t have to wait that long to read our findings. We will be publishing selected Q&As with media leaders, climate journalists and experts in advance of publication. You can read Wolfgang Blau’s take on some of the challenges – and opportunities – for public service newsrooms.

Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact by Dr Alexandra Borchardt, Katherine Dunn and Felix Simon, will be published on 1 March 2023. This blog was first published on the EBU’s homepage.
 

 
 
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Jay Rosen: “Journalists have to become more explicitely pro-democracy”

Jay Rosen, journalism professor with New York University, recently joined the Board of the new Bonn Institute for Journalism and Constructive Dialogue. His reasoning: If journalism is to survive in a polarized world, it has to provide perspectives and solutions. In this interview, initially published by Medieninsider, Rosen talks about attacks on democracy, diversity, innovation, and why the media industry is particularly reluctant to change. 

Medieninsider: American journalism has been pretty hung up with Donald Trump, now he is gone, at least as a president. What has this done to the industry?

Jay Rosen: Donald Trump was good for ratings and for subscribers, he was good to create interest in the news, but I don’t think anyone misses the kind of frenzy everyone went into when he tweeted something. The more serious question is, what happens when he runs again? Because his whole approach is to destroy journalism, to destroy trust in it. He tells his supporters, the press is critical with me, because they hate you. How should journalism respond to that? I think the industry has been reluctant to face this question, also because the stakes are so high.

But the industry must have learned something from the Trump years?

Our journalists did learn to say sometimes: This is a lie. They didn’t do that before that often. To simply offer a platform to someone who proceeds to supply disinformation is something journalists should not participate in. So the challenge is, how to avoid amplifying disinformation while still covering the news. The press is finally waking up to the fact that some people are antidemocratic. There are not just populists but fascists in that crowd. There is a real danger here to America democracy, and it is coming from an awakened right wing. Right now, the mainstream press doesn’t know what to do about it. A complicating factor is: The right wing has its own media system now and it doesn’t necessarily need the rest of the press. In this ecosystem things that we would call misinformation and disinformation are absolutely believed and promoted. There are actions being taken on the basis of misinformation and disinformation, like changes in law and governance, that arise from politicized fiction. Fox news is an extremely important actor in this. 

Has the significance of Fox News decreased now that Trump is gone or has it increased?

Increased! Now that Trump is out of the way, Fox is the home of his supporters. In a way Tucker Carlson, who is the most powerful figure in the Fox lineup, has taken over from Trump as a nightly presence. It is a very potent organization. 

Are these really two different worlds of journalism, or is there a crossover of journalists?

There is very little of it, a few journalists who start in conservative publishing like for example the National Review might change to other media like CNN or one of the big newspapers. But an increasing part of the right-wing media sphere is consumed with fiction and things that never happened, like the stolen election. Once you have written stories on premises that are false, it is very hard for that person to shift somewhere reputable, because they are on record with it. 

Many European countries have strong public service media. We like to believe that a polarization like that could never happen here.

That is a huge advantage and does make it harder for this extreme propaganda approach to reach as many people. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say it couldn’t happen. There are political forces on the extreme right wing, also in Germany. If they can discredit the public service media complex enough, if they can wip up resentment against paying the fees that are necessary to keep it going, they may be able to weaken the political support for public service broadcasting as part of their political campaign against elites. That would erode this advantage. You can witness this in the United Kingdom, where the Conservatives are attempting to push back the BBC. 

It is hard to overemphasize how much hatred for the media is itself a huge mobilizing factor in the politics of the right wing

What could the US teach the world about doing journalism in a polarized society?

We don’t have anything to teach the world with that. About 25 to 30 percent of the American voters are in many ways lost to mainstream journalism. It is not that they don’t use it. They mistrust everything they see. And it even goes beyond that: If a story appears in the mainstream press, it is a reason to disregard or disbelieve it. This is active distrust. It is hard to overemphasize how much hatred for the media is itself a huge mobilizing factor in the politics of the right wing. Nationalist populism generates power by raging at elites, and the central elite in that system is journalists. Resentment against the press is a political mechanism. 

What kind of consequences do reputable Media draw from that? Have they changed their approach?

I tend to say they are not doing enough. One thing we have seen is that how much the Republican Party has taken on the Trump attitude and approach. It is now the Republican way of operating, even if Trump is not involved. For example, Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote. Or they are making it easier for public officials to manipulate the vote. One of the things big news organizations are doing is they are putting a lot more people on the voting beat, covering changes in the voting system. The Washington Post has a new democracy desk, AP is doing something similar

Do journalists have to stand up more for democracy?

