Future of Journalism #Hifsa

THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

Developments and debates

Bob Franklin

Radical shifts in journalism are changing virtually every aspect of the gathering,

reporting and reception of news. The pace, extent and significance of these developments

have accelerated markedly since 2009, when the previous Future of Journalism Conference

convened at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. The factors

prompting this radical and structural reshaping of journalism, which were analysed and

discussed on that occasion, included: the continuing innovations in communication

technologies; the harshly competitive and fragmenting markets for audiences and

advertising revenues; dramatic reductions in the entry costs of some online outlets for

news; the collapse of the traditional business model to resource journalism; an expansive

role for social media as sources and drivers of news; dynamic changes in government

media policy; as well as shifting audience requirements for news, the ways in which it is

presented and, given the expansive number of (increasingly mobile) devices on which it is

received, even the places and spaces where news is produced and consumed (Franklin,

2011, pp. 1�2; Peters, C., 2012). Each of these trends and developments continues to have significant implications for journalists’ jobs, their workplaces, products and perceptions of

their professional roles, ethical judgements and day-to-day practice. They also pose

significant challenges to the future funding of a sustainable, critical and high-‘‘quality’’

democratic Journalism. The economic recession since 2007 has exacerbated these longer-

term trends, heightened their consequences for journalism and increased the already

‘‘break-neck’’ speed of developments, prompting Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to claim

that journalism ‘‘as an industry, [is] collectively suffering from what deep-sea divers refer to

as the bends’’ (Rusbridger, 2010).

One indicator of the pace of these changes has been the proliferation of neologisms

describing these developments in journalism. Not since philosopher Jeremy Bentham

fashioned an unprecedented 246 new words in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

century, including maximise, marginalise and monetary, to describe an entirely new range

of sentiments, values and economic behaviours and relationships which existing words

could not articulate meaningfully, has such a flurry of new words been generated (http://

www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-project/tools/neologisms). But in the new millennium the re-

quirement is for words which explain new communication relationships between journal-

ists and audiences, as well as journalists and sources, and all this, in a setting where the

professional identity and roles of journalists seem less certain. A cluster of new words such

as ‘‘produsage’’ (Bruns, 2008), ‘‘churnalism’’ (Davies, 2008), ‘‘crowdfunding’’, ‘‘crowdsour-

cing’’ (Aitamurto, 2011) ‘‘Infomediaries’’ (Goyette-Cote et al., 2012), ‘‘newsfulness’’ (Chyi

and Chadha, 2012) and ‘‘Huffingtonization’’ (Bakker, 2012), along with new verbs (to blog,

to curate, to download, to repurpose, to text and to tweet), describe and in turn help to

fashion new communication behaviours. Existing adjectives and nouns join in novel

combinations*citizen journalist, legacy media and user-generated content*to identify and label new communication relationships; the same ambition informs the more

Journalism Studies, Vol. 13, Nos 5�6, 2012, 663�681 ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.712301

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clumsy collection of words into novel phrases such as ‘‘the people formerly known as the

audience’’ and the ‘‘people formerly known as the employers’’.

But it was the breaking of the ‘‘hacking scandal at News International’’ in July 2011

which added even greater momentum to public as well as scholarly concerns about the

future of journalism; and just ahead of the Conference in early September. The story

enjoyed extensive and global media coverage. ‘‘Hackgate’’ possessed the essential

ingredients of a strong tabloid story; celebrities, sex, the royal family, phone hacking,

bribery, blackmail, crime and corruption. Journalism scholar Brian McNair, in his review of

Mary McGuckian’s film Rag Tale, which depicts journalistic culture in a fictional tabloid

newsroom, observed wryly that following the events at News International, ‘‘the

representations of office sex, hacking of sources, double dealing and betrayal among

colleagues, heroic consumption of cocaine and alcohol’’ seem less like the ‘‘loose satire’’

which the film originally intended than ‘‘cinema verite’’ (McNair, 2011, p. 615). The prompt

appearance of Rupert and James Murdoch at a House of Commons Select Committee

hearing risked relegating the story from high drama to farce, as questions, accusations and

eventually custard pies were thrown at the newspaper proprietor. Restored to some

semblance of dignity, Rupert Murdoch conceded that it had been ‘‘the most humbling day

of my life’’ (Guardian, 20 July 2011).

The ongoing events at News International continue to have significant implications

for the debate about the future of Journalism, and probably for the unravelling of that

future. One significant consequence has been the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry

into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press (http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/)

which began taking oral and written evidence in mid-November 2011. A special

Roundtable was convened at the Future of Journalism 2011 to allow an early assessment

of the importance of ‘‘Hackgate’’ and Leveson for journalism.

This brief introduction begins by setting out the ambitions for the Conference in

2011, as well as providing the broader context and background to the discussions, plenary

lectures (delivered by Professors Emily Bell and Robert W. McChesney) and the 90

research-based papers delivered by journalism practitioners and scholars from more than

30 countries, a selection from which is published below. Second, it offers some further

background to the Hackgate scandal by reporting brief extracts from the Roundtable

which explore panel members’ initial assessments of the causes and consequences of the

scandal for the future of journalism.

The Future of Journalism*Developments and Debates The Future of Journalism 2011 was organised to explore the collective scholarly

response to five broadly framed questions which, in turn, articulated the central

Conference themes:

. First, how are developments in media technologies generating new devices (such as mobile telephones and tablet computers) for distributing and consuming journalism

products, but also shaping a new journalism practice and innovative opportunities for

reporting news including citizen and participatory journalism, crowdsourcing and live

blogging? (Theme 1; Media Technology and Changing Journalism Practice).

. Second, what are the implications of these changes for the revenues traditionally available to fund journalism and what business models are emerging (for example, the

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recent enthusiasm for the construction of pay walls, the development of crowdfunding)

to resource newly emerging forms of journalism? (Theme 2; Journalism Business Models

and Strategies).

. Third, how are these changes unravelling globally in different national settings with their distinctive journalism cultures, audiences, media structures and histories? (Theme 3;

Global Journalism Developments).

