Let’s get the one that stings out of the way first. The new Reuters Digital News Report 2024 is out and it highlights once more the growth of platforms and reliance on creators, and a tenuous point of balance media has reached in terms of being trusted and avoided.
In Romania though, the worrisome trend of both continues. Trust in media has dropped to a low 27% (Romanian ranking 44 out of 47 countries in the study). The average is 40%, and Finland is at 69%.
The percentage of people saying they avoid the often or sometimes avoid the news is closing in at 50%, and if you add the occasional avoiders, it’ll take us up 73%.
Why do people avoid the news?
Five simple reasons, culled from the report by the GPT put together by Chris Moran from The Guardian:
Repetitiveness and Boredom: News media is often repetitive and boring, leading to disengagement.
Negativity and Anxiety: Negative news induces anxiety and powerlessness, making it overwhelming.
News Overload: Many feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of news available.
Disillusionment with Politics: Growing disillusionment with politics decreases interest in the news.
User Needs: Publishers focus too much on news updates, not enough on diverse perspectives and solutions.
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You can look at the Romanian context in multiple ways: it’s proof that mainstream brands are just sucking whatever air is left in the interest and advertising bubbles, and I’m talking mostly television, which remains an important source of information. But their journalism is, with some exceptions, mediocre, not to be trusted, and avoided.
It’s also proof that alternative/niche media have not put out offers that are attractive enough. Some – especially large news sites, like HotNews, G4, Libertatea – look dated, have bad UX, which translates into apparent little regard for the audience (as opposed to their advertising clients). If you’re just browsing, you’d find that getting information is mostly an exercise in avoiding banners, pop-ups and sponsored content.
But this is still a lively moment in alternative media, with many new newsrooms and verticals launching over the past year. The downside is they’re not doing anything new or making different strategic promises. They are new brands, with good intentions, but does the audience really need another, and another, and another investigative outlet with a reader donation model? Looking at the numbers, looking at user needs and populations that aren’t served, looking at what people consume, I’d say the answer is no.
The industry is trying things. But it’s mostly trying the same things.
The upside is that there is so much space to try something else.
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I have a tad more not so good news to share from Romania.
Together with a group of journalists, most of whom are just beginning their careers, we talked a lot about money. Mostly how little we make and have made in this profession. Last year I edited a story about media salaries in Romania, and, after a recent conversation, we drafted a survey to create a public database of freelance rates.
We just put out a first public version with around 30 entries, edited and written up by my former colleague, Cătălina Albeanu. We covered 11 newsrooms, and “the vast majority represent paid collaborations of 800 lei net income or less, and 13 of them were paid 500 lei or less.” That’s 160 euros or 100 euros sometimes for an investigation, or a reported piece.
Some colleagues tried to argue about special circumstances for some of these payments – just as they did when the salaries discussion came up. Yes, sometimes something happens, and the pay is low, and everyone is fine with that. I have paid people not enough at times, as well. But even setting aside the special cases – the pattern is clear. Freelance pay is too low. Salaries are too low.
And yes, the industry – especially the independent sector – is poor.
But we can’t keep using this excuse 15 years after the current era of independent publishing has started. We got to do better.
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Low trust, high avoidance and bad pay all come in a larger regional context.
Romania is not an authoritarian state (yet), but many politicians are attracted by the Hungarian – and more recently Slovakian – model. And those models lead to even tougher times, as Beata Balogová has shown in a speech she delivered recently at the European Press Prize ceremony in Prague.
Beata is the editor in chief of SME, one of Slovakia’s leading dailies, and I’m lucky to have her as a colleague in the EPP’s Preparatory Committee. She is one of the most thoughtful and attentive readers I have met, and a leader I admire, as her resilience in the face of the hate and abuse she and colleagues receive is astounding.
Here is a fragment from her keynote at the EPP ceremony, which you can read in full here. (The italics are messages of hate received by the journalists.)
After the murder of my colleague Ján Kuciak and his fiancé Martina, I believed that politicians understood that verbal attacks against journalists can morph into a bullet that pierces our bodies.
Six years later, there is more verbal aggression accumulated in public space than before the murder. I am talking about Slovakia, but hate has become a form of warfare against journalists in many other nations.