Journalists have to become more explicitely pro-democracy. They have to undertake the defense of democracy. That includes things like reporting about voting but also about disinformation. When you have a party that is turning anti-democratic, and you are supposed to cover that party fairly, you have a problem, because you are also supposed to be pro-democracy. Unfortunately, in the States being pro-democracy is increasingly seen equivalent with being pro Democrats. 

In 2018 you spend a summer in Germany studying “German press think”. What is it that makes German press think different?

One of the pillars of German press think is that journalism should help to prevent the return of totalitarianism. We don’t have that in the US.

Funnily, this is exactly what Americans taught Germans after the Second World War. So, is it time now for the American press to learn from Europeans?

That’s right. I don’t think in any of these problems we have talked about, American journalists are the leaders. 

Newsroom leaders have more and more to decide will they have the view from nowhere to prevail or will they have the “diversify the newsroom project” to prevail?

These pressures come at a time when many American newsrooms seem to be consumed by internal debates, for example about diversity and identity.

The campaign to diversify the American newsroom has gone on for about 30 years, even longer. The warning that the news media is too white goes back 50 years. The campaign hasn’t worked. In positions of power, you don’t see any real movement. Lots of minority journalists got frustrated with that and quit. 

Even with Dean Baquet having been the first black editor of the New York Times? 

Yes. In fact, just last year they had to do this big report on newsroom culture. The younger generation of minority journalists is more committed to these changes, they are less likely to accept excuses. They have also more tools for expressing themselves, they can always go to the internet. There is now a kind of confrontation happening between rhetoric and results. It is revealing this contradiction at the heart of the diversify the newsroom process:  Journalists are being recruited into the newsroom to bring in a different perspective to the news. Once they are hired, they are told to check their perspective at the door and show that they can be a professional like everyone else with a view from nowhere, as I call it. Newsroom leaders have more and more to decide will they have the view from nowhere to prevail or will they have the diversify the newsroom project to prevail. 

The debate about impartiality in journalism is alive and well in Europe, too. What do you think about it? 

I have to be careful when I talk about it. It depends a lot on what you mean by impartial or objective, in the United States that tends to be the term. We need journalists that are intellectually honest. If objectivity means, let’s use facts rather than arguments, that is important. If objectivity means getting a larger picture, that is extremely important as well. Impartiality means trying to describe what the situation really is instead of what we prefer it to be, that is super important and very basic to journalism. But if impartiality means you are above it all and you have no perspective, that is a lie. If you think of yourself as the only one who doesn’t have an agenda because you are a journalist, it is a dangerous thing to believe. 

The BBC has reworked the concept to make it fit their purposes, their regulator Ofcom now calls it due impartiality, meaning it has to acknowledge the context.

They discovered that the old concept didn’t work in daily newsroom practice. They saw that their managers who run the desks where doing this with climate change, to allocate the same time to climate change proponents and deniers. That is not what they wanted, so they went through this process. If you have two parties and one of them is powered by fictions, lies, and disinformation, simply reporting on what they do feels and sounds biased. 

If our newsrooms cannot learn how to become more helpful in problem-solving, they won’t survive as influential

The former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, says that the media has failed in the biggest story of our times: climate change reporting. Do you agree?

Today’s news system, at least the one we have in the US, is not designed to create public understanding. It is designed to produce new content every day. With climate change the first step that is required is learning, you need background knowledge, without this the news about climate change doesn’t make any sense. But our news system is not designed to create background knowledge but to report what’s new today. It is a new challenge. Journalism has to become more problem-solving.

Is this why you decided to join the board of the new Bonn Institute for Journalism and Constructive Dialogue?

Yes. If our newsrooms cannot learn how to become more helpful in problem-solving, they won’t survive as influential. It is a huge challenge for the profession, this will be around for the next 20 or 25 years. It is not like this week’s flavor of ice-cream. For us journalists it used to be that our job was to uncover problems, to put a spotlight on them, and it was governments’ job to solve them. This is no longer appropriate. But the move toward solutions journalism is happening. In the US the Solutions Journalism Network has been active for 15 years. They have reached 30 000 journalists and  collaborated with over 300 newsrooms. The movement is slowly spreading. Even small changes can take years. 

Can you please give us an example how this is reflected in American journalism?