. Fourth, what are the implications of these developments for the education, training and employment of journalists, as well as journalists’ changing perceptions of their

professional roles and identity? (Theme 4; Journalists’ Professional Roles and Identity).

. Finally, in what ways do these changes impact on journalism’s wider connections with the moral, political and democratic life of communities locally, regionally, nationally and

internationally? (Theme 5; Journalism, Democracy and Ethics).

Legacy Media and the ‘‘Crisis in Journalism’’

A ‘‘crisis in journalism’’ frame has been widely adopted to understand and respond

to the current changes in journalism. This frame highlights the dramatic closure of

newspaper titles along with plummeting falls in circulations, journalists’ jobs and

advertising revenues in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe (Meyer,

2004; Starr, 2009). Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, the UK’s most successful mid-market

tabloid, captures the mood of the crisis frame but turns his fire power against the too

frequent and precocious epitaphs for ‘‘good journalism’’:

It is an ineluctable truth that many provincial newspapers and some nationals are now in

a near terminal condition. If our critics spent as much zeal trying to help reverse this

tragic situation and work out how good journalism*which is, by its nature expensive*is going to survive financially in an internet age, then democracy and the public’s right to

know would be much better served. (Dacre, 2010)

But the future of newspapers requires a more nuanced understanding than the crisis

narrative allows. Such an assessment needs to explain important variations in the fortunes

of journalism in distinctive national settings and market sectors (Franklin, 2009; Preston,

2009); to move beyond the arguments which insist ‘‘internet good, old fashioned media

(especially) newspapers bad’’. Job losses and newspaper closures in the United Kingdom,

for example, are considerably fewer than the United States where the website Paper Cuts

reported 15,993 job losses in 2008, 15,000 in 2009, but 2800 in 2010, 4111 in 2011 and 991

for the first half of 2012 (http://newspaperlayoffs.com/, accessed 6 June 2012). In contrast

to both the United States and United Kingdom, Germany (the biggest media market in

Europe), has been described as a ‘‘deviant case’’ where the economic foundations of the

media market are still largely intact (Brueggemann et al., 2012).

Journalistic hyperbole may also have exaggerated fears about the future of

journalism. A recent analysis of business and financial issues in the journalism industries

reported in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today during 2008�2010, for example, suggests that journalists may indeed have ‘‘over reacted’’ to the market

downturn since the recession thereby contributing to this pessimistic mood. The study’s

summary conclusion is that

newspapers could do better in covering their own industry by providing a more

contextualised picture of their troubles. Less over-reaction and emotional imagery of

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death, coupled with a greater reliance on media economics data, might lead not only to

greater public faith in newspapers as an industry but also increased confidence in the

ability of the press to present events with accuracy and sobriety (Chyi et al., 2012, p. 318)

The ‘‘crisis in journalism’’ frame also needs to acknowledge the substantial changes

in the newspaper industry in the very recent past. Newspapers have been adapting

editorially and financially to accommodate innovations in media technologies and

changing market requirements (Franklin, 2009, p. 2); newspapers have for a good while

been much more than simply ‘‘news’’ printed on ‘‘paper’’. The newsroom at The

Washington Post, for example, which may be considered among the most traditional of

mainstream journalism businesses, has been radically overhauled ‘‘to think about one

primary goal: bringing as many visitors as possible to Washingtonpost.com’’ (Peters, J.,

2012). To that end, the paper’s print and online operations were conjoined early in 2009,

reducing staff from ‘‘more than a thousand’’ to ‘‘less than 640 people’’. Significantly, a new

managing editor:

brought large flat screen monitors into the newsroom that projected in real time what

the most popular stories were online. He installed a new internal publishing system that

required reporters to identify Google-friendly key words and flag them before their

stories could be edited. There are 35 different daily reports that track traffic to different

parts of the website. Editors receive a midday performance alert, telling them whether

the site is on track to meet its traffic goals for that day. If it appears that they might miss

their goal, editors will order up fresher content. (Peters, J., 2012)

Failure to meet traffic targets is one significant consideration which editors use in

deciding ‘‘whether to kill or expand a blog’’. But the quality as well as the quantity of traffic

is important to Post content. If site visitors’ computers have a government suffix .gov or

.senate*editors know they are reaching their target readership. As a senior manager argued, ‘‘That’s our influential audience. If a blog is not doing that great but has a higher

percentage of those, we don’t worry about it’’ (Peters, J., 2012). This approach to

newsgathering and reporting has proved successful within its own terms; the Post now

averages 19.6 million unique visitors each month, second only to the New York Times. The

Washington Post remains a newspaper, of course, but one which employs digital

technology to enhance its ability to deliver news to readers and readers to advertisers

in ways which maximise profitability (Peters, J., 2012).

Finally, some observers advise against the Eurocentrism encoded in the ‘‘Crisis of

journalism’’ frame and highlight the cases of China and India where the training and

recruitment of journalists to staff the expansive media industries is developing at an

unprecedented rate. The World Association of Newspapers’ annual survey for 2010 reports

mixed fortunes for newspapers with a growth in the number of paid daily titles from

13,223 in 2006 to a record 14,853 in 2010, with circulations of 519 million copies and

aggregate newspaper advertising revenues of US$94 billion, placing them in second place

to television ($180 billion) and still ahead of (growing) Internet revenues at $62 billion

(World Association of Newspapers, 2011).

This very mixed and layered picture supports and reconnects with the argument of

Bettina Peters (a plenary speaker at the 2009 Future of Journalism Conference) who

suggested, drawing on her experience with the Global Forum for Media Development,

that there is no single model, no magic formula, no ‘‘one size fits all solutions’’ which will

remedy problems in the great variety of settings and circumstances in which journalism is

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conducted. The subtitle to her plenary address, ‘‘Are we exporting a model that no longer

works at home?’’, articulates her concerns about the prudence of replicating uncritically

media development policies formulated in the global north for transitional societies in the

South (Peters, B., 2011, pp. 38�41).

