Andrea Carson

Behind the newspaper paywall – lessons in charging for online content: a comparative analysis of why Australian newspapers are stuck in the purgatorial space between digital and print

This article examines one response to the financial ‘crisis’ of print newspapers addressing the rise of digital paywall systems to monetise journalism. It analyses selected daily mastheads’ paywalls in the United States, Britain and Australia, comparing the type, pricing and audience uptake. This article reviews scholarly and industry literature to identify international newspaper paywall trends and considers these in the Australian context. The article finds paywalls are becoming the norm, with metered paywalls favoured over hard paywalls; paywall prices are increasing, after initial reductions, to offset digital subscriptions cannibalising print subscription revenues. As audiences and advertising migrate from print to our screens, a broader view is required. The argument here is that, in the short term, revenues generated from Australian digital subscriptions and digital advertising alone cannot sustain newsrooms, but the cost of print together with falling hardcopy circulations suggest digital paywalls must not be overlooked. In the immediate, Australia’s major newspapers are stuck in a purgatorial space between paywalls and print.

Understanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective

The importance of journalism to civil society is constantly proclaimed, but empirical evidence on journalisms impact, and how this operates, is surprisingly thin. Indeed, there is confusion even about what is meant by the term “impact”. Meanwhile, the issue of the role of journalism is becoming increasingly urgent as a consequence of the rapid changes engulfing the news media, brought about by technological change and the flow-on effect to the traditional advertising-supported business model. Assessing the impact of journalism has recently been the topic of debate among practitioners and scholars particularly in the United States, where philanthropists have responded to the perceived crisis in investigative journalism by funding not-for-profit newsrooms, with resulting new pressures being placed on journalists and editors to quantify their impact on society. These recent attempts have so far failed to achieve clarity or a satisfactory conclusion, which is not surprising given the complex web of causation within which journalism operates. In this paper, the authors propose a stratified definition of journalistic impact and function. They propose a methodology for studying impact drawing on realistic evaluation—a theory-based approach developed primarily to assess large social programmes occurring in open systems. The authors argue this could allow a conceptual and methodological advance on the question of media impacts, leading to research capable of usefully informing responses at a time of worrying change.

POLITWEETS: social media as a platform for political engagement between Victorian politicians and citizens

ABSTRACT Political parties and candidates’ adoption of social media technologies engender both optimism and concern about voter engagement in Australia. On one hand, scholars have expressed hope for a more democratic politics freed from traditional media’s gatekeeping role; on the other, researchers find political communication through social media generally fails to transcend politics 1.0. Following international studies, Australian scholarship focused on candidates’ use of Twitter and Facebook for political campaigning has identified a largely unfulfilled potential for a more participatory public sphere. This article contributes original research to this question of online political engagement by examining Victorian state politicians’ social media use during both non-election and election periods. We undertook quantitative content analysis and social networks analysis of politicians’ Facebook and Twitter use in 2014. We find state politicians like their federal and other state counterparts are rapidly adopting digital technologies, particularly Facebook, for political communication. Yet, despite the significant increased social media use by Victorian politicians for public communication purposes, we find that similar to other recent Australian studies the extent of political engagement between politicians and voters on these social media sites remains low. We identify two related factors that impede political engagement in the digital sphere, they are citizens’ negative comments and politicians’ long-standing desire to control the political message.

Public opinion and policy responsiveness: the case of same-sex marriage in Australia

ABSTRACT This article examines congruence between public opinion and politicians’ positions on same-sex marriage in the Australian House of Representatives from 2012 to 2016. In contrast median voter theorem and other office-motivated frameworks, Australian federal politicians have largely ignored majority opinion, which has been supportive of same-sex marriage for a decade. Using a unique dataset (n = 601,550) of voter preferences collected during the 2013 federal election, and collated Hansard and media data, we compare public opinion on same-sex marriage with politicians’ public positions. We find a status quo bias, suggesting the influence of special interest groups in this policy area. Yet, we also find parliamentarians are responsive to public opinion once it reaches a critical level, and that very low opposition to same-sex marriage in an electorate predicts policy support from its MP, which varies by party and over time.

A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

This article draws on ‘hyperlocal’ journalism scholarship to explore the civic functions of Australian local reporting in the digital age. Through place-based case studies based on interviews with media and civic leaders from three disparate communities, we find community groups are engaging with social media, particularly Facebook, to connect locals to services and community news. Community service providers are increasingly adept at using social media and, in many cases, prefer it to legacy media to gather, disseminate and exchange news. Concurrently, legacy media have lost newsroom resources that limit their practice of ‘shoe leather’ journalism and increase their dependence on official sources without independent verification. Yet, journalists are adapting to newsroom cutbacks by forming symbiotic relationships with non-media news providers, including local police. We find there are promising alternatives for fostering civic discourse and engagement through digital technologies despite less traditional local news and a reduced capacity for verified journalism.