With mass shootings it used to be that there was all this publicity about the shooter. You could read his bio in all detail. This encouraged other shooters to take up their guns. Critics said to major networs: You cannot feature the shooters as the star of the story without encouraging more violence. Now the stories are much more about the victims. This is a response to the criticism. It took 15 years. The adoption curve in journalism is absurd, it takes too long. We don’t have that long. The 2024 election is around the corner, for example.

Why is this industry so slow in adopting change?

One reason is, journalism is a team sport, in most cases it is collaborative. You need everybody to be on the same page on what our job is. It is a consensus practice. If the consensus becomes a problem, journalists are reluctant to give up their intellectual tools even when they are broken, because they need everybody to operate in the same way. There is the production routine after all, deadlines have to be met. Additionally, journalists get a lot of bad faith criticism from people who are trying to undermine the press. This is why sometimes they get defensive about criticism. Also, there is a cultural thing: journalists are a herd of independent minds, they are people who think alike but also think of themselves as individuals who make their own choices. This is how White House correspondents work: in their minds they are intensely competitive with each other at doing exactly the same thing. But the business prospects for the press are dim if they can’t help solving problems. When it is done properly, you often see in the numbers that people are paying attention and their satisfaction with the product grows. If those metrics show that people are paying attention and they find this kind of journalism more valuable this is a huge thing. 

Do we have to revolutionize journalism education then?

Slowly journalism education is changing. We are now seeing programs that are focused on innovation, teaching people how to become innovators in the newsroom and in these companies. That’s not the way it has been for a long time. Journalism schools were usually trailing changes rather than the other way around. It would be a significant change if they led the way. 

Do we also need more executive education?

Leaders of news organisations have to become smarter with a lot of things. There is a lot of pressure around developing the business of news. The news industry had remained remarkably stable and profitable for a very long time. That created a culture that isn’t build for rapid adjustments and changes, it is not exactly agile. That the news industry has to learn from the tech industry. 

Is there anything else the news industry could learn from the tech industry?

Iteration. This is a buzzword, I usually try to avoid those. Because the costs of trying things have fallen immensely in the digital era, you can use iteration. See what works, improve it. Innovation used to be creating a new food section. Now it is about quickly changing your product in response to user data. Incorporating your audience in the production of the news is also a whole new world. Previously the job of the audience was to sit in their seat and consume the news. The job of journalists was, finish your story, job done. Now your job is: how to get it to the people who really need it. That is something you cannot really outsource. In job interviews it used to be that the editors who did the interviewing had all the skills, now they ask the job seekers explicitely about the skills they themselves don’t have.  

So, it is all about figuring out user needs. What are the user needs journalism can and should fulfill?

People do consume news because they want to know what’s going on. They need journalism to know what is true and not true, what they can ignore and not ignore. But also: They want to know, how are we getting out of this mess? They need a reason why to keep paying attention. 

Interview: Alexandra Borchardt, the text was first published in German by Medieninsider on 20th May 2022.

 
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Forget About Extinction: The Pandemic Has Been A Media Empowerment Event

Moaning can be a strategy, and the media has been using quite a bit of it in recent years. When the pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, it even felt like there was a competition for the bleakest headline. Who in the industry doesn’t remember Buzzfeed’s reporter Craig Silverman concluding that the coronavirus was a “media extinction event“. Last year though things went surprisingly quiet in the horror scenario department. And now the latest trend report by Oxford-based Reuters Institute is predicting something like a bull market for the industry: The subscription business is flourishing and even the digital advertising market, which had long been declared dead, has made a strong comeback. 59 percent of the surveyed 246 media executives from 52 countries reported rising revenues, and three out of four respondents expected an even better business in 2022. Hooray, we are playing again!

It should be noted that the annual survey is not representative. Mostly those respond who are already committed and possibly proud of their successes. Nevertheless, the situation is apparently better than the mood. Instead of a “media extinction event”, the pandemic has become a “media empowerment event.”

Fuelled by increased user interest and trust levels, editorial and management teams at many publishers have finally taken their fate into their own hands. They are developing new formats and workflows geared to user needs, fine-tuning subscription models, and even taking care of their customers. The crisis has accelerated innovation, dozens of media executives had already gone on record for the EBU News Report, published in late November 2021 (transparency note: I am lead author of the report).