A New Journalism; Telling Stories Differently

A distinctive narrative about journalism, which has given rise to a good deal of

punditry and soothsaying, is more positive in its appraisal of the future of journalism. On

this account, recent developments offer the potential for a new journalism which employs

new media technologies creatively to explore distinctive ways of writing and presenting

news, whether working in converged newsrooms or wholly outside of conventional

newsrooms, funded with innovative (public and private sector) sources of revenue, and all

this informed by continuously shifting understandings of what constitutes journalism, the

nature of the audience’s engagement in news reporting, the professional roles of

journalists and even who is a journalist. Rusbridger, for example, claims ‘‘no one owns the

digital space and it is barely regulated’’ and

it brings with it an entirely new idea of what journalism is . . . Guess what? The readers

love to be involved. They too, like being critics, commentators and photographers. They

love helping to defeat injunctions and being asked to share their particular knowledge or

pool their expertise. You harbour a feeling that some of the stuff they create is poor? I

agree . . . But a failure to experiment is more dangerous than trying new things . . . This

open and collaborative future for journalism . . . is already looking different from the

journalism that went before. The more we can involve others, the more they will be

engaged participants in the future, rather than observers, or worse, former readers. That’s

not theory, that’s working now. (Rusbridger, 2010)

In similar fashion, van Dalen’s recent analysis of algorithms which can ‘‘automatically

generate news stories on the basis of statistical information and a set of stock phrases,

without interference from human journalists’’ certainly illustrates the extent to which

scholars and journalists may need to reconsider the question, Who (or maybe even, what)

is a journalist? (van Dalen, 2012).

Time to cue James Curran, the second plenary speaker from 2009, who offered a

timely reminder that soothsaying can be a dangerous business with risky outcomes. ‘‘The

passage of time’’, Curran recalled, has an unfortunate habit of ‘‘throwing custard pies at

those who predict the future’’ and that this ‘‘is particularly true in the hype-ridden world of

the media’’, where many ‘‘forecasts proved to be hopelessly wrong’’ (2011, p. 23). There

are no historical patterns or rigid progressions here which can serve as a model.

Newspapers were not replaced by radio or the latter by television*instead all three have flourished in the competitive company of the others. Many pundits, like their predecessors

continue to get it wrong; and routinely. They articulate with the same mistaken certainty

which Gitelman and Pingree identify as the ‘‘reductive futurological trope of super-

cession’’, the idea that each successive new medium ‘‘vanquishes or subsumes its

predecessors’’ and consequently the belief emerges that ‘‘in the digital age the book

[along with the newspaper] is doomed’’. We need to contest the notion that ‘‘to study

‘new media’ is to study today’s new media. All media were once new media’’ (2003, p. 3).

Previous research studies, moreover, some of which first reported their findings at

earlier Future of Journalism conferences, are beginning to reveal that the promise of a

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more participatory, interactive journalism, which challenges existing journalism practice

and reshapes traditional relationships between news producers, sources and audiences,

may enjoy less progress and meet more resistance than initially anticipated. The newly

won editorial access of those ‘‘previously known as the audience’’ may turn out to be more

apparent than real*the ‘‘utopias of online journalism’’ (Steensen, 2011, p. 311)*with professional journalists and editors remaining squarely in control, gatekeeping content

rigorously to sustain journalistic integrity and reputation, to guarantee commitments to

accuracy, impartiality and credibility, to maintain readers’ trust, but also to fend off

potential litigation, especially libel (Domingo et al., 2009; Hermida and Thurman, 2008;

Kenyon and Marjoribanks, 2008; Neuberger and Nuernbergk, 2010; Quandt, 2008; Vujnovic

et al., 2010).

The most problematic concern continues to be the development of business models

and financial strategies appropriate to the digital age as new media and online journalism

obstinately refuse to generate sufficient revenues to fund an adequate journalism. In

December 2011, for example, the UK Guardian claimed ‘‘more readers than ever before’’

with 60 million unique browsers on the website in a month and a ‘‘record average of 3.28

million unique browsers every day’’, for its online edition while more than 4 million

Facebook users installed the Guardian app in two months (Guardian, 3 December 2011,

p. 3). Despite this editorial and marketing success, the latest Guardian Media Group Annual

Report and Accounts reveal a pre-tax loss of £171.0 million compared with £96.7 million in

2009 (Guardian Media Group 2010). This mismatch between editorial and business success

signals that the key problem for journalism continues to be captured by the rather

‘‘clunky’’ phrase about how to ‘‘monetise content’’.

Hungry for cash, the media industries have welcomed the arrival of every new

device for receiving and transmitting news with an unbridled enthusiasm worthy of Kermit

the frog! As Picard (2009) observed:

It’s hard to find a new technology that news organisations don’t embrace. Read the Los

Angeles Times on kindle. Watch the ABC News on YouTube. Leave a comment on a blog

about media and marketing from the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to a podcast of ‘‘On

Science’’ from National Public Radio. Participate in a discussion board hosted by the

Washington Post about college admissions. Receive SMS news about the Dallas Cowboys

from The Dallas Morning News. Get features from Time on a PDA and tweets of breaking

news from CNN.

But in the rush to offer an indiscriminate welcome to the latest developments in

media technology, Picard argues, news organisations fail to pose the killer question: ‘‘How

will the use of a given technology generate money?’’ (Picard, 2009).