“I hope that people like you will be shot, hanged or at least expelled from Slovakia, you Jewish-Bolshevik prostitute. There will be celebrations that day, but you will not see them, because you will be dead. We should rather set you on fire, because you are not worthy of a bullet.”
Some politicians thought that hate is like a trained fight dog that they can release into societies and point fingers at any enemy they chose. But they are wrong. Once released, hate can no longer be controlled.
One of the most protected men in Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico, was recently shot five times. He fortunately survived the assassination. Editors of all major newspapers and sites condemned the act.
But politicians in power immediately launched attacks on the media. They said journalists should apologize to Fico for critical stories suggesting that his government was corrupt, that his party nominees abused power, and for questions about his luxury apartment and how he paid for it. They demanded apologies for investigations based on verified sources and facts.
In his first public speech after the tragedy, Fico suggested that journalists were part of the evil force that influenced the assassin to commit the horrendous act.
It seems that not only in Slovakia, but in many other countries, we need to go back to basics and explain to the public how exposing power abuse, conflicts of interest, nepotism, fraud, or corruption differs from spreading hate.
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The job at hand is difficult, and I believe Beata is onto something.
I’d push it a step further. We need to keep doing the traditional work we do, but we also need to be better at explaining to the public why we do it, and maybe, even more importantly, bring them along for the ride. We need to represent even more of their interests, or doing even more journalism that is informed directly by their needs, and that reflects their lives. (That’s what I argued for last week).
We need extra definitions other than “inform” and “hold power to account” to add to the list that is generated by “what is journalism for?”. Here are a few that I got from recent conversations with journalism innovators and community stewards:
Help people connect with each other, understand each other, and navigate their shared lives;
Sense make and connect;
Distribute responsibility for care;
Create and nurture relationships;
Belonging;
Confidence building;
Capacity building and solidarity for people to act to change their lives;
Systems change;
Conversation and action around a common need;
Bringing people together to negotiate what's important, and build together;
Instilling hope, agency, dignity.
Yes, there is hope.
That was some of the feedback we received after the three Central & Eastern Europe Media Conversations I co-hosted this week with colleagues from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Austria. We talked about new funding models, about how to better integrate technology and innovation into our routines, and about how to build newsrooms that people want to work for. (One amazing Zoom event to go – this Wednesday, on mental health and wellbeing in newsrooms!)
More than 50 people showed up on Zoom for each and there was palpable energy about trying different things:
The Hungarian Magyar Hang launched a book publishing arm in 2022 that generates more than 100.000 euros in revenue. Books!
Recorder in Romania getting more than 25.000 people to donate 3,5% of their income tax – double the amount from 2023. (For transparency: I am doing consulting for Recorder);
My former colleague from DoR, Jo, who started a newsletter about meal planning that now has over 26.000 subscribers and generates more than 40.000 euros in revenue. You can read this interview to find out more about how she does it. And now she has an English language edition, too. Sign up!
There is also hope when it comes to building better newsrooms – ideally ones that pay better and fairer, too. And this will happen once we drop our resistance to structure and process, and create clear mission and value statements, onboarding experiences, and a sense of what’ll happen to your career after you take on a new job. All these were laid out by Federica Cherubini and Isabelle Roughol, two of my favorite journalism provocateurs.
And Laura Krantz McNeill, a 2023 graduate of CUNY’s News Innovation and Leadership program put the icing on the cake by talking about the skills newsroom leaders of the future need to have:
We need people with a service mindset, who understand how to run a business, but a business with a mission that’s more important than ever. We need leaders who embrace new revenue models, run toward chaos, and are excited to build new structures from the ground up. We need leaders who are generous, who nurture the careers of their employees, and who are serious about creating diverse and inclusive workplaces. And we need leaders promoted for their skills and their thoughtfulness, not their loud voice, charisma, or pedigree.
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If you’re reading this when it arrives on Sunday morning, know that I’m on a plane to New York, for my last week in my CUNY program, which will finish with a virtual public presentation of all our capstone projects (five minutes each). It’s open for anyone – see you there?
My project is tentatively titled Why Does Our Newsroom Exist? and it takes some of the problems laid out above as challenges to be solved by a media organization that listens better, works fairer, and delivers on that definition I shared above, to help people connect with each other, understand each other, and navigate their shared lives.
Next Sunday I’ll do a mid-year review, and in the July letters I will share an updated version of my capstone project in full, in a few installments.