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.
Yup. It's strange that an industry of this size and stature will sort of "stand by" and watch itself go under. We all know that pay walls won't create a viable revenue stream (see Newsday), and yet, that really seems to be the only strategy big ink is willing to try. It will take a radical shift in thinking, product and distribution to even begin to stem the tide - something most newspaper executives would never even consider. Sad, really.