During my studies, we were often told about how the journalism industry has been completely upended over the last two decades, due to the rise of social media platforms that have taken up a lot of advertising revenue from news websites, making new platforms much less profitable than it had been before. For obvious reasons those were perhaps not the kind of words you would hope to hear about the field you have chosen to pursue your studies in. However, the dramatic shift that has taken place in the industry has undoubtedly contributed to the concerning state of modern media.
It wouldn’t be controversial to say traditional media has been on a downward trend for many decades at this point, the modern media landscape has changed dramatically because of the internet.
The advantage of the rise of digital media is that the internet has made it so that many more people can have a voice to express themselves and their opinions about any matter they choose. Virtually anyone can start a blog, like I did with this one, and publish whatever content they wish. Similarly, anyone can create a YouTube or TikTok account and begin publishing content for any audiences. The media landscape has become easily accessible to anybody interested in making content.
However, what that has done is make the media landscape saturated with lots and lots of content, much of which are not high quality. The fact that anyone now has the ability to create content online has brought about its own problems. Misinformation and conspiracy theories have managed to become widely disseminated.
Moreover the finances of most media organisations have been severely strained by this online reality. The amount of money media outlets can make from advertising has been severely diminished. Likewise, the popularity of social media sites has meant that news websites receive way less traffic now because people can just receive all the information they need on Facebook or Twitter/X.
This has been the source of fury among numerous media practitioners, that social media sites can benefit from the journalism they publish without media outlets being remunerated in return for their coverage. That’s why we have seen such intense standoffs between social media sites like Facebook and governments seeking to force the social media platform to pay for new content shared on their platform. However, social media sites have fiercely fought back against any attempts at requiring them to pay for news content shared on their platforms. In extreme circumstances we have even seen Facebook ban the sharing of news content in countries where this kind of regulation is pushed.
This becomes a problem because newspapers need to pay their journalists for the work they are doing. There are many who complain about the current state of modern journalism, saying that it is not as high quality as if had been in the past. However, the reality is that when the pay is not good, then the quality of journalism you get won’t be good either.
As a result of this competition for clicks to gain advertising revenue, news websites have increasingly been more interested in receiving as much traffic as possible to their sites. As a result, rather that publishing quality content, they are increasingly willing to just publish clickbait articles to gain any kind of traction.
However, what this does in the long run is that it has affected the credibility of many media outlets and the reputation of the industry as a whole. So many professionals who would otherwise be excellent journalists have become disillusioned with the industry. Because why would they be interested in churning out shallow clickbait stories over and over again? What kind of fulfilment is one supposed to get from that?
Then on the flip side, the media outlets that do produce high-quality content are often paywalled, which I don’t think is the right solution either. It means that only people with enough disposable income to spend on numerous media outlets will be able to afford to pay their subscription fees. Moreover, it also means that so much good content that is produced is never seen by large swaths of the population. How can we say that the media is fulfilling its purpose of holding the government accountable; when all the content produced is behind a paywall and not accessible to everyone?
But the fact remains that if you want to have high quality journalism, you have to pay skilled journalists an acceptable wage. And paywalls have proven to be the most lucrative source of revenue for media companies, because money made form ad revenue has proven to not enough for many media companies.
We have reached a stage where when visiting a news website, it is either free but inundated with advertising or it’s inaccessible because it’s behind a paywall. This has only served to make the user experience for anyone seeking to consume news media content a burden.
I decided to study media studies because I wanted to be a part of this industry. Therefore, watching the current dire state of the industry is something that I find incredibly concerning.
The news thankfully isn’t all bad. Various forms of new media that otherwise would not have existed have managed to make a significant contribution towards the media space, exemplified by the likes of YouTube video essay channels and podcasters who have managed to gain prominence.
Likewise, the fact that I can even have this blog and publish my podcast, Africa PolitiCast, is evidence that the media landscape has become so democratised. I have the editorial freedom to write and publish whatever kind of content I am interested in and passionate about, which might not be the case working for a company.
We are at an inflexion point within the media industry. How the industry will look like in the future is uncertain at this stage. However, the news industry will always be an important part of holding the people in positions of power accountable and upholding democratic institutions. If this concerning trend continues, it wouldn’t just be bad for the media industry but for society as a whole.