Introduction

The recent 2019 UK General Election was a divisive and bad-tempered affair held against the background of Brexit stalemate and rows over the impact of austerity on public services. In the end Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party gained a majority of 80 seats as voters backed his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and take the country out of the European Union by 31 January 2020 and voters also seemed to have reservations about Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour Party leader.

The election was called at the end of October 2019 after parliament agreed that a fresh mandate was required to break the Brexit impasse. Campaigning officially began on 6 November and spanned six weeks. Polling day was Thursday 12 December.

1. News Consumption across Online and Offline Media

Some commentators have questioned the importance of traditional news formats such as TV and print in comparison with online and especially social media. In this first chapter, we explore the relative importance of these different media but also the way they were used in combination by different groups over the course of the campaign. We base this section largely on the survey data which allows us to compare usage of different sources of news and combine this with demographic and political information. We should bear in mind that as this is an online poll (covering ages 18–65 only) it is likely to underestimate the role of traditional media such as TV, print, and radio for those who are not online.

Later we’ll turn to the tracking data to understand online behaviour in detail, but first we need to understand more about how online fits into wider news diets.

Media Consumption Compared

We look first at the proportion of people who used TV, print, radio, online news, or social media for news overall in the last week of the campaign and compare this with consumption of election news (Fig. 1). TV and online news (including social media) were the most important sources of news overall, with 57% of our respondents using TV and 70% accessing online news. Within online, news websites reached more than half of our respondents (56%) but social media was also significant with four in ten (41%) having used it to get the news in the previous week. Only around a third used radio to get news and roughly a quarter of our online sample read printed newspapers. This consumption pattern matches findings that we have published in our previous Digital News Report based on data from the beginning of 2019.

As one might expect, consumption is slightly lower across the board when we ask just about election news. While reliance on online news drops by 14pp, television largely holds its share indicating that the medium may have played a bigger role around the election, at least for some. TV news spends a great deal of time covering election issues and that can reduce the space available for other news. By contrast, there tends to be a greater variety of news stories available online and in social media, which means more distractions – and more opportunities to avoid election news in particular.

Figure 1. Proportion that used different sources of news/election news in the last week of the campaignNEWSSOURCE_POST. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news? NEWSSOURCEELECTION. Which of these have you used to get news about the 2019 UK General Election in the last week? Base: Total survey sample = 752.

When it comes to election news specifically, we also see differences around age and political allegiance – which we know are linked in the UK (Fig. 2). Younger users were much more likely to use online news and social media while older ones were more likely to rely on offline media – particularly TV, but also radio and print. There is a similar split when it comes to political allegiance, with Labour voters more likely to use online news and social media when compared with their respective counterparts. This is likely to be strongly linked to age because Labour voters tend to be younger on average.

Figure 2. Proportion that used different sources for election news in the last week of the campaign

NEWSSOURCEELECTION. Which of these have you used to get news about the 2019 UK General Election in the last week? P2019VOTEACTUAL. Which party did you vote for? Base: All survey respondents: 18-34 = 150, 35-65 = 602. All survey respondents that voted: Conservative = 213, Labour = 217.

These age-related differences between online and traditional media are striking but so too is the role played by social media within the online category. Four in ten (36%) of 18–34s say they used social media to access election news, only slightly fewer than the percentage that accessed online news sites (49%). One in seven (13%) of the younger group say they only consumed news from social media in the last week of the campaign. 21% of 35–65s say they only consumed TV news.

We’ll come back to perceptions of the importance of different sources of election news later in this report.

2. Online News Consumption in Detail

In this chapter we dig much more deeply into the detail of online news consumption using our tracking data with 1,711 participants aged 18–65, including all of those who took the survey. With the agreement of panellists, we monitored all the news websites and apps they visited on computers and mobile phones as well as their wider web usage. This methodology should provide more accurate data about what these respondents did rather than just what they remember when asked in a survey.

Taking the whole six weeks from 4 November to 15 December, we find that around three-quarters (72%) of the entire online panel visited one or more news websites during the election campaign, with the top 30 sites accounting for the vast majority of that. The average news user spent 16 minutes a week reading online news stories during the six-week campaign and accessed around 22 news stories each week across web and mobile. This is a significant amount of news consumption, but to put it in perspective, it is worth pointing out news makes up just 3% of all internet time – even during an election period.

Tracking data. Base: All that accessed a website between Nov 4 and Dec 15 2019 = 1,666.

Figure 3. Reach of different types of news sites during the campaignTracking data. Base: All that accessed a website between 4 Nov and 15 Dec 2019 = 1,666.Note. Numbers in parentheses show the number of sites monitored in each category.

National and international news sites reached almost three-quarters (71%) of all website users, with hundreds of local sites together reaching four in ten (40%) – but with very low figures for each individual website (Fig. 3). Partisan digital sites such as the Canary and Novara Media and foreign sites like Russia Today (RT) collectively reached 6% of users. RT’s reach was roughly equivalent to that of the Brighton Argus, a popular local title, at around 1% of our sample. We also monitored traffic to over one hundred pro- and anti-Brexit pages on Facebook, but these were visited by less than 2% in total. Satire sites were used by around 3% of our sample.

Daily online usage fluctuated during the course of the campaign with significant peaks at the start of the campaign (6 November) and again at the end for the results (12 and 13 December) (Fig. 4). It is striking that overall online news consumption during the election was no higher than the month before – a period which saw a deal with the EU and a series of political manoeuvrings and high-profile parliamentary votes. On 29 October Boris Johnson finally got his wish for a pre-Christmas vote and the campaign started the following week.

