El estado de los medios 2008

Los resultados que muestra la nueva versión del The State of The News Media, realizado por el Pew Institute, son notables. Después de 15 años desde la aparición de Netscape y el nacimiento del periodismo digital, lo medios han comenzado a sacar conclusiones con tinte de paradigma. Las pesadillas para los medios tradicionales, pero curiosamente no por la tan anunciada falta de audiencia, sino por la fuga de la publicidad. Pero hay otros datos claves para entender este proceso que aún suena esquizofrénico. A pesar del aumento de las plataformas y la fragmentación de las audiencias, los tópicos no ha evolucionado de igual manera. Peor aún. Son los webiste de noticias los que muestran menos flexibilidad que los diarios o la TV para ampliar su espectro. Los productos periodísticos ya no se pueden pensar como un producto terminado, la dinámica los obliga a pensar en "continuo", un camino sin final aparente. Contar historias y poner una agenda hoy es insuficiente. Esto ha llevado a que los medios busquen información más allá de sus organizaciones. Hoy 11 de los principales diarios estadounidenses entregan contenidos no propios. Un año atrás era sólo uno. Así se explica también que 13% del tráfico total de los 10 principales diarios de EE.UU. proviene de las visitas a los blogs del propio periódico. En realidad, es mejor el informe, indispensable para los que están mirando de cerca los medios, a las audiencias y los contenidos.

Informe Pew Institute

The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago.
And the problems, increasingly, appear to be different than many experts have predicted.
Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of "The Long Tail," the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.

The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old-media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience than they did in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists.

Certainly consumers have different expectations of the press and want a changed product.
But more and more it appears that the biggest problem facing traditional media has less to do with where people get information than how to pay for it — the emerging reality that advertising isn’t migrating online with the consumer. The crisis in journalism, in other words, may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising.

This more nuanced recognition is also putting into clearer relief what news people see as their basic challenge: somehow they must reinvent their profession and their business model at the same time they are cutting back on their reporting and resources. "It’s like changing the oil in
your car while you’re driving down the freeway," said Howard Weaver, the chief news executive of the McClatchy Company.