Amor de Cosmos

Emily Bell, head of digital content at Guardian News and Media and visiting professor at University College Falmouth, gave a lecture on online journalism. She made some points worth remembering.

1. It will go where the audience is. Instead of hoping that people will go to their website to read or watch the news, journalists will need to take their stories out to where the readers and viewers are. Today, that means publishing stories on Twitter, on YouTube, on Facebook, as podcasts on iTunes, and so on. In ten years’ time, those platforms might be different, but the principle will remain - journalists will have to take their stories to where the audience is.

3. Journalists will need to be very reliable and trustworthy. Enabling readers to comment publicly on stories means that journalists can no longer get away with shoddy work - readers can and will set facts straight, add new information and deconstruct ‘spin’. Part of the reason why the BBC’s Robert Peston has become such a phenomenon is that his obvious deep knowledge of the finance industry means his stories and opinions are trusted.

News has never been profitable. Sky News isn’t profitable; it’s subsidised by other Murdoch enterprises. The Guardian isn’t profitable; it’s funded by a trust. BBC News isn’t profitable; it’s funded by the licence fee. It’s very difficult to make a profit from journalism, although some new models are showing small profits, such as VillageSoup, a hyperlocal news community organisation in the US.