Chyi and Chadha address a similar question by examining the ownership and use of

portable electronic devices, including computers, netbooks, iPhones, iPod Touch,

e-readers and tablet iPads, to receive news. The question they interrogate is significant,

if not crucial: ‘‘While multi-platform delivery is widely prevalent, is multi-platform news

‘consumption’ a reality?’’ (Chyi and Chadha, 2012). The data deriving from a Web-based

survey of more than 750 US Internet users, aged 18 years and above, deliver compelling

evidence about the current usage and revenue potential for these devices. While 75 per

cent of laptop/desktop computer owners used their computer to receive news at least

once a week and 46 per cent used them to access news daily, the equivalent figures for

smartphones were 19.6 and 6.3 per cent; less than 10 per cent of owners of netbooks,

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iPod Touch, e-readers and iPads used them to access news once a week and less than 5

per cent did so daily (Chyi and Chadha, 2012). The study concludes that

media companies must continue to invest in their core products on traditional

platforms . . . while new technologies do seem promising and may possibly hold some

effective solutions for the struggling news industry, traditional or legacy media will

continue to play an important role in providing news to the interested consumer. (Chyi

and Chadha, 2012, p. 443)

In the United Kingdom, the findings of a cognate study of 66 local newspapers’

efforts to supplement declining sales and advertising revenues with monies from mobile

telephony confirmed Picard’s concerns about the earning potential of ‘‘a given

technology’’ (Nel and Westlund, 2012). A large-circulation regional newspaper the

Wolverhampton Express and Star, for example, made extensive content available through

a mobile-optimised website and by 2011 had started adding smartphones and tablet apps

which were available free of charge, but carried limited advertising and no e-commerce

options (Nel and Westlund, 2012). Many of the other newspapers in the audit suffered

similar experiences, prompting the authors to the cautionary conclusion that, while

newspaper publishers are presumably aiming to provide users with complementary

ways of accessing the news, there are risks that their new mobile services displace

those they offer in print and on the Web while earning even less revenue (Nel and

Westlund, 2012).

The erection of pay walls to protect against unpaid access to online materials offers

a seemingly delightfully simple and increasingly adopted mechanism to ‘‘monetise

content’’; a related alternative is for readers to buy the appropriate app for their tablets.

Murdoch has led the way with The Times in the United Kingdom; the New York Times

promptly followed his lead. There are many reasons to doubt the efficacy of such a

business strategy, not least the fact that online subscribers generate only one-quarter of

the revenues which the buyer of the print version of the paper produces (Evans, 2010;

Franklin, 2011a, pp. 5�9, McChesney and Nichols, 2010, pp. 70�3). But it is clearly significant for the business culture of the news industry that major corporations are

rejecting the notion of ‘‘giving the news away’’, along with the suggestion that readers will

not pay for the news which is freely available and readily accessible elsewhere.

Similarly, the suggestion that good journalism costs money increasingly sits at the

centre of new business strategies, irrespective of whether the revenue stream required to

fund such journalism derives from the profits of private/corporate media industries, a

licence fee to deliver public service news, crowdfunding (Aitamurto, 2011), levies on the

profits of communication corporations (Institute for Public Policy Research, 2009), public

subsidies (Downie and Schudson, 2010) or voucher schemes which allow citizens to

choose the news organisations which will enjoy funding (McChesney and Nichols, 2010).

The increasingly loudly mooted suggestion is that whatever the cost of quality

journalism, it is a price worth paying. One consequence of ‘‘free news’’ may be a

diminishing band of trained, experienced and professional journalists*rebranded as ‘‘content providers’’*rewriting news releases (or even ‘‘repurposing’’ the work of other journalists; Phillips, 2011) to fill news outlets on all platforms with a different kind of news

product. The production of ‘‘free news’’ may require reconfiguring many of journalists’

routine professional practices around news gathering and reporting, leaving traditional

and democratically significant areas of journalistic coverage*including courts, councils,

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local decision making, parliaments, executives and administrations*unreported and worryingly unaccountable (Davies, 2008; Fico et al., forthcoming; Franklin, 2011b).

Who Guards the Guardians? Causes and Consequences of the ‘‘Hackgate’’ Scandal

Lord Leveson, the Chair of the Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the

Press (http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/), established to investigate the events which

became known as ‘‘Hackgate’’, claimed that the purpose of the inquiry could be distilled

into ‘‘one simple question’’: ‘‘Who guards the guardians?’’ (Daily Mirror, 15 November

2011). The barely concealed assumptions in his question highlight two specific foci for the

inquiry. First, the latter part of his brief question confirms that a long-established role for

the press has been that of a fourth estate, a mechanism of accountability, a watchdog

protecting the public interest against powerful and predatory interests of economic and

political elites; which might include an overweening government. Second, the early part of

his question places regulation at the heart of the inquiry’s concerns: Who should regulate

the press? Should the existing system of ‘‘self-regulation’’ be replaced by a regulatory

regime enforced by statutory powers? (Gopsill, 2011).

The Future of Journalism Conference convened a Roundtable to provide delegates

with an opportunity to discuss the significant and far-reaching implications of the

‘‘hacking scandal’’ for journalism. Panel members reflected both academic and practitioner

perspectives and reported early assessments of the implications of these events for

journalism in those countries where the Murdoch press was significant (the United

Kingdom, the United States and Australia). They included: Chris Bryant (CB), the MP for

Rhondda and Shadow Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform who had been

highly critical of News International in debates in the House of Commons; Ivor Gaber (IG),

Professor of Political Communication at City University and the University of Bedfordshire

and a journalist/editor at the BBC, Channel 4, ITN and Sky News; Robert W. McChesney

(RM), Gutgsell endowed Research Professor at the University of Illinois and host of the

weekly radio show Media Matters; Bettina Peters (BP), Director of the Global Forum for

Media Development and previously Deputy General Secretary of the International

Federation of Journalists; and Lynette Sheridan Burns (LSB), Professor and Head of the

School of Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney and previously a

journalist with 25 years of professional experience, including working at Murdoch

newspapers.

Causes

Panellists agreed that ‘‘Hackgate’’ was a unique and significant milestone in the

future of journalism although it was too early to identify specific outcomes of the events

with any certainty or the likely conclusions of the various inquiries established to explore

them. But there was a clear consensus about the root causes of Hackgate which were

broad structural factors relating to (1) the highly concentrated ownership of news media in

the United Kingdom and globally and (2) an insufficiently rigorous regulation of media

content but more significantly of media ownership.