Peaks of interest during the campaign itself were mainly focused around non-election stories such as flooding in the North of England, a terror attack in London, and a BBC interview with Prince Andrew where he tried to ‘clear the air’ over his friendship with Jeffery Epstein. Some of these became political issues which demanded a response and diverted the parties from their core messages for several days.

Figure 4. Average time spent with news sites per dayTracking data. Base: All that accessed a website between 4 Oct and 15 Dec 2019 = 1,806.

Figure 5. Other stories knocked the election off top spotFloods in Sheffield in the first week, Prince Andrew’s interview with the BBC in the second, and the London Bridge terror attack in the fourth all diverted attention from the election and demanded political responses. Far left: REUTERS/Jon Super; Centre: Mark Harrison/BBC; Right: REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Which News Websites were Most Heavily Used during the Election Period?

The BBC was the most heavily used news website in terms of people reached (44%), the number of stories read, and the time people spent with those stories (Fig. 6). Right-leaning Conservative supporting titles, the MailOnline, the Sun, Telegraph, and Express, also attracted considerable online reach, as did the Guardian and the Mirror, which tended to be more sympathetic towards Labour.

Figure 6. Reach of specific news websites during campaignTracking data. Base: All that accessed a website between 4 Nov and 15 Dec 2019 = 1,666.

It should be noted that, for the BBC and Sky News, we only measured traffic to their news domain. For other websites, such as the MailOnline and the Guardian, we tracked all content including sport and a wider range of lifestyle content. It is likely that, when it comes to political and election coverage, there is an even bigger gap than is indicated here between the BBC and the rest.

Our approach, which is based on measuring access to hundreds of thousands of story URLs under a publisher domain, does not allow us to identify political news or election coverage specifically.

We should also be wary of just looking at website reach. We get a very different picture if we look at the time people spend with different websites. This is arguably a better measure of engagement and shows the importance of a small handful of sites in the UK. Taken together, the BBC (28%) and the MailOnline (21%) account for almost half of all time with news sites while the Guardian (7%), the Mirror (6%), and the Sun (5%) make a significant contribution (Fig. 7). Other sites that do well in terms of reach, however, such as the Express and the Independent, show very low levels of time spent, with around 2% of the overall news pie. In many cases, this is because traffic to these sites tends to be irregular use from social media or search rather than regular and loyal audiences.

Figure 7. Time spent with news sites during the campaign

Using the time-spent metric, we can also identify the amount of time people spent online with brands that supported the Conservatives (right-leaning) or Labour (left-leaning).

In the UK, most national newspapers openly endorse either Labour or the Conservatives during election campaigns, and actively encourage their readers to vote for them. In 2019, the Mirror and the Guardian endorsed Labour, whereas the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sun backed the Conservatives (the i, the Independent, and the FT did not make an endorsement in 2019). However, strict laws mean that broadcasters like Sky, Channel 4, ITV, and the BBC must remain politically neutral, and devote equal airtime to parties and candidates.

Figure 8. Proportion of news site time spent with different types of outlet

Here we see that much of the time spent with online news media during the election was with brands that had obligations to be impartial (broadcast brands like BBC and ITV) or those that took a non-partisan view (like many local newspapers) (Fig. 8). Brands that openly supported the Conservatives (e.g. Mail, Telegraph, Times, Sun) accounted for nearly three times as much time as those that supported Labour (e.g. Guardian, Mirror).1

In combination with our survey evidence about the importance of television as a source of election news, it is clear that sources with obligations around balance and due impartiality remain critical for framing political news offline and online in the UK. This is a very different picture from the one we see in the United States where some commercial broadcast media (and their websites) take a partisan approach to much of their coverage and public media are less influential.

Having said that, obligations around impartiality are not the same as being seen to be fair and balanced. There was significant criticism during and after the campaign on social media and from participants and candidates about hidden and overt biases.2 Senior BBC and ITV correspondents were regularly accused of bias from both Conservative and Labour supporters. We explore these issues further in Chapter 4 where we look in more detail at the issue of trust.

Where did Younger and Older Groups Get their Online News during the Election?

We’ve already seen in Chapter 1 that young people were more likely to get their news online than older groups so it is something of a surprise to find in our tracking data that the young were accessing fewer online mainstream news sites overall. Two-thirds (66%) of 18–35s accessed any news site during the six-week campaign compared with three-quarters (76%) for 35–65s (Fig. 9). This suggests that young people are turning to other sources of online news.

Young people used mainstream brands (BBC, MailOnline, the Guardian, Sun, and Mirror) during the campaign, but they used them proportionally less. The main exception was the Guardian which had a slightly higher proportion of under-35s than over-35s and the same was true of digital-born brand BuzzFeed, though with much lower reach overall.

Figure 9. Reach of selected news sites by ageTracking data. Base: 18-34s/35s-65s that accessed a website between 4 Nov and 15 Dec 2019 = 673/1051.

Even more striking was the difference in engagement amongst under-35s, who spent less than half as much time reading news stories (8 minutes/week) when compared with over-35s (22 minutes/week) (Fig. 9). We know that young people are less interested in politics and less likely to vote, but given they also consume less TV and radio news this is worrying from a democratic perspective.

