The news business is in a bad way, judging by the latest revenue figures from the Newspaper Association of America. These woes are reflected in the pessimistic outlook of 353 executives at news
organizations surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, in association with the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Association.
The most ominous finding of the new Pew/ASNE/RTDNA survey: Less than half of the executives surveyed believe their organizations will still be operating in 2020 if current trends continue
unabated. More immediately, just under one-third of the executives surveyed said they believed their operations could go out of business in the next five years.
While various factors are
contributing to the decline of news organizations, this outlook primarily reflects concern about steep declines in advertising revenue, resulting in advertisers shifting spending from print and
broadcast to the Internet.
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At the same time, news executives are dubious about new initiatives, like charging for online content through pay walls and micropayments. In fact, just 10% said they
are currently working on developing such a system, although another 32% are considering it. Overall, believe 15% think pay walls will be a significant source of revenue three years from now.
Executives are even skeptical about the idea of government subsidies, with 75% saying they had "serious reservations" about any form of government support, and 50% saying they would have concerns
about government tax credits. Some 78% said they would object to financing from special-interest groups.
Without some new source of revenue, however, their future prospects are bleak.
Interestingly, broadcast news executives were noticeably more pessimistic about the future of their news operations than newspaper executives. Pew found that about 64% of broadcast executives believe
journalism is headed in the wrong direction, versus 49% among newspaper colleagues.