McChesney was unequivocal about the fundamental incompatibility of democracy

with patterns of consolidated media ownership. ‘‘In a free society’’, he argued,

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You just can’t let one company have this much power. Monopoly is the enemy of a free

press . . . This is a cardinal principle. This guy’s [Murdoch] power in this country is just way

out of proportion. Even if he was the greatest guy on earth, even if I. F. Stone came back

and inherited his fortune and he ran it, I’d say this is too much power for I. F. Stone. There

is no human, no single firm, no single entity should have this sort of power. That’s just a

core democratic value and principle. (RM)

The second causal problem was the system of press self-regulation in the United

Kingdom. Peters criticised the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for its role in the

unfolding events. ‘‘The PCC used to be talked about as the model for self-regulation for

the world’’, she argued, although she never supported that view,

because the PCC includes only the publishers and the editors; it used to have journalists

but they left many years ago. And now, we have seen how badly the PCC functioned in

this sorry saga. They never picked it up; they rebuked the Guardian for following up on

the story . . . and I think Rusbridger [the Guardian Editor] was absolutely right to leave the

PCC over this. Clearly the PCC has no teeth and no way of dealing with this. So now it will

hopefully no longer exist in this shape or form, there is an opportunity to look at self-

regulation in this country. (BP)

Chris Bryant MP added a third element to this causal mix: the role of celebrity in

British tabloid culture. He argued that Hackgate reflected the intense competition of the

tabloid market and offered his own experience as illustration. The News of the World, he

claimed, was

succumbing to the celebrity culture that has dominated the British tabloid and, for that

matter, half of the British television news for the last 10 years . . . But they were also trying

to get a slice of the action in every other story which every other newspaper was running

and that’s why phone hacking became endemic. It’s not especially that they were trying

to get a story by listening to a phone; it was often that they were trying to . . . confirm a

story, or to establish where somebody was . . . So for instance, in my case, the material

they had . . . followed a story . . . run by the Mail on Sunday, that’s when they started

hacking into my phone messages and they ended up with lots of telephone numbers of

other people who they would have no idea that I knew*other than by listening to my phone messages. And they got in touch with them and offered them thousands of

pounds to tell them their stories about me. And that’s the kind of Preying mantis side of

the News of the World that was going on.

Consequences

The panel was equally unanimous in identifying the potentially troublesome

consequences of this combination of an ‘‘insufficiently regulated’’ but ‘‘over-concentrated

media industry’’ structure. First, it generated an extremely hierarchical but ‘‘obedient’’

culture within the newsroom which also pervaded the entire media organisation; at News

International, Murdoch became an unchallengeable figure. Second, the system delivered

cost-effective, very profitable, celebrity-based stories for news organisations which

enjoyed a global reach. Finally, but most significantly, this media structure shaped a

relationship between media and political power which allowed the former to exercise

political advantage in the pursuit of corporate profit at the expense of democratic decision

making; each consequence is considered in turn.

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First, this allying of ‘‘weak regulation’’ with ‘‘consolidated media ownership’’,

nurtured ‘‘an exceedingly macho, highly charged newsroom environment’’ (LSB); a

newsroom mood confirmed by Chippindale and Horrie’s raucous account of the antics

in the Sun newsroom in their splendid Stick It Up Your Punter! The uncut story of the ‘‘Sun’’

newspaper (1999). Sheridan Burns, who worked for Murdoch in the mid-1980s, recalled:

The editors in Australia were swaggering Murdoch men . . . with volatile temperaments

and a taste for colourful language. Reading Bruce Guthrie’s Man Bites Murdoch last year it

seems that nothing has changed. I never met the man but I did watch several terrifying

editors tremble when Murdoch was in Sydney. The newsroom was always permeated by

the spectre of Murdoch, the man who was always watching, who read every single one of

his papers every day and had something to say about them all. So I really thought about

that as I watched that former force of nature deny to the British Parliamentary inquiry

that he ever directly interfered in his newspapers. (LSB)

A further consequence of this managerial dominance was ‘‘the lack of independence

of Australian journalists working for the News’’ especially when ‘‘reporting the [Hackgate]

scandal’’ (LSB). She argues that the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism in

Sydney,

found that the coverage of the scandal was slight on facts and strong on comment and

most vehemently in the pages of the Australian [a Murdoch title]. [The Centre] noted a

number of themes in the paper’s coverage: blaming the audience*noting the News of the World’s circulation; blaming the crowded English newspaper market for creating

unreasonable competition; blaming the culture*that all the newspapers do it anyway. And of course blaming those who complained for being elitist, which is a familiar refrain

from Rupert. (LSB)

Second, the hacking scandal illustrated how confidential materials accessed in one

national context could be circulated around the media organisation to inform editorial in a

different, geographically remote, setting. In multinational media organisations, which

focus reporting on celebrities with a ‘‘global recognition’’, such materials may provide

strong tabloid stories for a multitude of outlets around the world; sourcing materials in

this way is very cost-effective. As Sheridan Burns noted:

In Australia the first and most vehement reaction to the phone-hacking scandal was that

it doesn’t and it wouldn’t happen here. The Australian CEO, John Hartigan, said that News

would participate in an external audit by two senior judges of all expenses payments for

the last three years. This may show that Australian papers have not paid private

investigators to phone hack but Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and other Murdoch papers

certainly picked up salacious stories that were acquired by illegal means and ran them.

(LSB)

Finally, but significantly, the corporate structure of news organisations, in tandem

with a weak regulation regime, skewed the relationship between media and politicians in

favour of the former, allowing them undue influence in policy and decision making; and

with undemocratic outcomes. This final consequence was itself judged to play out in one

of three ways.

First, media owners and politicians (including the government) could become too

cosy, triggering policy advantages for media players. Gaber observed that Murdoch ‘‘uses

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his media clout to advance his corporate interests’’ which may entail winning political

support. Indeed, ‘‘one of the most staggering facts’’, for Gaber, ‘‘is that since the last

election, Rupert Murdoch or one of his senior colleagues has met with David Cameron or

one of his senior colleagues once every two weeks. It’s just a staggering thought, in terms

of what those conversations were about’’. McChesney offered a cognate argument that,

media policy making has to be taken out of the shadows . . . and the sort of corruption

that is now attached to it everywhere in the world, where . . . media magnates bribe

politicians. They own them basically, they have this cosy relationship and it is

antithetical . . . to a free press, a fourth estate and the relationship with political power

that you must have in a free society . . . It cannot be permissible for the Murdochs of the

world to basically buy their way to a policy they want; whatever that takes. (RM)

There is a second, more negative way, that media power may allow policy influence;

Bryant offers a case study.