It is possible that social media is making up some of this gap, but other research suggests that this tends to involve catching up on headlines, watching short videos, and sharing memes rather than engaging with deep or nuanced coverage.3 In our survey, under-35s say they used news websites for election news more often than social media and far more than TV or print. They also said that news websites were the most important in helping them understand the issues in the election. And yet 8 minutes a week (less than 2 minutes a day), on average, spent reading all news websites suggests that this group has been paying little attention to their own medium of choice.

The Role of News Apps

Our tracking methodology also allows us to look at the time spent with different news apps during the election and to compare this with other apps that people use. Here we find that, among app users, BBC News (10%) and Sky News (3%) had by far the highest reach of any news app during the campaign but there was very little traction for others (Fig. 10). Overall, 18% accessed one or more news apps during the campaign compared to 66% that used Facebook, 64% WhatsApp, and 27% Twitter. People who used apps spent more time on average than those who used the mobile or desktop websites but in total time with news apps was less than 1% of all app usage.

Figure 10. Reach and time spent with apps during the campaignTracking data. Base: All that accessed the internet using a mobile app between 4 Nov and 15 Dec 2019 = 758.

In total the BBC app accounted for more than half of all news app users. News app users tend to be brand loyalists, older, and more interested in news. Our tracking data show reach of the BBC News app is 6% with 18–24s but as high as 16% with 55-65s.

Despite these significant numbers, far more people used news websites via mobile or desktop browsers. The vast majority are not sufficiently interested in news to download a specific news app. When it comes to apps, it also worth noting how news compares in terms of both reach and time spent with social apps like YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. According to our data, under-35s who used Facebook spent on average nearly 3 hours a week using the app during the election period, Instagram users spent just over an hour each week, and Twitter users spent just under an hour. This compares with an average of 30 minutes for this group reading all news apps put together.

When they are using these apps they will, of course, come across news, but according to our survey data, with the exception of Twitter, they are primarily there to connect with friends rather than catch up with news (Fig. 11). It is notable how under-35s consider all of these apps more important for news than older groups – especially Twitter (33%).

Figure 11. Relative importance of news for users of different social platforms

Top Stories during the Election

As previously discussed, our methodology measured news usage during the election period from hundreds of designated websites, but this is not the same as measuring election news. To understand the relative interest in the election compared with other stories, we looked at the most viewed 100 stories for each week with our panellists and measured the proportion that were election related.

On average, we find that around four in ten (38%) of the most popular online stories were about the election during the six-week campaign, though this proportion was as high as 61% in the final week (Fig. 13). As previously noted, the period also saw major floods in the North of England, Prince Andrew’s ill-fated interview about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and a terror attack on London Bridge in which two people died. The bulk of the most-read stories – including almost all the top stories each week – came from BBC News, which as we’ve already seen is by far the most used news website in the UK. The most-read story in the period from the start of the campaign to a few days after polling was the BBC’s ‘As it happened’ election results page, which was read by around 4% of the sample. If we also include the month before the campaign, the most-read story was the BBC’s poll-tracker, which was read by around 5% (Fig. 12).

Another successful piece of evergreen content was the BBC’s ‘Who Should I Vote For?’, which enabled users to compare the manifesto commitments of the main parties. This interactive guide was used in similar proportions by younger and older groups and reached about 2% of our sample.

Figure 12. Word cloud drawn from the top headlines and two of the most popular news stories

On a weekly basis, the most read election stories tended to involve news rather than opinion, with ‘live pages’ run by websites like the BBC and the Guardian accounting for a significant proportion of traffic. These contain a feed of updating posts about developments in the election mixed with social media reactions in reverse chronological order. Our data show that these live pages had dwell-times up to ten times higher than a typical story and many visitors would normally return several times in a day.

Conservative-supporting media such as the MailOnline chose a political agenda that focused on issues such as anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the level of spending commitments in the party’s manifesto. News headlines from right-wing media were often overtly partisan, framed as part of a larger narrative around the dangers of a hard-left Corbyn government:

In addition, both left- and right-leaning media from a print background carried opinion pieces with a clear political perspective:

• Dominic Lawson: If you think the NHS is well run, vote Labour | Comment | The Sunday Times
• Marina Hyde: In this climate, how does Boris Johnson not melt with shame | Opinion | The Guardian

Partial headlines, personal attacks on politicians, and overt press support for a particular party may have had some effect in this campaign but our data show that most of these stories gained little reading attention. Brands like the Express achieved some reach over the course of the campaign but its stories accounted for 2% of total reading time. Stories from the MailOnline did attract more attention, though story analysis shows that much of this was for non-election-related news. The Guardian was, if anything, much more influential, with its political coverage achieving high reach with younger voters and appearing regularly in the most-read lists.

Election Results Day

Figure 14 which tracks engagement levels for popular news sites, shows how audiences turned to the BBC for reliable information and analysis as the results came in on election night. Traffic to the BBC was around four times higher than its nearest competitors (the Guardian and MailOnline) during these peak times.

Figure 14. Hour by hour consumption of news websites for election resultsTracking data. Base: All that accessed a website between 12 Dec and 13 Dec 2019 = 1,243. Note: figures indicate total minutes spent with each site by panellists. A figure of 0 indicates that no panellists used a site in that hour.

By morning, we see another significant peak with online both a supplementary and primary source of news. The bulk of usage came around 7 am, with mobile phones a convenient way to get updates on the national picture and on local results. The peaks for MailOnline and the Guardian came a few hours later, which suggests a certain amount of complementary usage as users looked for additional perspectives and analysis on the results.

