Last year's cover story in The Economist headlined "Who killed the newspaper?" spurred the World Editors' Forum and Reuters to discover the state of the press across the globe. The result is the first Newsroom Barometer, claiming to be the first international survey focused on newsroom strategies and morale. So, according to 435 of the world's editors-in-chief, deputy editors and senior news executives, nobody has killed the newspaper.
That's the key point to emerge from a mammoth and optimistic six-part report into newsroom trends carried out by the research firm Zogby International . It should be read in full, especially the final analyses by John Zogby and Jeff Jarvis. I have to say that some of the findings appear to suffer from that well-known market research disease: telling the interviewer what you think you should be saying rather than what you really think and actually do. Here are some snapshots.
Far from being discouraged by the evolution of technology, 85% of senior news executives see a rosy future for their newspaper. They accept competition from online sources and free papers, and in turn are making efforts to adapt. And editors now realise that content matters more than marketing. Oh really?
Anyway, with only one passing comment, here are more findings:
* 40% of editors and news executives believe online will be the most common platform for news 10 years into the future, while 35% believe in print's supremacy. A tenth say mobile devices will be the most common platform, while 7% cite e-paper.
* Half the respondents believe that journalistic quality will improve over the next 10 years, but one-quarter think it will worsen.
* 80% view online and new media as a welcome addition. Those with high volume web traffic - more than 200,000 unique visitors a day - are more likely to view new media positively, but the majority of editors at newspapers with modest traffic or no web sites also viewed new media positively. (Did The Independent's Simon Kelner not take part?)
* Three in ten view free newspapers as a threat to the market, while the majority take a more benign view - 34% view them as a welcome addition, and 28% consider them negligible.
* Three-quarters view the trends toward increased interactivity between news organisations and their readers as a positive development for quality journalism, while only 8% take the negative view.
* 54% of editors think shareholders and advertisers pose the principal threat in the future to editorial independence of newspapers, while 19% of respondents - mostly from the developing world - cite political pressure as the main threat.
Overall, it's fascinating stuff, though I wonder if it adds up to much more than pious hope. Note Jarvis's contribution who argues that "one of the biggest threats to the future of newspapers is not the internet, Craigslist, or freesheets but editors themselves - those who have resisted change and missed so many of the opportunities technology provides to expand journalism."