What is a Journalist?: The view from employers as revealed by their job vacancy advertisements

The period 2009–2010 was characterised as an industry-transforming period of economic and professional “crisis” for news journalism, involving significant journalism job losses in most developed nations. However, at the same time that media employers were laying off journalists in unprecedented numbers, they were still hiring a small amount of new recruits to work as journalists. These job advertisements therefore provide a rich source of information about how employers defined “journalism” during a period of transformation. Focusing on jobs advertised by Australian media companies, this article shows that journalism was not a high priority as they sought to restructure. Employers advertised four times as many jobs for advertising, sales and marketing staff as they did for journalists. When they did seek to hire journalists, employers retained conservative views about the nature of journalism as a trade rather than a profession. They were focused upon centralised, low-pay positions where candidates’ malleability, experience and personal attributes were more important than formal qualifications. Employers’ advertisements also suggested they were ill-equipped to cope with the digital transition and viewed it as something that was occurring outside the domain of many journalism jobs.

Understanding Collaborative Investigative Journalism in a “Post-Truth” Age

The political economy for watchdog reporting is deeply challenging, yet exposing abuses of public trust had renewed focus in 2016. “Spotlight”—a Boston Globe investigation into Catholic Church sex abuse—inspired an Oscar-winning film. Two months later, 300 International Consortium for Investigative Journalism members broke the global story of tax evasion with the Panama Papers. These represent exemplar moments for watchdog journalism in a “post-truth” age characterised by fake news. They illustrate a shift in investigative reporting practice: from an “old model” of a highly competitive single newsroom environment—like the “Spotlight” team—to a “new model” of multiple newsrooms (and countries) sharing information to expose wrongdoing on a global scale, like the Panama Papers. This paper applies mixed methods to analyse the development and consequences of this new model of collaborative investigative journalism. It examines 30 years of national media awards in Britain, the United States and Australia to identify when award-winning newsroom collaborations began, their key story targets and outcomes. These findings are triangulated with interviews with investigative journalists. The findings theoretically and empirically add to emerging scholarship examining how digital media technologies—held responsible for the “journalism crisis”—paradoxically offer opportunities for evidence-based journalism.

Introduction: international approaches to online political participation and connective action

This symposium highlights how scholars are engaging with cutting edge research questions on the transformative effects of online political participation and new forms of online collective action. F...

Book Review: News WritingMcKaneAnna, News Writing, 2nd edn, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2014, ISBN 9 7814 4625 6305, 182 pp., £23.99. Distributor: Footprint Books.

Media International Australia and meaningful (Gilad Lotan). Finally, the book looks inside newsrooms at the ethical challenges and policies that balance evolving funding models and editorial priorities (Adam Hochberg), the intellectual habits of reporters (Ann Friedman) and the methods journalists use to correct their mistakes (Craig Silverman). Part 3 features an enlarged principle of minimising harm, as journalism moves towards a principle of engaging community and an ethic of diversity (Eric Deggans). The authors resist the idea of manipulation through fear and sensationalism (Kelly McBride and danah boyd). The values of truth and transparency are interpreted in relation to a specific community and the common good (Steven Waldman and Mόnica Guzmán). At the end of every chapter there are reflective case studies and accompanying analytical questions to discuss and present a contemporary application. These help to explore the value of journalism and the complex relationship between the journalist and the public. This book identifies and champions the guiding principles that inspire and influence journalism. It offers reasoned reflections in truth and transparency for individuals, communities and organisations. The book is an enterprise of and for the postmodern world, for it provides critical insights well articulated by the contributors. It presents dilemmas in context, and suggests ways to confront them in a very practical way. It also underlines the moral domains of the individual, as well as of the community, in the pursuit of truth and transparency. It is clearly the product of an intense academic engagement of scholars within a fruitful area of debate. This book is timely and accessible, readable and reflective, suitable especially for journalists and those in the field of moral philosophy. – D’ Souza Romero, Studium Theologicum Salesianum (STS), Salesian Pontifical University, Jerusalem Campus McKane, Anna, News Writing, 2nd edn, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2014, ISBN 9 7814 4625 6305, 182 pp., £23.99. Distributor: Footprint Books.