Figure 15. Much of the battle for election traffic was via mobile phones

Election results pages from BBC News, The Times, Guardian

Conclusion

Despite the importance to the Brexit outcome, it is clear that the British people were not fully engaged by an election just a few weeks before Christmas. There was a peak of interest at the beginning of the campaign and another one when the result became clear, but overall the amount of news consumed online was pretty similar to a non-election period and interest fell over the course of the campaign. Individual news organisations with highly engaged and politically interested users may have seen more activity, but we find no evidence of an overall increase.

Frustration with the drawn-out Brexit process may have played a part in this – along with lack of trust in politicians. With many people saying they worry that they can’t tell the difference between what is real and fake online it is perhaps not surprising that many turn as much to their friends or colleagues to help make up their mind as they do to the media these days.

But even if the news media play a smaller role than in the past, our report does show that the vast majority of our sample consistently consumed the reporting of a relatively small number of mainstream news brands operating across a combination of TV, radio, print, and online. Television remains an important source of news overall as well as helping people understand the issues.

But TV is unlikely to maintain this level of importance in the years ahead as the population ages and fewer people watch traditional TV news. If these trends continue it is not clear which media will fill the gap or how fair and balanced that will be. News media did reach over 70% across online sources but much of this was shallow and fragmented – accounting in total for just a fraction of all internet time.

The evidence that younger voters spent just 8 minutes per week with online news media (and even less with election news) and that more than one in ten (13%) of this group only used social media for election news will be of considerable concern for those who worry about political engagement and the health of democracy. This is not so much a concern about political filter bubbles, since our data suggest social media users tend to be exposed to a wider range of political news, but more a worry about why younger people seem to find existing news media so unappealing , and about the unreliability and the lack of transparency over what people are exposed to.

In terms of news brands, the presence of the BBC is both unsettling and reassuring. Its political coverage dominates online news coverage as much as it does via TV and radio, suggesting a less plural media than some might like. On the other hand, it could be seen as a positive that most of the news people were exposed to came from an organisation that has particular obligations to be fair and balanced during an election, conducted regular fact-checking of politicians, and published a wide range of information about party positions. Given the importance of this output, it is scarcely surprising that the BBC’s coverage has come under such scrutiny from both sides and was the subject of more complaints than ever before.

Despite this, our data suggest these criticisms from political parties, activists, and media commentators were not fully shared by ordinary people. The majority of those who expressed a view felt the BBC had done a good job. BBC stories were widely viewed, and read equally by Conservative and Labour voters. More widely, however, it is true that Labour supporters feel more suspicious of the media than Conservatives. There is historic resentment on the left about the relentless personal attacks by right-wing titles which they believe make it harder for a Labour leader to ever win an election. But it is also clear from our data that the right-wing media – with the exception of the Daily Mail – have lost influence and reach with the move to online and continue to do so with each passing election. Indeed, there are more left-leaning options online and some of these, like the Guardian, have gained much greater reach and influence than they ever had in print.

It was probably never the case that headlines in a national newspaper endorsing one party or another could win or lose an election. That is even less the case today as politicians develop their own channels and as personal networks have become more important in influencing choices. This report shows that mainstream media still play an important role in scrutinising politicians and helping to inform voters, but they no longer have a monopoly on these activities.

Before the election, much of the public debate in media circles related to concerns about political polarisation fuelled by online and social media, but our analysis suggests an even bigger problem may be the lack of significant engagement with news by significant portions of the population.

News media looking to increase their relevance may wish to draw the lessons from this campaign to convince those disappointed with the coverage that they can do a better job in the months and years to come.

Methodology

This study was commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to understand how news was consumed during the 2019 UK General Election campaign. The data were collected by Netquest using a combination of passive tracking and two online questionnaires.

Netquest tracked the computer and mobile use of 1,711 people aged 18 to 65 from 4 November to 15 December 2019. A subset of these panellists was also invited to complete an online survey shortly after the official start of the election campaign (fieldwork 13–19 November), and again immediately after polling day (fieldwork 13–19 December): 840 panellists completed the first survey, and 752 of these also completed the second survey (retention rate: 90%).

For most of the statistics we present here, the base is everyone in the panel that accessed a website at least once during the campaign from either a computer or mobile device (1,666 people). Where we refer to the use of apps, the base is everyone that accessed the internet using an app during the campaign (758).

The tracking data were weighted to be representative of the British population aged 18 to 65 in terms of age, gender, and region, based on the latest population estimates from the Office for National Statistics.6 The survey data were weighted to be representative of the British population aged 18 to 65 in terms of age and gender. As the focus of the research was on the UK General Election, we excluded panellists from Northern Ireland due to differences in the political system.

The focus of this research is on the passive tracking of online media use. Limitations associated with panel recruitment and the practicalities of the tracking methodology meant that we were not able to recruit a sufficient number of people aged over 65 to make it representative of the entire British population. Therefore, we restricted the study to those aged 18 to 65. This is important to keep in mind here because age is an important predictor of both vote choice and news use. As such, the data will tend to under-represent Conservative voters. This means that our survey sample contained slightly more Labour voters than Conservative voters, but this is consistent with post-election polling from YouGov that also showed that Labour had a higher vote share than the Conservatives among the under-65s.7

The focus of this study is online news use. We tracked the use of 35 of the most popular mainstream national and international news websites for broadcast, newspaper, and digital-born outlets (e.g. bbc.co.uk/news, dailymail.co.uk, huffpost.co.uk), 879 local newspaper websites (e.g. birminghammail.co.uk, liverpoolecho.co.uk), 20 specialist, alternative, or partisan websites (e.g. thecanary.co, breitbart.com, newstatesman.co.uk), seven satirical news websites (e.g. thepoke.co.uk, thedailymash.co.uk), and 125 dedicated politics pages on Facebook (e.g. Leave.EU, EvolvePolitics). We also tracked the use of 16 dedicated mobile news apps (e.g. BBC News app, Sky News app). Unless otherwise specified we use ‘news’ to refer to the 35 most popular mainstream national and international news outlets.

