Will journalism survive? Journalism leaders forum tackles the question

Despite the economic turmoil surrounding the journalism profession,will good journalism survive?

Last night’s 10th Journalism leaders forum at Uclan asked the question how the media should cope with the rapidly changing environment which is the last few weeks has been made far worse by the decent into global financial meltdown.

Steve Yelvington summed up the position at least from an American perspective when he summarised the economic implications for the structure of the media. For Steve three things had changed.

Most importantly the trend of the past few years for media concerns to conglomerate and consolidate with a consequential rise in borrowings had left companies exposed to the banking crisis.This was allied to the collapse of a component part of the revenue model,that of classified advertising,especially for him that of real estate,cars and employment adverts.

Simon Reynolds from the Lancashire Evening Post giving a UK regional perspective begged to differ. He is convinced that the US model is the same in the UK :“what is happening in the industry is a need to find a new business model to sustain journalism.Like the US there has been losses of revenue but allied to this he has seen increases in revenue from digital streams.

For Steven Grey also with an American perspective,large pieces of newspaper content are now provided online and individuals are now sitting in front of a large free news stand,people are turning to the internet to find local solutions.
Newspapers need to become the provider of information of choice,”the local information utility” as he puts it.

As for the consequences for the journalism profession,The Guardian’s Kevin Anderson stressed the need for flexibility,using the use of his paper’s embracing of twitter as a example. News organisations ,according to Kevin “have not taken advantage of the new technology and still focus on the large scale broadcast model.”
Simon Reynolds believed that the greatest challenges lay in the mental state of journalists, the ability to think across a number of mediums.

Perhaps though it was UCLAN’s owner digital chair professor Jane Singer who gave hope for the assembled students.The important thing was journalism,good journalism will survive