Often to help with the number of people that see a news article, news organisations will post these stories to social media sites. However, over recent months these sites have been reducing the number of people seeing these articles. What impact does this have on journalists and the journalism industry? Aaron Stokes spoke to Professor Charlie Beckett to find out.
Before entering the world of academics, Professor Beckett spent nearly 25 years as a journalist. He began his career in the traditional method of working at local papers. After this, he moved into broadcast journalism reporting on current affairs and news.
Since entering the academic world, Professor Beckett has been working at the London School of Economics where he runs the Polis Think Tank.
Research conducted by the News Media Association, highlighted editors are sharing “grave concerns” about what impact tech platforms can have on the journalism industry.
90 percent of the editors who took part in the survey said they believe Google and Meta “pose an existential threat to journalism”.
The changes that these sites are introducing can feel personal for the editors Professor Beckett explained.
Alongside search engines as well as social media sites, AI is also posing a risk to the industry. This is due to its ability to produce misinformation that can then be posted to social media sites. An example of this is the use of ‘deep fakes’.
‘Deep Fakes’ are created when technology can put anyone in the world, it does not just have to be celebrities, into a situation that they were not in. This can cause issues not only for the public that are using social media, but journalists as well when they are gathering story ideas.
As a result of this, Professor Beckett wants to remind journalists and student journalists when sourcing stories that in the back of their minds, they should consider that there is the chance something could be artificially created.
Another of the noticeable changes noticed by the industry has been social media sites reducing the reach of news articles on their sites.
The Press Gazette reported that Reach PLC’s page views have fallen by a third since Google and Facebook made changes to their sites.
Professor Beckett said: “Tech companies are less interested in having news or journalism from news organisations on their sites.
“So, they have changed their algorithms [to reflect this]”.
One of the repercussions of the reduced reach can be that journalists do not meet their page view targets.
Professor Beckett wants to remind journalists that just because one of their pieces may not be reaching the targets that have been set, they have not necessarily written a bad story.
Sometimes small changes such as adjusting the headline, changing the image used or even getting a new or different quote can help an article.
“Just because something’s not getting great numbers, doesn’t mean that it’s not useful or important.”
However, page clicks are not the only area where the decline in reach is affected. It can affect the amount of money that news organisations earn, as a result, they have to look for new ways to generate income. One of the ways that organisations are trying to combat this is by introducing subscriptions.
Professor Beckett recognises that subscriptions can work for news organisaitons, but they do have their own set of challenges. One of these challenges is retaining subscribers.
He said: “[People] get bored.
“They have other things that they want to spend their money on. “
Alongside this, there is the issue of the number of people who would be prepared to pay for their news. This has been a challenge for the news industry since the introduction of subscriptions and paywalls were experimented with in 2010. In addition, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis adds a challenge to try and get readers to subscribe to publications.
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