Tessa Jowell, who was the Minister in charge of broadcasting policy and newspaper

policy and every element of policy that was important to Rupert Murdoch’s empire, had

her phone systematically hacked into, answerphone messages listened to, as I under-

stand it phone conversations listened to, for months and months and months. And I

think that was a deliberate campaign of harassment and intimidation to make sure that

the Labour government delivered the media policy that he [Murdoch] wanted. I think

that is corruption short and plain. (CB)

Peters offers another example of trying to shape policy outcomes by deploying what

might be termed ‘‘editorial menace’’ which threatens electoral or reputational con-

sequences. She argued the need for a pan-European approach to regulation given the

multinational character of media conglomerates. ‘‘We need something at the European

level’’, she suggested,

which the European Parliament has been calling for since 1982 . . . At the beginning of

the 1990s, the European Commission actually had a bit of courage for about a day and a

half and proposed legislation concerning concentration of [media] ownership. But The

Times, ran an editorial, ‘‘The European Union: the greatest attack on press freedom in the

20th century’’; clearly up there with Hitler and Stalin. This law has been sitting in a drawer

ever since. Unless there is a real coalition built across Europe, I don’t see it coming out of

the drawer. (BP)

Finally, media power may be exercised through partisan reporting which supports or

attacks a politician; if supportive, the editorial favours win political favours in a seemingly

endless circle of reciprocity. The alleged Faustian pact between Blair and Murdoch which

served their mutual policy advantage provides one example here. But typically, the

editorial partisanship assumes the form of critique. On 30 May 2012, for example, Business

Secretary Vince Cable told Leveson that News Corporation made ‘‘veiled threats’’ that the

Liberal Democrats would be ‘‘done over’’ if he opposed the takeover bid for BSkyB

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/30/leveson-inquiry-cable-clarke-live). Sheridan

Burns offered an example from the Australian press. ‘‘Murdoch papers are routinely

decried for political bias’’, she claimed. ‘‘Just last week, Hartigan [CEO at News] was again

defending News against allegations of sustained bias against our current Labour

government’’ (LSB).

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Leveson and the Future of Journalism

At the time of the Roundtable it was clearly too early to predict the consequences

of Hackgate and Leveson for the future of journalism, but panellists were agreed about

the significant potential for initiating media reform. Bettina Peters suggested that

‘‘because Hackgate outraged people it does provide the opportunity for things to

change’’ (BP). Gaber was more sanguine. ‘‘It is an important time’’, he acknowledged, but

cautioned

it could be business as usual in a year or two’s time, even with a Sunday Sun [a much

mooted substitute for the highly profitable News of the World]. I don’t have a great deal

of faith in the Leveson Inquiry, but I think we have an opportunity*in this country at least*to get some more rigorous regulation . . . and I just hope we don’t let that moment pass. (IG)

Considerably more optimism was expressed about the prospects for correcting one

of the two key causes of Hackgate, namely the inadequate system of press self-regulation

which was too reliant on press interests. Peters claimed Leveson offers,

a unique opportunity to come up with a self-regulatory structure with some teeth; and

some broader base. Something that’s not just the editors and the publishers but that

involves the journalists, that involves civil society representation. You find models in

many parts of the world. You could look at issues of co-regulation, i.e. a self-regulatory

body that has statutory powers, like they have in Denmark and Sweden . . . And

finally . . . look at the mandate. Make it broader than just receiving complaints. Make it

more active in the promotion of pluralism and press freedom in the country. Make it

publish a State of the Media report that includes issues of press freedom and editorial

independence, like the Indian Press Council . . . This would create a system of press

regulation that would support that side of the British press that is strong, that is

committed to ethical values and hopefully push to one side those elements of the British

press that aren’t. (BP)

Panellists were markedly less optimistic about reforming the second cause of

Hackgate: the highly concentrated ownership of the media industries. McChesney believes

the fundamental problem here is that ‘‘the Murdoch’s of the world buy their way to a

policy they want’’. He confesses he is ‘‘not sure how that [problem] would be resolved in

this country’’ but suggests*with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek*that if Hackgate could accomplish that, ‘‘they should get up a statue to Rupert Murdoch for contributing to

the freedom of the press in the UK’’. Regrettably, Murdoch seems an unlikely champion of

press freedom.1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to the two distinguished plenary speakers who fired up the Future of

Journalism 2011 Conference with their thoughtful, provocative and scholarly presenta-

tions. Emily Bell (‘‘The (Many) Future(s) of Journalism’’) is Professor of Professional

Practice and Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism

School. Robert W. McChesney (‘‘Farewell to Journalism? Time for a rethinking’’) is the

Gutgsell endowed Research Professor in the Department of Communication at the

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University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA. Their contribution to the academic success

of the Conference would be dicult to overestimate. Annie Rhys Jones is the undoubted

powerhouse behind the organisation of the Future of Journalism; she worked incredibly

hard and with great enthusiasm to make it happen once again in 2011. I owe her a huge

debt of gratitude. Thanks also to Shelley Allen and Meredith Drew at Routledge,

colleagues at JOMEC including James Clemas, Justin Lewis, Deb Lloyd, and Jon Adams

and his technical colleagues*as well as Melissa Beattie, Lucy Bennett, Joe Cable, Susana Dias, Patrick Fitzgerald and Janet Harris, who have given their support, time and labour

to help make everything work! But finally, thanks to the many presenters, speakers and

session chairs for their contributions*in fact, to everyone who came along to contribute by sharing evidence and arguments; and for making it so abundantly clear that peer-

based learning is highly productive but also terrific fun.