Passive tracking data are generally considered to be a more reliable way of measuring online news use than surveys. However, the tracking software is only designed to collect data on URLs accessed using computers running Windows and Mac OSX operating systems. The mobile tracking software can be installed on both Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, but only the top-level domain for each URL accessed (e.g. bbc.co.uk, theguardian.com) can be recorded, as well as which apps are shown on the main screen. As the passive tracking software records the URLs loaded by browsers, it is not possible to track what people ‘see’ on their screens but do not click on. As such, passive tracking does not record, for example, news snippets displayed on people’s social media feeds or on apps that use their own in-built browsers. Panellists are able to turn off the tracking software for 15-minute periods at any time, and this is not recorded in the data.

As tracking software only measures online use, we supplemented it with online survey data on people’s attitudes and their offline news use. Online samples will tend to under-represent the consumption habits of people who are not online – typically those who are older, less affluent, and with lower levels of formal education. It is also important to note that online surveys rely on recall, which is often imperfect or subject to biases. We have tried to mitigate these risks through careful questionnaire design and testing. We have made particular use of survey questions from the British Election Study, and we are very grateful to them for making their survey questions publicly available.8

The size of the survey sample means that some subgroups in the data are too small to meaningfully compare to others. For example, it is possible to compare Conservative voters with Labour voters, but not with voters for other parties. Even comparisons between Conservative and Labour voters should be treated with caution because with roughly 200 voters for each in the sample of 752, only differences of around 10pp will be statistically significant using a chi-squared test (p < .05). Where appropriate, we flag differences between groups that we do not believe to be statistically significant using this test in both the text and the figures.

About the Authors

Richard Fletcher is a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and leads the Institute’s research team. His primary research interests are global trends in digital news consumption, comparative media research, the use of social media by journalists and news organisations, and more broadly, the relationship between technology and journalism. He is lead researcher and co-author of the main Digital News Report – the world’s largest annual survey of global news consumption.

Nic Newman is Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, where he is lead author of the annual Digital News Report and the annual Journalism Trends and Predictions report. He has recently published a detailed study on news podcasting. Nic is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition.

Anne Schulz is a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Her doctoral work focused on populism, media perceptions, and news consumption. She is researching questions surrounding news audiences and digital news.

Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of the Google News Initiative.

1. Key Trends and Predictions for 2020

In this section we explore key themes for the year ahead, integrating data and comments from our publishers’ survey. For each theme we lay out a few suggestions about what might happen next.

1.1 Business Outlook More Positive than for Years, but Worries about Journalism Persist

Almost three-quarters of our respondents (73%) say they feel confident or very confident about their company’s prospects in 2020. It’s a surprisingly upbeat assessment given continuing editorial and commercial uncertainty but reflects optimism amongst many publishers that reader revenue and diversification strategies are starting to pay off.

These same media executives, however, are less confident about journalism in general (46%) and public-interest journalism in particular. There is widespread disquiet about the decline of local news and the economic and political pressure on journalists trying to hold the rich and powerful to account.

It is depressing and concerning to witness the continued attacks upon the free media by heads of state.
–Karyn Fleeting, Reach plc, UK

Confidence in my company/the state of journalism

Q1/2. To what extent are you confident about your company’s prospects/journalism’s prospects in the year ahead? N=230

One notable trend is lack of confidence from public service broadcasters (PSBs), many of whom face rapidly falling audiences for linear output, growing competition from Netflix and Spotify, and, in many cases, attacks on news output from populist politicians and commercial media owners. Average confidence from respondents from a PSB background was just 46% compared with the overall average of 73%. These numbers are influenced by recent or upcoming budget cuts in a number of countries, including Denmark, Australia, and the UK.

Reader Revenue Focus

By contrast, commercial media, especially those at the quality end of the market, are increasingly confident about the future of paid content, with both large and small companies hitting important milestones in the past year. The New York Times has 4.9 million digital and print subscribers, almost halfway to its 10 million goal.1 The Financial Times broke through its 1 million subscriber target, while the Guardian returned to profit – after years of heavy losses – off the back of more than 1 million reader contributions over the past three years.2 News executives across many countries tell us that reader revenue is providing stable and growing income while advertising has remained volatile, with many reporting worse than expected results in 2019.

Growth engines, reader revenue specifically, has very positive prospects; advertising revenue remains a major concern.
–Jon Slade, Chief Commercial Officer, FT

Most important revenue stream for my company going forward?

