It’s time for british journalism to embrace the digital age | thearticle

It’s often said that there is a crisis in serious journalism. Changes caused by digital media, so the story goes, are responsible. If it were true, then liberal democracy would suffer. It

goes without saying that a healthy free press is vital if public and private institutions are to be held to account. But I think the story is nonsense. In fact, I believe that we’re on the

cusp of a renaissance in quality journalism. What makes me so optimistic? Well, for a start, the market is ripe for it –  it’s just that no publisher has yet got to grips with the digital

world. Old newspaper brands talk about innovation, but essentially, their websites are just newspapers in digital form. They may look swish, and are often impressively technically

sophisticated, but the commercial and editorial strategies that power them have been lifted straight from the 1950s. And, sadly, they’re just not cutting the mustard. Print sales are

declining year on year, and subscriptions to paywalled websites aren’t popular enough to make up the shortfall. But there’s another option. Instead of swimming against the digital tide,

publishers should – as other industries have done with great success – learn to surf it. Just take the high street. At the start of the century, companies selling on the high street relied

on physical shops, manufacturing systems, sales staff and procurement departments to get their products out. Then, thanks to the internet, Google and Amazon emerged. These global

conglomerates were able to provide selling infrastructure to hundreds of thousands of retailing companies all at once, leaving retailers free to concentrate on manufacturing quality

products. Those medium sized companies with fancy shop fronts and sub-standard products lost out, but small businesses producing quality goods were suddenly able to access a global market

which, only a decade or so before, would have been reserved for the big players. This same simple structure is true for most transnational digital organisations. Hardly any of them make

‘stuff’, they just put a service in front of someone who wants to buy it. As we all know, Uber owns no cars and Air B&B no hotels. No similar digital market place has grown up for

journalists. Editorial is still largely created by large national publishers who have an ideological axe to grind.  If you want to be a journalist, you normally must get a job at an old

newspaper brand. Once in the job, you have to sign up to writing for a particular audience, and align your opinions to a certain ideological viewpoint which the readership expect from the

print product. Twitter and Facebook provide huge new audiences for journalists.  The problem is that the writers still depend on newspaper owners to write a salary cheque at the end of each

month because Zuckerberg’s company has never paid a journalist anything, despite selling advertising around every article. What journalism needs is its own market place.  A publishing

platform free of regional or ideological constraints, but gripping enough to draw thousands of readers in so brands will pay to advertise. Now, don’t get me wrong, we must learn from the

deficiencies of the new economy, and there are many.  Getting these new transnational platforms to take responsibility for anything is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.  Nearly all fall

short when it comes to taxation, employment rights and being accountable for the content which is ‘posted’ (never published?!) on their platforms. What traditional publishers do well is

protect their journalists from intimidation when taking on the powerful. Old paper and magazine brands are also accountable for writing anything which is unjust or libellous.  This is

largely thanks to the power and responsibility of the editor. Modern journalism, if it is to be taken seriously, must translate ‘the editor’ onto ‘the platform’. And this is what TheArticle

will do. TheArticle will be a space for readers to gain a plurality of voice and intellectual stimulation. We’re working on ways to create a membership community and interacting with other

users (more of this in the spring). We will never corrupt our readers data and we will always pay tax where revenue is raised. We will work on behalf of journalists, learning from what is

bad about the ‘new economy’.  We will never exploit journalists. We will always pay 60% of money gained from an article directly into the journalist’s pocket. TheArticle will be a place of

idea exchange within the bounds of the Western, liberal and democratic tradition.  We’ll take legal responsibility for everything we publish and give all sides of the argument. Bullying,

racism, sexism and general nastiness will be cut out through active and intelligent editorship, led by Daniel Johnson. In doing all this, we believe we will create the conditions for a

renaissance in journalism.