Trends

The infinite variety of publications on the Internet is poised to cut the ground from under the feet of another classical print medium. The ubiquity of blogs updated in real time to social news sites has caused serious problems for the press. The general urge to communicate of web communities threatens an entire profession. An interview with media scholar Professor Dr. Stephan Weichert about the future of the newspaper and of journalism.

Professor Weichert, have you already read your morning newspaper, or are you one of those who get the news on the Internet?

Naturally, I read the printed version of a newspaper every morning, and not just one. During the day I get much of the news from the Net, and most recently on my iPad. Specialist information also reaches me over Twitter, Facebook and through bloggers.

Just recently the wikis have made an end of reference works. Am I mistaken, or can we already hear the death knell for the next traditional print medium? I’m pretty sure that in fifteen years there won’t be the same density of newspapers in Germany which there is today. We will experience not only a decimation of total circulation, but also bankruptcies of smaller and medium-sized newspaper publishers. A few prestigious papers such as SZ and the FAZ, mass circulation newspapers such as Bild and Kölner Express, and also the taz with its hardy solidarity model will probably survive in printed paper form – though with greatly reduced circulation. But most papers will cease their print editions and establish themselves as “online only” brands.

The disappearance of the newspaper is a logical consequence of the sharp fall in advertising revenues combined with the lack of an online business model, the strong turn to the Internet, especially among young people who have little time for the papers, and the thinning out of newspaper staffs that has resulted in a severe deterioration in the quality of reporting. Not to mention the identity crisis in journalism itself, brought about among other things by the necessity for professional journalists to adopt themselves intellectually and technically to publication conditions on the Net and by the competition of amateur journalists.

Amateur journalists are not a substitute for media professionals

One could consider the end of elite control over the printed word as quite a gain for democracy. What’s the problem with practicing citizens or grass roots journalism?

Journalism is a profession that you can learn and for which there is a training. The practical skills that we train – for example, researching, fact checking, forms of expressions, publishing a newspaper, online publishing, layouting and much more – cost the students a lot of perseverance, hard work and commitment, and prepare them for the job market. And I can assure you – our course of studies is no picnic; it’s not by chance that Wolf Schneider remarked that “quality” has to do with painstaking. Amateur journalists can be an enrichment for journalism, but they can never replace media professionals.

Staff reductions, fee reductions, chopping articles by outside authors, are the recipes with which publishing houses have reacted to the present crisis, accompanied by massive upgrading of their free Internet services. Can you understand these apparently counter-productive strategies and approve them?

Understand, yes; approve, no. I can understand that publishers want to take precautions to be ready for the great dying out of newspapers. This is primarily about psychology and working morale. It’s naturally simpler to make a smooth cut and lay off 300 employees than to have to fire 20 every month. That would trigger a permanent state of fear in which everyone thinks he may be next tomorrow. On the other hand, the loss of quality resulting from the wave of layoffs and the budget cuts is the worst thing that publishers could do to their papers. The last argument for buying a traditional newspaper drops away.

Wage dumping and newspapers

Freelance journalists, who are in any case not lavishly paid, are the main victims of the development. Do the hosts of freelancers have any hope of surviving professionally in the short or long term? At the founding conference of the Freelancers Association, my esteemed colleague Tom Schimmeck made the joke that a freelancer would have to write a text the length of the Bible every month in order to earn a decent livelihood. But when you look at the line fees, the laughter quickly sticks in your throat. The Marburger Neue Zeitung, for example, pays ten cents per line, that is, ten euros for 100 lines, which is the length of the average article. I think this wage dumping is a real disgrace, and I ask myself how journalists with a monthly salary that is hardly more than Hartz IV can ever make ends meet. The risk that many good people will go into PR has therefore increased dramatically.

There are now experiments on fusing classical and web-based content – for example, the weekly newspaper Der Freitag. A model for the newspaper of the future, or rather an act of desperation?

Freitag publisher Jakob Augstein is one of the most visionary and brightest minds in the media. It takes a lot of private money ready to hand, however, to realize his dream of a network journalism that actively integrates the community and its communication channels in the production processes and doesn’t, as with other publishers, patronize them or appease them as an annoying mass. I cross my fingers for him that he succeeds in financing his ideas. Then many other publishers would surely jump on the online print-hybrid train and finally realize that, in the medium term, only the combination of online and print journalism leads out of the current financial straits.