NOTE

1. At the time of going to press, there have been very significant developments since the

‘‘Hackgate’’ Roundtable was convened. On 4 January 2012, Elizabeth Filkin’s (the former

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards) inquiry into relationships between the police

and the press concluded that they were ‘‘too cosy’’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/

2012/jan/04/filkin-report-police); on 12 February 2012, six senior journalist at the Sun

were arrested on suspicion of bribing police and public officials (http://www.ft.com/cms/

s/0/077d060e-54c1-11e1-a372-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1pecq6Q6y); on 9 March 2012,

the Press Complaints Commission was closed and entered a ‘‘transitional phase’’*its Chair Lord Hunt began drafting a proposal for a new self-regulating body for the press

(www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article � NzcyNA); on 14 March 2012, Rebekah Brooks, ex-Chief Executive of News International was arrested for a second

time (http://www.france24.com/en/20120313-news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-rupert-

murdoch-rebekah-brooks); on 3 April 2012, James Murdoch resigned as Chair of the

BSkyB Board*he had resigned as Chair of News International of 29 February; on 23 and 24 April, James Murdoch’s evidence to Leveson revealed an ‘‘inappropriate’’ email

correspondence between the Department of Culture, Media and Sport concerning News

Corporation’s bid for BSkyB which triggered the resignation of Adam Smith, special

adviser to Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/

leveson-inquiry/9225854/Jeremy-Hunts-special-adviser-quits-saying-his-behaviour-went-

too-far.html); in his evidence to Leveson on 25 and 26 April, Rupert Murdoch apologised

for the phone hacking by the News of the World saying he had been ‘‘misinformed and

shielded’’ and that the affair was a ‘‘serious blot on my reputation’’ (Guardian, 23 April

2012, p. 1); on 1 May 2012, a report of the House of Commons Culture Committee

concluded that Rupert Murdoch exhibited ‘‘wilful blindness’’ to events at News

Corporation and was ‘‘not a fit person to exercise stewardship of a major international

corporation’’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17898029); on 15 May 2012, Rebe-

kah Brooks was charged on three counts of conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice by

concealing ‘‘materials, documents and computers’’ from police detectives; on 30 May

2012, Andy Coulson was charged with perjury*at the time of the alleged offence the ex- Editor of the News of the World was Prime Minister David Cameron’s Press Officer (http://

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18262740).

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The Future of Journalism 2011: Presenters and Papers

AITAMURTO, Tanja and LEWIS, Seth, Open Innovation in the News Industry: A study of

open APIs, the Knight News Challenge, and Spot.Us

ARCHETTI, Cristina, Which Future for Foreign Correspondence? London foreign

correspondents in the age of global media

BAKKER, Piet, New Journalism 3.0 Aggregation, Content Farms and Huffinization: The rise

of low-pay and no-pay journalism

BAKKER, Piet, Not Dead Yet; the changing significance of newspapers worldwide

BARDOEL, Johannes, A Plea for Journalistic Distinction

BARNHURST, Kevin, The Form of Online News in the Mainstream U.S. Press, 2001�2010 BELL, Emily, The (Many) Future(s) of Journalism

BERNARDI, Floriana, Roberto Saviano: Journalism, civic engagement, ethics, democracy

BODKER, Henrik, The Changing Significance of Columnists

BREVINI, Benadetta, Does Online News Personalization Threaten Democracy? The

reinvention of PSB online in Britain and Denmark and its democratic challenge

BROERSMA, Marcel and GRAHAM, Todd, Social Media as Beat: Tweets as a news source

during the 2010 British and Dutch elections

BRÜGGEMANN, Michael, HUMPRECHT, Edda and ESSER, Frank, The Stability of the

German Media Market and its Future Crisis

BRUNS, Axel and BURGESS, Jean, New Methodologies for Researching News Discussion

on Twitter

CANTER, Lily R., The Journalist, the Community Reporter and the Public: A model for

collaboration in UK local newspapers

CARVAJAL, Miguel, GARCIA-AVILES, Jose and GONZALEZ, Jose, Crowdfunding and

Non-profit Media: Business models for journalism in the public interest

CASERO, Andreu and IZQUIERDO, Jessica, Journalism Business Models in the Digital

Age: Evidence of the Spanish case

CHIROVAMAVI, Munorwei, Verbal Warfare: An analysis of opinion columns in three

Zimbabwean newspapers in the context of the national healing and integration

agenda

DE COCK, Roszane and BLAAGAARD, Bolette, The Quest for a Job: Obstacles and

opportunities for young professionals in a changing journalistic world

DE KEYSER, Jeroen and RAEYMAECKERS, Karin, The Printed Rise of the Common Man:

How Web 2.0 has changed the representation of ordinary people in newspapers

DE MAEYER, Juliette, Journalism and Hyperlinks: Where do they connect?

DICK, Murray H., The Re-birth of the ‘‘Beat’’: A hyperlocal newsgathering model

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DICKINSON, Roger, The Use of Social Media in the Work of Local Newspaper Journalists

DIEKERHOF, Els and BAKKER, Piet, To Check or Not to Check: Fact-checking strategies of

Dutch journalists

EDSTROM, Maria and LADENDORF, Martina, Freelance Journalists as Flexible Workforce

in the Media Industries

EDSTROM, Maria and SVENSSON, Eva-Maria, To Commercialise Freedom of Speech:

Swedish media between democracy and market

EIDE, Martin, The Structuring of Accountability Journalism

GABER, Ivor, The Transformation of Campaign Reporting: The 2010 UK General Election,

evolution or revolution?

GADE, Peter, BOETTCHER, Mike, KRUG, Christopher, SCHMELTZER, John, JONES,

Julie, STEYN, Elanie, WIEDEMANN, Buddy and FOOTE, Joe, Afghan101: A case

study of innovative journalism

GODLER, Yigal and REICH, Zvi, Explaining Journalistic Epistemologies: Preliminary

findings and a theoretical framework

GOYETTE-CÔTÉ, Marc-Olivier, CARBASSE, Renaud and GEORGE, Eric, Converging

Journalism: Producing and publishing news for multi-platform conglomerates in

Canada

GUTSCHE, Robert Jr and MALEWITZ, James, Facing the Future of Online, Nonprofit

News: The challenges and prospects for emerging non-profit journalism in the U.S.

