Public Media and Political Independence: Lessons for the Future of Journalism From Around the World

Profiles how fourteen nations fund and protect the autonomy of public media via multiyear funding, public-linked funding structures, charters, laws, and agencies or boards designed to limit political influence and ensure spending in the public interest

Resourcing a viable digital journalism

Much academic enquiry into financing journalism looks to the precarious prospects for sustaining commercial models. In contrast, this chapter explores arguments which suggest that a viable journalism requires alternatives to commercial funding. Mainstream debate across industry and the academy accepts, often as a premise, that journalism can only flourish as a commercially delivered product operating in highly volatile and adverse market conditions (Grueskin, Seaves and Graves 2011). Various radical perspectives respond that the commercial model is broken, is the agency of crisis for news media and cannot serve as the basis for sustaining a diverse public journalism. These differ in how far mainstream, market media are repudiated but common to the critical perspectives explored in this chapter is their contribution to serious debate about the qualities of journalism that need to be sustained and fostered, and about the ways in which this may be achieved

Funding Independent Journalism in the Authoritarian Media Landscapes of Russia and Hungary

This dissertation looks at the challenges and opportunities of independent newsrooms in Russia and Hungary—with a focus on financing. Unlike in the past, when authoritarian governments often relied on outright censorship, physical threats, and imprisonment to silence the independent media, a shift towards softer methods can be observed in the first two decades of the 21st century. The preferred weapon of choice of authoritarian governments is orchestrating media capture. As media markets are increasingly enervated, and old business models of news media are failing worldwide, governments can utilize a set of covert measures, by which they create dependencies that effectively prevent media outlets from living up to their watchdog role. These measures are, among others, ownership changes, market manipulations or the selective distribution of state advertising. There is an extensive body of literature both on the problems of news media business models and the pressures that originate from authoritarian governments. However, there has been limited attention so far on the interconnections of the two phenomena: the literature on media financing predominantly focused on the problems of Western journalism, while most of the works on authoritarian state pressure—especially in my countries of interest, Russia and Hungary—have disregarded the relevance of business models in restricting news media. This work aims to fill this void

Promoting Journalism as Method

The marketplace of ideas has been a centerpiece of free speech jurisprudence for a century. According to the marketplace theory, the vigorous competition of ideas, free from government interference, is the surest path to truth. As our metaphorical marketplace has moved online, the competition has never been so heated. We should be drowning in truth. Yet, in reality, truth has perhaps never been more elusive. As we struggle to promote democratic debate and surface truth in our chaotic networked public sphere, we are understandably drawn to familiar frames and tools. These include the source of the marketplace of ideas theory—the First Amendment—as well the institutional press, once a key gatekeeper of that marketplace. Yet, both the institutional press and the First Amendment have limitations that hamper their ability to spark transformative change. Instead, this Article proposes that we look to journalism. Journalism is not the press or a journalist. Rather, it is a method and a practice—an evolving system for gathering, curating, and conveying information. Among its aims are accuracy and truth, the checking of power, and the creation of spaces for criticism and compromise. Seeding and propagating journalism could have numerous benefits. It could help to provide some of the norms desperately needed for our new information environment. It might inject democratic values into an information ecology that is driven by profit-seeking. It could create friction where speed and scale now reign. Finally, it could help reinvigorate and even repopulate an institutional press in desperate need of reinforcement

Competition and Media Performance: A Cross-National Analysis of Corporate Goals of Media Companies in 12 Countries

Despite digitization and platformization, mass media and established media companies still play a crucial role in the provision of journalistic content in democratic societies. Competition is one key driver of (media) company behavior and is considered to have an impact on the media’s performance. However, theory and empirical research are ambiguous about the relationship. The objective of this article is to empirically analyze the effect of competition on media performance in a cross-national context. We assessed media performance of media companies as the importance of journalistic goals within their stated corporate goal system. We conducted a content analysis of letters to the shareholders in annual reports of more than 50 media companies from 2000 to 2014 to operationalize journalistic goal importance. When employing a fixed effects regression analysis, as well as a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, results suggest that competition has a positive effect on the importance of journalistic goals, while the existence of a strong public service media sector appears to have the effect of “crowding out” commercial media companies

The role of digitally native, nonprofit news media in the future of American journalism: an exploratory study

Unprecedented changes in journalism practices have been occurring since the 21st century ushered in the digital age. News gathering methods, means of information delivery, and consumer habits have altered dramatically because of technological advances, causing a disruption in the traditional business model. Newspapers, historically the key instrument for investigative and public affairs reporting in the United States, have been the media sector facing the biggest decline in revenue and circulation. While the audience is migrating to traditional news outlets online, the advertisers are not. Free services such as eBay and Craig\u27s List have contributed to a nearly 50% drop in revenue for newspapers. Therefore, the once profitable news industry is no longer as attractive to corporate owners with commercial interests. The response has been severe budget and staff cuts. An estimated 30% of traditional journalism jobs have been eliminated. In response to the fiscal crisis, 60 nonprofit news organizations have formed, mostly online, with the mission of performing public service journalism. Hearings on the future of news have been held by a U.S. Senate committee, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission, which is researching whether these digitally native nonprofit news outlets should be eligible for government funding, similar to the public broadcasting system. The purpose of this exploratory study was to gain a better understanding of how these digitally native nonprofit journalists view their role in the future of public service journalism and determine whether government financing is appropriate or even desired by the leaders of these organizations. Findings suggest that the leaders view their role as necessary to democracy because they provide information about public affairs, serve as a watchdog of government officials, and engage the public in a discussion of community issues using digital technology. However, they cannot perform these functions alone. The leaders see partnerships with commercial and public media as key to their success. The respondents also are concerned with diversifying their revenue streams beyond foundation and philanthropic funding. They do not support direct government subsidies, however, because they believe that type of support would present ethical and credibility issues

Social Media and the Press

The Internet and social media are transforming news as we knew it, yet the precise consequences of these changes are not yet clear. Journalists now rely on Twitter, crowdsourcing is available through social media, facts and stories are googled, traditional print newspapers have websites and reporter blogs, open newsrooms invite community participation in the editorial process itself, video from citizen journalists is commonly used in mainstream media storytelling, bloggers consider themselves journalists, and media consolidation marries entities like AOL and the Huffington Post. In turn, changes in the news-access practices of readers are increasingly influencing the length, breadth, and subjects of reporting, whether online or in print. While recognizing the reality of the many positive changes facilitated by social media-including the potential for an Internet-mediated renaissance of public engagement with news-this Article explores some particular challenges posed for the democratic press by the new reality of social media