This is about time. For decades, journalists have left the money-making part of the business to the publishers. These, in turn, had often just administrated advertisers and subscribers rather than selling advertising formats and journalism. But suddenly, advertising revenues dwindled, whereas on the content side, the quality supply multiplied. Journalism had become a consumer good, to be developed and sold accordingly. Only the producers had noticed it rather late. These days things are different. In many media outlets, teams of journalists, marketing, and tech have started to work together on products for different audiences. And what’s at least as important is that publishers look at how their neighbours are doing it, support each other, and – the master discipline – even develop solutions jointly. For 2022 and beyond, the smart ones are collaborating, cooperating and/or training together. This is happening on an international and national level. There are several examples:

► In the project “A European Perspective“, led by the European Broadcasting Union, public broadcasters share important content and make it accessible in different languages with the help of automated translation.

► In the Table Stakes Europe program, managed by the World Media Association Wan-Ifra, European publishers train their editorial teams in the “audiences first” principle and support each other; they recently started their third year (transparency note: I work as a coach in the program).

► In the award-winning Drive project, led by Deutsche Presse-Agentur, more than a dozen German regional publishers pool their user data and jointly analyse the findings.

And the number of international training programs, in which seasoned journalists and media managers look into each other’s decks and learn new skills, continues to grow. When it comes to innovation, scarce resources render it not only impossible but also stupid to be a lone warrior. This is especially true for public service media, where waste is hard to justify in front of the license fee or taxpayers.

Of course, there are also those who want to – and possibly can –  go it alone. In the first week of January, The New York Times announced its acquisition of sports journalism platform The Athletic. It did so for $550 million, giving it access to subscribers across America and beyond. The industry has been debating ever since whether this is a new killer virus for local journalism or not all that bad, as Joshua Benton of Harvard’s Nieman Lab reflected.

And then there’s Axios, another U.S. digital journalism provider, which plans to redefine local journalism in a land of news deserts. It launched Axios Local and is expanding into audience-centric business journalism with Axios Pro. In addition, there are plenty of creators on both sides of the Atlantic who are making their debut as founders, either alone or in teams. Young journalists seem to have overcome their shyness when it comes to business models. Just a year ago, Project Oasis, a major study on media start-ups in the U.S. and Canada, analysed that many founders’ lack of business knowledge was the biggest hurdle to becoming successful media entrepreneurs.

So, are the many appeals to support journalism superfluous because the industry can manage without help? It’s not quite that simple. Pressure on press freedom is growing in many countries, and journalists are increasingly exposed to aggressive attacks. In addition, many customers could develop a kind of subscription fatigue and thus bring the positive development to a standstill. In the “Trends and Predictions” report of the Reuters Institute, significantly more respondents were convinced of their own company success than predicting a great future for journalism. This demonstrates a new sense of agency but also a certain humility. The diligent workers outnumber the visionaries. Most respondents said their focus this year would be making what they had already built better, more efficient and more user-friendly. Making growth sustainable, this should be a central goal – in 2022 and beyond.

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The Moral Dilemma of Paywalls: Why Journalism will Increasingly Move into Two Different Worlds

Selling journalism is no crime. In fact, only a few reporters and editors are ashamed of the fact that much of what they go great lengths to research, edit, and produce can only be consumed for money. After all, even bread is not for free. However, potential users who are stranded at paywalls at times make journalists feel like sleazy used car dealers. “It’s outrageous to make important information available to paying customers only,” complain those who are turned away at the login. Some even go further and argue, this promotes the division of society. Nikki Usher made this point in her book “News for the Rich, White, and Blue” that was published by Columbia University Press in 2021.

So, feeling attacked like this, who can blame journalists for getting a bit pathetic at times when talking about their craft? They prefer to elaborate about enlightenment and democracy, about holding power to account and citizen service, rather than about user loyalty and business models. The truth is, however, that without rapid progress in the commercialization of their offerings, many publishers will not survive.

This is why the journalism of the future will most likely move into either one of two worlds: On the one hand, there will be the increasingly sophisticated world of commercial journalism, in which highly professional providers offer their distinct audiences custom-fit, high-quality content, and user-friendly products that inspire them. On the other, there will be the world of public service or non-profit journalism, which steps in where the market fails. In this second world, journalism of the watchdog type will be created that only a few people are willing to pay for, or it will be about journalism that serves audiences which cannot or refuse to pay for news. Democracy needs both worlds. So, instead of fuelling today’s fights between public service and commercial media in tightening markets, it is about time for an honest discussion about this division of labour. Journalism would benefit from it – and so would citizens.

