contents

NEWS IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE NEWS!

I CAME across an article the other day, the gist of which made for interesting reading.

Basically, it said that the way we receive our news has changed forever and that traditional mediums have either gone for good or are only hanging on by a thread.

It further argued that social media sites have become the new newsrooms. A car crash, a fire, a lunatic on the streets – either live or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. etc. in seconds.

Anyone with a phone now has the potential to be a breaking news reporter…which for someone with almost 40 years’ service behind the keyboard is somewhat alarming.

The yardstick for all of this – as is so often the case – is America, where CNN is currently setting a record for all the wrong reasons in terms of dwindling audience figures.

The digital news website BuzzFeed took the internet by storm a decade ago, winning a Pulitzer Prize along the way. It shut down in April.

Australia has not been immune from the abandonment of free-to-air TV channels to the likes of on-demand, subscription and streaming services.

Ratings figures show 2022 was an “Annus horribilis” for our mainstream TV channels, with around 20 per cent of free-to-air viewers in primetime last year going elsewhere.

Indeed, Steve Allen from Pearman Media described it as “the biggest audience decline in the history of TV”.

Of course, the public have been changing their reading and viewing habits for generations.

I still remember going to work on the train in the morning and most of those in the carriage would be reading the paper – then the evening paper on the ride home.