Newsmakers must balance going where the audience is with the financial realities of where they make money. That is just one of a raft of findings from a recent detailed study of the news industry carried out by the respected industry organization, the DPP.
In the second episode of season three of the Making the Media Podcast, host Craig Wilson discusses the challenges facing news with the DPP Chief Executive Officer, Mark Harrison.
The DPP produced three reports in their “Tomorrow’s News” study, which examined many aspects of both the technical and financial aspects of creating news for multiple platforms.
He says that the relentless nature of news production makes implementing effective change extremely difficult, “It never stops and you are measured as the news organization on being on it the whole time and being right, you know, being accurate and effective. To be maintaining that culture of speed and responsiveness and reliability at the same time trying to fundamentally change everything you do from a technological point of view. It is like the ultimate business change challenge. I think we can't underestimate how big an ask this is.”
Mark discusses the role of the Cloud, the drive towards story centric news models, the methodology the DPP deploy when crafting their reports, and they talk in detail about how news, as a business, must pay its way. While for public service broadcasters, this is primarily based on reach, commercial news organizations must be profitable, but balancing that against finding an audience is becoming increasingly complex.
In the podcast, he says, “Your competition isn't other news organizations. Your competition is anything else on a mobile phone. What they call adjacent content, which I think is a great phrase. Actually. Who knows what that adjacent content might be? It might be a game, might be another piece of video. Who knows? They've become very adept at doing this. And working out how to make credible and effective news content, particularly for a younger audience, and on platforms like TikTok, the trouble is, where the audience is isn't where the money is.
Find out more on the next episode of the podcast, available on all major podcast platforms on Monday, October 3rd.
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