The fact that readers are now turning away from newsprint in large numbers has prompted some to forecast newspapers will not survive beyond the middle of this century (Meyer, 2009). For other commentators, the ease and convenience of receiving up-to-the-minute news on electronic devices (and the speed of news audiences’ uptake of mobile devices) seems to be making newspapers obsolete (Langeveld, 2012).
Consequently, the need for printed news in today’s communities is still very much debated. Indeed, the 2008 recession prompted a period of gloomy predictions for the newspaper industry: of newspaper closures and the death of the newspaper as a means of transmitting and receiving news, for example Claire Enders’ prediction about half of regional UK
43 newspapers closing by 2014 (Brook, 2009), Robert Picard’s prediction that falling advertising revenue would spell the end of newspapers (Picard, 2008) and Meyer’s much-quoted 2043 end- date for newspapers (Meyer, 2009). Since then, though the cutbacks described above have stripped many newspapers of staff and resources, publishers’ tactics appear to have staved off a more dramatic round of closures. These have not happened at the predicted rate, prompting Enders to issue a retraction of her earlier prediction (Ponsford, 2010). Though there are still many pessimists who view the end of newspapers as inevitable, the tide of general opinion among commentators has become more optimistic. There are those who have tempered the gloom with views that back the ability of newspapers and hybrid print and web “news organisations” to continue fulfilling a valuable role (Satchwell, 2012), or who see an exciting future for collaborative enterprises involving journalists and citizens, and in new types of digital journalism, data journalism and storytelling that push journalism into new frontiers (Franklin, 2014). Regardless of the continuing survival of local news publishers, however, deeper social problems endure because of the withdrawal and weakening of journalism already highlighted.
In conclusion, regardless of format – with or without physical ink-on-paper newspapers – there remains a need for news that keeps communities, towns, regions and nations informed about the events and issues that affect them, and there remains a need to pay for it. Key to the political economy-influenced narrative behind many of the studies to which I have already referred is the question of funding journalism to service democracy and the public sphere. Newspapers have been the source of much original news and scrutiny, and because of advertising revenues have historically been able to underwrite the costs of journalism as we currently know it. But if the mode of funding them is collapsing, then how can we ensure democracy continues to be serviced by public service, fourth estate local news? So far, the digital advertising model has not proved to be sufficiently profitable to adequately underwrite this kind of journalism, and it is still largely subsidised by print revenues, as I discussed above. Newspapers, too, in cutting back on resources, have shown that they are unable to deliver reliably the kind public service journalism we might expect.
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Some predict a future in which news is provided by citizens themselves. Arguments have been made in favour of online citizen journalism’s ability to provide a substitute for traditional newspapers, as “sources of public affairs news and information” (Fico et al., 2013, p. 152) – and there are those who claim a digital age of publishing freedom will allow many voices to join the public debate and open public bodies to scrutiny. One 2012 study in the US found that while websites run by citizen journalists increased the overall number of local government stories in the traditional print press, perhaps through a process of encouraging competition and rivalry for the best stories and scoops, they are not enough to provide a substitute for
newspapers, concluding: “citizen journalism sites, particularly citizen blog sites, are more information complements than substitutes, and with respect to news and opinion about some communities they may have been neither complements nor substitutes” (Fico et al., 2013, p. 165). Similarly, a recent study of hyperlocal websites in the UK found that they were
“economically precarious” and suffer from “a relative lack of visibility within their communities” (A. Williams & Harte, In press, expected 2016, np). Even though high levels of campaigning and investigative news were found, these sites typically have a low audience reach (A. Williams, Harte, & Turner, 2015b, p. 12). Financial stability, then, is the challenge for news organisations, large and small, if journalism is to survive and to serve the interests of the public and the public sphere.
The next chapter examines the importance of such public interest journalism to
democracy, and analyses theories of media and journalism that might begin to explain why the weakening of the advertising revenue model has far reaching consequences for citizens living in local communities in the UK and for those in other similar economies.
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3
Chapter 3
Newspapers, democracy and the public
sphere: why news is important, and why the
newspaper crisis matters
In this chapter I discuss three important theoretical frameworks, each of which informs this study. First, I discuss the public sphere and relate it to the local news environment. Second I examine theories of the normative roles of journalism within democracy, including a discussion of the two-step flow of communication. Third, I examine more closely how democracy is defined for the purposes of the research.