Q3. Thinking about your own company, which of the following statements do you agree with most. Reader revenue will be the most important revenue stream going forward/reader revenue and advertising will be equally important/advertising will be most important. N= 189

But it is not just big companies that are making reader revenue work. Smaller publications are also finding success through a variety of subscription and membership models. Investigative news site Follow the Money in the Netherlands and slow-news operation Zetland in Denmark are amongst those hitting tipping points around profitability:

Due to a very successful ambassador campaign (member-get-member) this year we had a 25% growth in August and our budget is now for the first-time balancing.
–Lea Korsgaard, Editor in Chief, Zetland, DK

We have solid base of subscribers and we know [this] makes our audience grow and keeps our churn low. We are convinced that the subscription model is future proof.
–Jan-Willem Sanders, Publisher, Follow the Money, NL

This year will see southern European media houses leaning more into subscription. In Spain, El Mundo has already started to charge for premium content, with El País set to follow early in 2020. It is already asking readers to sign in (for free) to read opinion and weekend features in preparation for the change. This is a major shift of direction for publications that until recently have pursued a scale-based strategy (which has sometimes led to accusations of clickbait and low-quality journalism).

Payment options at El Mundo

Other regional chains such as Vocento and Prensa Ibérica have established paywalls in most of their titles, while the independent sector is strengthening membership and or donation options.

What to Expect in 2020?

Crumbling cookies? Publishers will be pushing aggressively ahead with registration and log-in strategies following data privacy regulation and tightening restrictions on cookies by anti-ad-tracking browsers like Safari and Firefox. First-party data will be at a premium going forward but this is likely to further benefit platforms like Google and Facebook, which have hundreds of millions of authenticated and logged-in users. By contrast individual news publishers may struggle to persuade consumers to keep logging in. Expect more publisher alliances, like NetID3 in Germany and Nonio4 in Portugal, to counter this trend.

More consolidation. Declining margins in the face of falling readership and growing platform power have already led to a series of mega mergers, leading to new questions around plurality and concentration of ownership. US-based regional newspaper chains Gannett and GateHouse Media combined forces in November to create a conglomerate that will own around one in six daily titles in the US. Vice acquired Refinery 29 and Vox Media bought New York Magazine in eye-catching deals that create both scale and complementary audiences. In the UK the group that owns the Daily Mail added the i newspaper to a stable that includes the Metro freesheet – giving it around 30% of the national newspaper market. Troubled regional publisher JPI Media is up for sale, likely to be bought by Reach plc or Newsquest, and national broadsheet the Daily Telegraph is also rumoured to be on the market. In the past many of these mergers have destroyed value, so the focus is likely to be on keeping editorial propositions distinct while integrating back-end systems like technology, data, and ad tech.

Editorial partnerships. With publishers realising that they can’t cover every option, they are increasingly looking for partnership opportunities. In the recent UK election, Sky News teamed up with Buzzfeed News to help tap into the social conversation. In return Buzzfeed got access to brand exposure with a much bigger audience. In podcasting, partnerships are the order of the day, with Gimlet working with the Wall Street Journal and Slate and The Economist getting together to produce the Secret History of the Future.

Subscription avoidance. With more publishers after our money, people will encounter more and more paywalls, and consumers will be increasingly aware of how to get around them. Most people are willing to subscribe to only one or two digital sources of news,5 but might still be interested in accessing more. Loopholes around incognito browsing are increasingly being closed by registration strategies, but sophisticated paywall blockers are emerging that can open up all but the most secure websites. Consumers will also become savvier about looking for special deals at renewal time.

See also
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, ‘Building the Business We Want’
Eduardo Suárez, ‘Making Readers Pay’

1.2 Post-Truth Politics and the Journalistic Response

The UK election was yet another example of politicians playing fast and loose with the facts, avoiding journalistic scrutiny, and denigrating the media. ‘It’s been the most shallow, mendacious and frustrating election I can remember and a bad advertisement for democracy,’ declared veteran political analyst Peter Kellner.6 The UK’s independent fact-checking organisation, Full Fact, said the six-week campaign saw ‘inappropriate and misleading campaign tactics that we hadn’t seen before’. These included an official Conservative Party Twitter account impersonating a fact-checking organisation and editing footage of a Labour politician to make it look as if he couldn’t answer a question about the party’s Brexit policy.

The media integrated fact-checking into coverage and scrutinised politicians wherever possible, but these TV interviews and debates are watched by fewer and fewer people. Politicians are increasingly trying to bypass the media and convey messages directly via social media. Boris Johnson declined an invitation to be interviewed by the BBC’s toughest interviewer Andrew Neil and hid in a fridge to avoid another TV interview. Channel 4 replaced Johnson with a melting ice sculpture when he refused to turn up for a leader debate on climate change. In the wake of these challenges, the Tories briefed journalists that they would review both Channel 4’s broadcasting licence and the funding mechanism for the BBC.7

In our survey, 85% agreed with the proposition that the media should do more to call out lies and half-truths, but it is not clear that this approach cuts through with audiences, and it may even be hardening criticism of the media from both left and right.

The news media should do more to call out misleading statements and half-truths by politicians

Q7. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The news media should do more to call out misleading statements and half-truths by politicians. N=223

As more politicians around the world pick up Donald Trump’s media playbook, these dilemmas will become more acute in the year ahead. The media have become more robust in aggressively fact-checking since the events of 2016, but a number of publications that run these teams told us they fear this is not having ‘any impact on large parts of the public’.

