How will quality journalism be funded?

ABC-TV’s Media Watch show just ran an interesting report on the recent ‘Future of Journalism’ conference in Sydney.

For journalists, it painted a gloomy picture:  quality journalism will struggle to survive in the future as traditional media declines and advertising revenue dries up. The problem is that, as mainstream traditional media increasingly moves on line, the quality content is being ditched because there is less advertising to offset the cost of reporting.

But, if ‘dumbed down’ tabloid sites are not to be the future of traditional media outlets, how then will quality journalism be funded?

See this interesting report from one of the speakers at the conference, the UK’s Roy Greenslade.

I tend to think that on line news sites will open up to more and more community generated content as the whole nature of information delivery changes. The ABC is a good example of this. Put simply, journalists will then have to compete for a share of the mix, but their expertise will give them a good edge.

 

Ian