OpinionIn a world made more hostile by the pandemic, can media stay viable and safe?
- As online traffic soars during the pandemic, revenues continue to plummet. The pandemic has exacerbated challenges familiar to media owners, editors and journalists everywhere, not least the critical need to find a sustainable economic model
Viability, diversity, stability and safety are essential ingredients of any healthy information ecosystem. How many media worldwide can say yes to all four?
As we mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, media across the globe are fighting threats both existential and immediate. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges familiar to media owners, editors and journalists everywhere. The dilemma for an industry shrinking by the day and fast running out of money is that the biggest, most unavoidable cost is the journalism that defines it.
Covid-19 has forced questions around the economic model and financing for the media front and centre, into the view of everyone with even just a passing interest in how news is produced. Many of the difficult questions facing the industry are underpinned by an inability to predict an economic model that will guarantee a future for quality, professional journalism. Digital ad revenue failed a long time ago to make up anywhere near the shortfall from traditional advertising sources. (The irony, during this global pandemic, is that the media have generally seen online traffic soar, yet revenues continue to plummet.)
Experiments with paywalls, subscription models, and shifts away from traditional news products have produced notable localised successes but are no one-size-fits-all panacea.
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Hong Kong journalists protest against police’s new definition of ‘media representative’
In developing markets, across countries where press freedom is threatened, or where huge disadvantages in skills and resources were already acute, the coronavirus-catalysed survival fight comes at a moment when many media organisations are already on their knees.