The lack of consequences for a President who lies repeatedly has only emboldened a generation of politicians to give up any commitment to truthfulness. It’s grim out there.
–Leading US publisher

See also
Meera Selva, ‘Journalism under Fire’

But responses are not obvious and the news media often don’t help by sometimes or often repeating or amplifying lies and misleading narratives. Even among those who try to challenge falsehoods and blatant spin, publishers worry that devoting time to fact-checking can divert resources and attention from other journalistic endeavours. Others say that there is often a fine line between ‘calling out a statement and perceptions of partisanship’, which may undermine trust with readers, listeners, and viewers. The media might also take note of our own research which shows that the public often feels that politicians (and other public figures) often don’t get a fair hearing8 and that the media takes an overly negative view of events.9 Some hope for a more nuanced response than just calling out politicians in the year ahead:

We certainly need to offer fact checks and reality checks. But we also need content which explores good faith politics, what might be working, how policy develops and makes a difference. Otherwise we will push our audiences to disengage and distrust politics even more.
–Mary Hockaday, Controller, BBC World Service

I’m always optimistic about the industry – but this year I worry more about reader fatigue and news avoidance than I ever have before. Clearly this is a problem for democracy and debate, not just for the industry.
–Sarah Marshall, Head of Audience Growth, Conde Nast

The issues of disengagement and news avoidance are a growing concern for many executives. Countering cynicism and negativity is likely to become a more important theme for journalists in the year ahead.

Platform Responsibility

Journalists are as critical of tech platforms as they are of politicians when it comes to misinformation and disinformation. In this year’s survey they are damning in their verdict about platforms’ attempts to clean up the problem. Less than one in five (17%) gave Facebook credit for their efforts in the last year, despite it removing billions of accounts, stepping up funding for fact-checking, and increasing transparency around political advertising. YouTube rated at just 18% in a year when it has promoted reputable sources around breaking news events and introduced new information panels flagging misinformation. Google search rated marginally better at 34%, after changes to its algorithms that have surfaced more original and local journalism in results. Twitter scored 41%, possibly due to their recent stance on banning all political advertising on its platform.

How publishers rate platforms in the fight against misinformation
Percentage rating 3, 4, or 5 (average or above)

Q8. To what extent do you think that the following platforms have done enough in the last year to combat misinformation and disinformation? N=221

But the overall message from publishers is that these efforts are nowhere near enough to combat the scale and scope of the problem.

All the tech platforms spend a tiny fraction of their vast revenues and technology resources on this area, despite fair, transparent media being an absolutely vital ingredient of a healthy, functioning democracy. Most of their efforts feel like lip service to appease regulators.
–UK publisher

Our survey also reveals the different approaches between Europe and the US in terms of where the limits of free speech should lie.

Most platforms still hold the position ‘if it’s not criminal, it’s free speech’, which is unacceptable. Once more, they take the money, and leave the costly work (fact-checking, counter-arguing, etc.) to journalists from media outlets.
–Vinzenz Schmid, Strategy, SRG SSR, Switzerland

It is hard to separate the responsibility of platforms from the wider tensions in society that are fuelling these trends. And without clear guidance on the limits to free speech Silicon Valley companies are increasingly being asked to make more editorial judgements on which content should be removed or demoted. Whatever they do, it is hard to see platforms pleasing publishers or politicians in 2020.

What to Expect in 2020?

Platform regulation bites. In some countries (e.g. the UK) we are likely to see a new technology regulator this year with powers to oversee an enforceable code of conduct for the biggest players, such as Facebook and Google, and new rules to give consumers more control over their data. But issues around free speech and elections will be much harder to regulate. Politicians will largely duck these challenges again in 2020.

US election focus. Social media will be in the spotlight in the run-up to the November presidential election, with coordinated campaign activity and increasingly vocal accusations of platform bias from the right as well as some voices on the left. Expect more smears against candidates and attempts by domestic actors to create coordinated campaigns across networks – and for arguments to rage about whether false or misleading political messages should be fact-checked or given less prominence. Closed groups on Facebook and WhatsApp, where it is harder to monitor and rebut false information, will become an increased area of focus.

1.3 Platforms and the Relationship with Journalism

Our digital leaders survey shows publishers remain more positive about Google and Twitter than Apple, Facebook, Snapchat, and Amazon when it comes to initiatives to support journalism. Over half of respondents rated Google as average or better but all other platforms attracted more negative than positive sentiment, and there is a considerable amount of cynicism about underlying motives across the board.

How publishers rate platforms in supporting journalism
Percentage rating average or above on five-point scale (3,4, or 5)

Q9. To what extent do you think that the following platforms have done enough to support journalism? N=221
*these figures are low partly due to large number of don’t knows – 13% for Apple, 26% for Amazon, 38% Snapchat, compared with just 2% for Google and 3% for Facebook.

Google’s higher score is reflective of the large number of publishers in our survey who are current or past recipients of Google’s innovation funds (DNI or GNI), and who collaborate with the company on various news-related products. Facebook’s lower score may reflect historic distrust from publishers after a series of changes of product strategy which left some publishers financially exposed. In the last year, however, Facebook has stepped up its commitment to journalism, with several new product initiatives as well as a commitment to invest around $300m in journalism-related initiatives over the coming years.

The overall sense from our survey, however, is that publishers do not want hand-outs from platforms but would prefer a level playing field where they can compete fairly and get proper compensation for the value their content brings.

Few of the platforms take the business of journalism seriously. Funds and small bits of industry engagement won’t cut it. The industry needs real and meaningful business models for journalism. Apple News+ achieves the opposite, which is profiteering for Apple while conditions for publishers are appalling.
–Global publisher

Policymakers continue to talk about different kinds of intervention to help the news industry. These include enforcing the EU’s new copyright directive, often referred to as the ‘link tax’ because it requires platforms to pay for unlicensed content that appears in aggregated news services. The process is a direct result of lobbying by big publishing houses but got off to a rocky start in France, the first member state to implement the directive, with Google opting to display less information in search results rather than set a costly precedent. With publishers turning to the courts and both sides digging in, the only guaranteed winner this year is likely to be the legal profession.