The highly professional world is currently emerging at a rapid pace. Most publishers have understood that only the sale of digital subscriptions, or at least memberships and other products, will secure their future. They are increasingly using experiments and meaningful data to figure out which customers or customer groups are most lucrative and how best to serve them. The audiences-first focus is at the core of media innovation programs like Table Stakes, in which close to 150 publishers in the US and Europe have already taken part (disclosure: the author of this is a coach in the Table Stakes Europe program run by WAN-IFRA). A lot of great journalism is created this way. But decisive for gaining and retaining subscribers is individual customers’ time spent on certain media. An extensive German data-gathering project called Drive has revealed that this was the key metric for selling digital subscriptions, not the clout of individual stories or subject areas that “convert well”. This summer, the industry organisation INMA named Drive, that bundles data from more than a dozen regional publishers and is led by German Press Agency dpa, the word’s “best news media innovation project”.

Focusing on “media time” though means that many publishers won’t be able to afford much journalism that doesn’t zero in on lucrative audiences. As resources become scarcer, newsrooms must inevitably ignore target groups that promise little commercial success. They are better off making those even happier who they already serve. This may be an audience with a certain level of education, political lineage or background. News organizations like the New York Times and the Financial Times have long understood this. Despite proclamations to the contrary, it is hardly worth many newsrooms’ while to reflect the diversity of society in its entirety. To the contrary, this can even alienate their core clientele. This is a sad truth and sounds reprehensible for journalism on a mission to safeguard democracy. But media companies with too little focus will sooner or later risk their existence.

This makes the role of public service media or non-profit offerings all the more important. With public service media at least in the traditional European concept, every citizen has to pay the license fee. That’s why the broadcasters have a mandate to reflect society in all its diversity and – this is important – meet all groups at eye-level. Unlike commercial publishers, they must remain impartial and use all formats necessary to reach users. Public service media has an obligation to go where the market of journalism fails. However, this also means that they have to make offerings for the mass market in order to not disappear into insignificance. When some commercial publishers argue public service broadcasters should retreat into niches, they don’t understand market dynamics. Such fear of competition always demonstrates a lack of confidence in their own offerings. To defy international platform or streaming monopolies, public service providers must cover the breadth. The commercial ones, on the other hand, should provide their audiences with so much added value that these are happy to pay for it. Ideally, both sides should cooperate on new technologies, innovative services, or education, rather than antagonize each other.

Complementary to public service news, there will also be a niche for non-profit news organisations, particularly in markets without strong public service media like the U.S.. They will establish themselves in areas where the market fails. The Texas Tribune, one of the most prominent non-profit U.S. media companies, for example, has focused on local political coverage. Readers typically don’t like to pay for that, their founder Evan Smith has argued. But when no one holds local politicians and administrators to account, it has been proven to hurt communities and their citizens. This is where funders who want to do good for society will be needed.

An open debate about the different journalism worlds would also enliven the discussion about trust in media. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford recently published a study based on discussion forums with media executives from the U.S., the U.K., Brazil and India. What emerged was that newsrooms target their trust-building efforts at very different audiences. For some, it’s about breadth. The aim is to win back those who have turned their backs on the public debate – an endeavour that is honourable, arduous and important, yet rarely successful commercially. For the rest, it’s about stable customer relationships and thus depth. Nevertheless, building trust as a means to an end is not reprehensible, on the contrary. It safeguards the plurality of the media landscape and consequently democracy.

This text was first published in a slightly different version in German by Medieninsider on 8th December 2021.

 

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Desperately Seeking Youngsters – Seven Insights About a Demanding Audience

This phrase keeps popping up regularly in editorial meetings: Everyone is presenting their topics, and then one of the bosses throws it in: “We have to do something for young people.” Perplexity escapes the eyes of older participants. Maybe something about Tik Tok? About hip music or the approaching high school graduation? Everyone younger than 30 goes into hiding, just in case. They know that their most important job is to impress their over-40 superiors with clever suggestions that will go down well with the over-60 clientele. After all, they want to be taken seriously.

Established media companies and young audiences have a hard time with each other. While the former cannot do without the latter, because this would result in their economic starvation, the latter can very well do without many things that ensure the livelihood of publishers and broadcasters: Subscriptions, apps, and live TV, for example. Even with digital there is no guarantee. According to the Digital News Report 2020, 84 percent of under-25s don’t go directly to a media brand’s website, but get information from what social media, search engines or news aggregators flush into their timelines or onto their screens via push messages. This is why established media put it on the agenda again and again: Young users desperately wanted.

