The future of journalism: Less is more

August 18, 2024
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It’s all about relationship and trust, not sensationalism and scale

James Breiner

Aug 15, 2024

Lluís Cucarella is the editorial director of the Journalism Laboratory in Spain (Laboratorio de Periodismo), so when he asked me to be on his podcast and talk about the future of journalism, I had to say yes.

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Lluís Cucarella, from his X (formerly Twitter) account

To prepare, I spent a lot of time re-reading my own blog posts and academic articles. I boiled down my thoughts into a few key ideas, all in Spanish because the podcast is in Spanish.

Here I’m going to give you the boiled down English version of what I was trying to say on that podcast a few months ago.

The high cost of quality

High-quality trustworthy journalism is costly. It takes time and people to produce. And I have to thank a friend who is an electrical engineer for reminding me of this fact.

He wrote a comment on my newsletter about a free online course I took on artificial intelligence. One thing we learned in that course is that AI chatbots sometimes respond by “making something up” when they can’t find an answer in their database.

My friend, who is an expert in computer-assisted product design, said he was not surprised.

“Your online course was free, your newsletter is free, the AI chatbots are free (his emphasis). That’s why 8,000 people registered for the course you took. Compare this to a university, where 15 people might attend a class for $20/hour.

“This illustrates a fundamental flaw in our old-school (pre-internet) information systems, where professional news (and education) is expensive and therefore reaches a small audience.

“Garbage news is shocking and free, and reaches everybody (i.e. TikTok). Professional news has to be free and compelling to compete with the garbage” (my emphasis). — Al Kordesch

Drowning in junk

And that leads to my main point. The old business model for news was based on massive distribution to massive audiences with advertisers seeking to stimulate people’s appetites for ever more stuff and services. Advertising subsidized the public service news.

But search engines and social media took away the audience, the advertisers, and the revenue of broadcasters and newspapers.

Tech giants’ algorithms have decided that what audiences and advertisers want on the information menu is sensational crime, celebrity sex scandals, conspiracy theories, salacious gossip, shouting politicians, weather danger, and sports.

A new business model for news

This model of screaming for our attention has turned people off. More people actively avoid the news. It’s depressing, they tell pollsters. It doesn’t help them make important decisions in their lives.

Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute has summarized these global trends of declining trust in the news, rising news avoidance, the role of influencers with younger audiences, and the percentage paying for news.

Cucarella asked me to comment on these trends.

Declining trust. Newman’s data explain why so many big digital media like Vice, BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and The Messenger have been laying off journalists, abandoning news coverage, declaring bankruptcy, or closing their doors.

What’s missing from mass media and mass advertising is trustworthy information that helps people understand the confusing world around them. And as any economist will tell you, when something is scarce, in short supply, its value is greater. That means it can command a greater price.

The opportunity: relationships, not scale

The news in itself has no economic value. It is easily reproduced, copied, and shared depending on public interest.

And as I’ve already mentioned, what algorithms deem to be newsworthy isn’t always trustworthy, useful, or relevant to people concerned about problems close to home.

In that environment, the credibility of a news product, its trustworthiness, and its relevance to people all have value. And all of these qualities are in short supply.

For independent news media, this represents an enormous economic opportunity. These qualities are the basis of a new business model for news.

The opportunity for news publishers

There isn’t exactly a single formula that works, but the independent media that have survived and thrived in various parts of the world share some or all of the following characteristics, which I discussed in an earlier newsletter:

  • Their founders include respected journalists. These people have the social capital to attract investment or donations and recruit top flight talent.
  • They disrupt established media’s monopolies on production and distribution by taking advantage of free or low-cost digital tools. They keep operating costs low.
  • They experiment with multiple revenue sources — donations, memberships, hard and porous paywalls, ecommerce, events, courses, content licensing, fact-checking, and consulting services. Many also have advertising, but some accept none to maintain independence.
  • They focus on relationships rather than scale. They nurture intimacy with their readers, viewers, or listeners. They focus on niches, either geographically or thematically. They develop local issues and topics of interest to their target audience — health care, public education, government services, public safety, local culture, and corruption.
  • They produce stories and reports in the language and tone of their target audience, often ethnic or religious groups ignored or marginalized by the largest media and the powers that be.
  • They use intimate digital media channels such as podcasts and newsletters to deepen the relationship with their community.

For the rest of this month, you can book a 20-minute Zoom call with me to chat about entrepreneurship or media or whatever you like. It’s free. The link with available times is here. We can chat and get to know each other better. In English or in Spanish.

Final thoughts and the future

My interviewer, Lluís Cucarella, ended the podcast by asking me what advice I had for young people interested in the communication sciences and journalism.

I’ve always told my students the same thing: pick an aspect of journalism and communication that you’re interested in, and start building a portfolio of work while in school. It might be photography, video production, blogging, investigative journalism, feature writing, marketing, social media, event planning — and then develop a basic level of competence in other journalism disciplines.

Entrepreneurs and startups. Students — and their parents — worry about what kinds of jobs are available for journalism graduates. They’ve all heard about the big media companies laying people off.

The media companies that are hiring are the ones filling the big gaps left by the legacy companies — the startups that are creating niche media designed to serve smaller communities that have keen interest in particular topics or geographic areas.

These niche audiences are smaller, but they are much more likely to be loyal consumers of the content, sharers of the content, and purchasers of the products and services offered.

Where to work?

  • Look for media organizations that focus on teaching, learning, innovation, and connecting with their audience.
  • Look for media that base their evaluation of a journalist’s contribution not on the number of articles produced but on how they meet standards of depth, accuracy and fairness.
  • Look for media that search for explanations of why things are happening and what people can do about it.

Independent media have an idealistic mission: they hold the powers that be to account — whether business people, politicians, or other media. They speak up for the powerless. They provide a valuable public service so ordinary people can make decisions about how to govern their communities.

A lot of the news about the news industry looks bad, if you consider only what’s on the surface. But let me suggest some other ways of looking at things:

And to you young people, good luck, and do good work.


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