Figures released today show that online advertising revenues in the UK have now overtaken that for newspapers. TV and radio are also suffering. But where’s the money going? For journalists, the frightening prospect is that it is not going to online news media. And it certainly doesn’t seem to be going to independent online journalists. I think this is a problem because
it implies two things. Firstly, that there will be fewer not more journalists as mainstream media goes online. But secondly, it suggests that so far there has not been much sign of fresh new journalism businesses starting up to take advantage of the internet. There have tons of new media businesses in every other field. Many of them are connnected to social networking, which I believe is only one step away from a form of journalism. There are exceptions such as Rick Waghorn, but such as Craig McGinty combine it with more general web enterprise or consultancy. And we’ll be discussing the future of independent online journalism at a seminar as POLIS tonight – email polis@lse.ac.uk if you want more information.
And very interesting the event was too. As someone who is trying to make online journalism work as a business, I too am interested in the future…
There’ a broader point here -beyond journalism and into digital creativity in the broadest sense. About 80% ( rough estimate) of that cash goes into AOL, Google, Yahoo and MSN (not in that order). All of whom make only marginal investment in any digital creative efforts within the UK.
There is in other words an unprecedented disconnect between ad revenue and creative endeavours (one has normally supported the other quite effectively). This isn’t, I believe, a particularly healthy situation as we look at the future of our creative industries – journalism included.