But what about young people’s media consumption, what do they like, what do they ignore, when do they tune in and when do they tune out? Judging by how much and how long the topic has preoccupied newsrooms, research on this is fairly slant. For the German market, two studies revealed important findings this spring.  One is “#usethenews”, published in April 2021 by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research Hans-Bredow Institute. The second one puts an emphasis on media literacy and was published in March by the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. From this, my own research and from countless conversations with students from various disciplines, a few things have emerged that editorial strategists should know.

First: The house is indeed on fire on this topic, not only as far as the future of publishers is concerned, but also with regard to civic engagement in democracy. According to the research team at the Hans Bredow Institute, around one in two young people do not consider it important to be informed about current events. They provide the explanation right away: “Journalism often lacks a connection to young people’s everyday lives.” So it’s not enough to shrug and point to the generally rising proportion of news avoiders, which the Digital News Report puts at around one-third internationally. Among the younger generation, news abstinence is much more pronounced. Anyone who is serious about journalism as a pillar of democracy should therefore take urgent action.

Second, the gap between those who are well informed and competent and those who can barely find their way in the new information landscape is widening. Whereas formerly, even those with a low level of education used to be reasonably well informed, perhaps because there was a newspaper lying around here and there, because they watched TV news out of boredom, or were force-fed hourly radio news while driving, all of this can be completely avoided in the age of maximum distraction possibilities. The information gap that the Internet was supposed to close is opening up more and more as a digital divide between the social classes – if nothing is done. Public broadcasters with their mandate to offer journalism for everyone have a special obligation here.

Third: Fortunately, many young people are interested in the world around them after all – just not always in what seasoned politics and feature editors find exciting. Those who enjoy journalism like to check out the local news. Anything to do with environmental protection and science is thought after, at least by the better educated. Incidentally, in a recent American study on news avoidance (“The head and heart of news avoidance”), it were also stories touching health, science, the environment and local affairs that news avoiders of all generations were most likely to be interested in. Newsrooms whose informal pecking order starts with the politics desk followed by a large gap will have to adjust.

Fourth, what unites all users of the younger generations is a preference for light subject matter. According to the Leibniz study, “funny and strange” is consistently well received. In any case, humor is a pretty sure way to get a hearing among generations Y and Z, as evidenced not only by Böhmermann and Co. But beware, it’s not necessarily the kind of humor that those same mature executives like. Joking at the expense of weaker people is not acceptable. Those who dish it out have to at least take a joke themselves once in a while. In the humor department of journalism, the same applies as with uncertain sources: If in doubt, leave it alone.

Fifth: There’s no way around influencers, but they don’t have to be Instagram marketing heroes. When the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter had Greta Thunberg head the newsdesk for one day last year, digital subscriptions came rushing in, several thousand in one day. Celebrities increase reach and help get messages across. Rule of thumb: Celebrities should come across as people, not officials. Having the movie star talk about politics and the politician talk about movies can make both more credible, if they mean it honestly. Young people are trained to distinguish between genuine authenticity and staged approachability.

Sixth, diversity counts – and not just as a box-ticking exercise. Young people expect a program or brand to portray the world as they experience it. They may be able to identify with protagonists and perhaps even contribute something themselves. This includes language that is both casual and respectful and content that – see above – has something to do with their everyday lives. News should be useful and fun, was the conclusion of a study on young journalism users published by market researcher Flamingo together with the Reuters Institute in 2019. Constructive journalism that opens the world wide with perspectives is therefore particularly well received by the young generation. Rule of thumb: You can trust the audience with something. The success of science-driven formats such as Brainstorm by Irish public broadcaster RTE or the German magazine Katapult are proof of this. It’s a pity for cost killers that in-depth research is usually more time-consuming than dishing out news copy-and-paste style. But quick news is everywhere these days. You could say that young people are journalism gourmets.

Seventh: Journalism must be easily accessible and well prepared. Digitization trains all generations for convenience; Amazon, PayPal, Spotify and Co. have set the gold standard for user-friendliness. The old world, in which people still read instruction manuals, wrote down phone numbers and went to the kiosk on the corner, is disappearing. For journalism, this means it has to go where the users are and make it easy for them. The American study mentioned above says that barriers to understanding and a lack of self-confidence in dealing with the media are the main reasons why people give news a wide berth. When in doubt, the interactive infographic with three bullet points beats the 200-line editorial. This is bitter for some authors. While complexity used to be a sign of quality, today it has to be well justified. This is good. Because in the past it has all too often merely concealed incompetence or laziness.

This column was published in German on May 17, 2021 by Medieninsider. It was translated by DeepL and then edited.