HARRINGTON, Stephen M., If It’s Sick, How Can We Tell? Four criteria for evaluating the

health of journalism

HEINRICH, Ansgard, Foreign Reporting in the Sphere of Network Journalism

HERMIDA, Alfred, Tweets and Truth: Journalism as a discipline of collaborative verification

HERMIDA, Alfred, FLETCHER, Fred, KORRELL, Darryl and LOGAN, Donna, Your Friend

as Editor: The shift to the personalised social news stream

HOBBS, Andrew, Lessons from History: Why readers preferred the local paper in the

second half of the nineteenth century

HUMMEL, Roman, KIRCHHOFF, Susanne and PRANDNER, Dimitri, We Used to be

Queens and Now We Are Slaves: Working conditions and professional expectations

in the media

JOHNASSON, Bengt and WESTERGREN MÖRTBERG, Erik, Local or Not? The impact of

political system factors on media election coverage

KARLSSON, Michael and CLERWALL, Christer, Negotiating Professional News Judgment

and Audience Metrics

KNIGHT, Megan Anne, The Use of Social Media and Web 2.0 Technologies as

Newsgathering Tools in Contemporary UK Journalism

KRUMSVIK, Arne, Why Old Media Will Be Funding Journalism in the Future

LAHAV, Hagar and REICH, Zvi, ‘‘Living Ugly or Dying Beautifully’’: A case study of the

interpretation and rejection of an innovation in journalism

LARRONDO, Ainara, LARRAÑAGA, José, KOLDOBIKA, Meso and AGIRREAZKUENAGA,

Irati, The Convergence Process in Public Audiovisual Groups: The case of Basque

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LEWIS, Seth, The Open-source Ethos of Journalism Innovation: Between participation and

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MCQUEEN, David, JACKSON, Dan and MOLONEY, Kevin, The PRisation of News and

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MEIJER, Irene Costera, Public Listening: New challenges for journalism

MESSNER, Marcus and BAJKIEWICZ, Tim, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter as Journalistic

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MÜKKE, Lutz, Journalists of Darkness

NEL, Francois, Control Shift and Returns: Tactics and tools local newspapers use to

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NEL, Francois and WESTLUND, Oscar, Making the Mobile News Call: Newspapers in

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NGUYEN, An, Effects of Soft News Consumption on Public Attachment to the News: Is

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NIBLOCK, Sarah and LASHMAR, Paul, Who wants to be a Journalist? Socio-economic

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NIELSEN, Rasmus Kleis, The Absence of Americanisation Media Systems Development in

Six Developed Democracies, 2000�2009 NYGREN, Gunnar and DEGTEREVA, Elena, Russian and Swedish Journalists: Professional

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OTTOSEN, Rune, WikiLeaks: Ethical minefield or a democratic revolution in journalism

PETERS, Bettina, How Journalists and Self-regulatory Structures Deal with Ethics and Press

Freedom in a Changing Technological Environment: Indonesia and Malaysia

PETERS, Chris, Journalism to Go: The changing spaces of news consumption

PHILLIPS, Angela, Speed, Quality and Sociability: The changing practice of live news

reporting

PLEIJTER, Alexander, BOON, Lex and HERMANS, Liesbeth, Blogging Journalists and

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ROSAS, Omar, News You Can Trust: A look into French-speaking Belgian audiences’

heuristics for building trust in online news media

RUPAR, Verica, Journalism with a Byline: What does it say about the future?

SALOVAARA-MORING, Inka and JUZEFOVICS, Janis, Who Pays for Good Journalism?

News journalism, ownership and democracy in CEE countries

SALTZIS, Kostas, Breaking News Online: A study on the patterns of news story updates in

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SCHÄFER, Christian, Reasons and Ways of Inventing New Journalistic Formats in Six

German Newspapers: Results of qualitative interviews with executive editors

SJØVAAG, Helle, Shifting Business Models and Journalism’s Professional Ideology

STEENSEN, Steen, ‘‘We’re Just Trying to Have a Nice Time’’: How software like Cover-

it-Live potentially transforms the professional ideology of journalism

STEPINSKA, Agnieszka and OSSOWSKI, Szymon, Three Generations of Polish Journal-

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STEYN, Elanie and JENSON WHITE, Kathryn, An International Census of Management,

Leadership and Entrepreneurship Courses in Journalism and Mass Communication

Programs at Institutions of Higher Learning

STROMBACK, Jesper, KARLSSON, Michael and HOPMANN, David Nicolas, Dissonant

Evaluations of Norms and Practices: Comparing what journalists think should be and

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THORSEN, Einar, SREEDHARAN, Chindu and ALLAN, Stuart, Journalism, Transparency

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THURMAN, Neil, PASCAL, Jean-Christophe and BRADSHAW, Paul, Can Big Media Do

‘‘Big Society’’?

THURMAN, Neil and SCHIFFERES, Steve, The Future of Personalisation at News Websites:

Lessons from a longitudinal study

TOKTAS, Selma, Journalist in the Turkish Post-1980 Mediascape: Craftman or professional?

VAN DALEN, Arjen, The Algorithms Behind the Headlines: How machine-written news

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VAN KERKHOVEN, Marco and BAKKER, Piet, News in a No-paper City

VAN LEUVEN, Sarah and RAEYMAECKERS, Karin, Impoverishment or Expansion of the

Public Sphere? The impact of marketing and digitization on sourcing practices and

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VERGEER, Maurice, PLEIJTER, Alexander and HERMANS, Liesbeth, Journalists Multi-

skilling in the Digital Age: Changes in professional activities

VERWEIJ, Peter, Twitter-Networks Between Journalists and Members of Parliament

WAHL-JORGENSEN, Karin, CUSHION, Stephen and GARCIA BLANCO, Iñaki, Back to the

Future: Scholarly predictions about the future of journalism

WEINHOLD, Wendy, The Interview Exercise: Teaching journalism as critical thinking

WIIK, Jenny and ANDERSSON, Ulrika, Journalism Meets Management: Changing

leadership in Swedish news organisations

WILLIAMS, Andrew, Strong PR and Weak Science Journalism? UK newspaper coverage of

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