Come next month, I will have been a gainfully employed daily newspaper journalist for 28 years. This more than amply qualifies me for the title 'veteran'. The word implies age, wisdom and a lack of flexibility but, in an era of new media and change, I feel I am anything but. All people working in physical print, television and radio - regardless of their experience - are struggling to look for the way forward.
The lifeblood of any news media company is advertising revenue. For 'old media' firms, this is being chipped away by the internet and mobile devices with screens. News, analysis and features are often available for free in a more convenient form, leading to falling circulation, and fewer viewers and listeners. Newsrooms have become places of uncertainty, out-of-the-box thinking and adaptability.
I have decided that I would make a terrible journalism teacher. The industry is not one I recommend for someone seeking job security. This is a business that, until it finds a way to resolve the financial issues, will be unsettled. The person who eventually comes up with a fool-proof revenue model will be my next bedroom pin-up.
Whoever is behind Hong Kong-based Next Media's news animations is not likely to find their image in so-esteemed a place. Nor is whoever thought up the bright idea of using actors to introduce the evening news on network television in the US. Mixing entertainment with news is a bad idea. News, no matter how light it may be, has to be presented seriously, not trivialised.
At the heart of the problem, the research says, is the under-30s. They embrace those screen gizmos with gusto. Hard-copy newspapers and magazines are not their thing: it's online or nothing for them. They watch television by downloading the parts they want to see; what they listen to is streamed. Want to get them to read? Hand them a comic.
Next's Apple Daily in Hong Kong and Taiwan have taken the research to heart with their animations. Every day, about 10 90-or-so-minute videos are produced for each paper's website by the Taiwan-based animation unit. Using basic, stylised characters, they turn news events into moving images. For the sake of telling a good story, unknown or uncertain elements are fictionalised.