More positively, the EU has already taken other action to help news organisations, including allowing member states to exempt digital publications from VAT, while a number of governments around the world are looking at issues of transparency and excessive fees in the digital advertising market. As we have documented in a recent report, policymakers have a range of actionable options if they want to create a more enabling environment for independent professional journalism, including steps to protect media freedom, enhance the sustainability of the news business, and help the industry and the profession work towards its digital future.10

Whether policymakers will take such steps remains an open question but in our survey publishers feel that interventions are more likely to hurt journalism (25%) rather than help it (18%), with the majority feeling that it will make no difference (56%).

Will policy making interventions help or hurt journalism this year?

Q13. Do you expect policymaker interventions to help or hurt journalism this year? N=217

What to Expect in 2020?

Facebook’s News Tab goes global. As this rolls out beyond the United States, we can expect more arguments about who should be included and how much publishers should be paid. Perhaps the bigger question, though, is whether consumers will show any attention to a walled garden full of tried and trusted news brands. Our own research suggests news is more of an incidental part of the Facebook experience rather than a destination for news, and it may be hard to shift those behaviours. Mark Zuckerberg’s publicly stated goal is for tens of millions of users – just a small percentage of Facebook’s 2 billion global user base.

Controlled off-platform news. Facebook’s news tab is part of a wider trend, with platforms looking to create trusted and curated environments for news rather than mixing it with user-generated content. YouTube have started to inject trusted brands into the feed when big stories break and Google’s carefully selected news index does a similar job for AI-driven products like Discover. We’re also seeing more humans involved in the process, with platforms hiring editors to manage the nuances.11

1.4. Diversity and Talent in the Newsroom

In the last few years, the industry has woken up to the lack of diversity in newsrooms and the difficulties this creates in representing societies fairly and accurately. Much of the recent focus has been on gender, following the #MeToo movement, the exposure of pay gaps in the UK, and deep-seated sexist attitudes in French newsrooms. But there has also been soul-searching after Brexit, Donald Trump, and the Gilets Jaunes protests about the lack of political diversity in journalism and the failure to understand concerns of those outside the big cities.

Our publisher respondents say they have made big strides over gender diversity, with three-quarters (76%) believing their organisation is doing a good job. However, they rate themselves less well on diversity from non-metropolitan areas (55%), on political diversity (48%), and on racial diversity (33%). Critics will argue that these relatively high figures reveal complacency amongst news executives and that much more still needs to be done.

My news organisation is doing a good job with …

Q5. To what extent do you agree with the following statements? N=227

Within these averages we can detect significant regional differences, with Scandinavian publishers much more confident about gender diversity than publishers in other parts of Europe. Overall, women were much more sceptical about the rate of progress than men:

In France … we are particularly bad at diversity issues. I think this awareness is not yet at the right level in my newsroom.
–Top French print publisher

Others report progress at more junior levels, but with editorial decision-making often still in the hands of men:

Portuguese media is very gender balanced … except when it comes to editors in chief.
–Catarina Carvalho, Executive Editor, Diario de Noticias

There was widespread recognition in our survey about the need to expand recruitment beyond liberal urban elites. Digital-born brands in particular have used remote working to help increase diversity, but in countries like South Africa remote working is harder to pull off and the economics often don’t stack up:

Pressure on costs and a very disparate geographical country mean it is difficult to sufficiently cover outlying areas, and most media outlets focus on the metro areas.
–South African publisher

A recent RISJ report on diversity and talent12 concludes that journalists must reach out to audiences that are becoming more and more diverse, while newsrooms need to be made attractive to new entrants who have to be convinced that the news business has a future.

Our survey shows that publishers feel this is going to be easier in editorial areas (76% confidence) than in data science/technology (24%), or product (39%). Here, there is intense competition with tech platforms and consumer brands who can often offer higher salaries, more job security, and a culture within which individuals can do their best work.

The competition for tech and data talent is intensifying. Google and Facebook are hiring relentlessly in London. In 2019 we lost a number of team members directly to them, but indirectly we also see significant upward pressure on salaries.
–UK publisher

Confidence about attracting and retaining talent in different areas
Percentage saying extremely or very confident

Q6. How confident are you that your organisation can attract and retain the talent you need in the following areas? N=225

Despite the general confidence over editorial retention, there are some hot spots. The Athletic, when it launched its sports subscription service in the UK, hoovered up some of the best national and regional talent, reportedly doubling the salaries of many reporters in the process. Another difficult area is audio, where there is a fight for on-air talent and the best podcast producers, with publishers and broadcasters competing with tech platforms like Spotify and independent studios.

We are less confident about younger editorial staff (below 30). They tend to drift toward podcasting and pure digital players and away from more text-based newsrooms.
–Troels Jørgensen, Digital Director, Politiken

Overall, many publishers are holding on to the hope that the ‘excitement of working in media and being able to have a positive societal impact’ will continue to attract talent even when pay and material conditions are better elsewhere.

What to Expect in 2020?

Initiatives to increase diversity. Some news organisations have started to impose their own targets for gender balance in terms of contributors. The BBC’s 5050 project started as a grassroots project with 500 teams joining voluntarily and the vast majority of these (75%) hitting these targets.

More software tools to help measure diversity. Elsewhere, online sites are being increasingly supported by software tools that give real-time readouts for editors. We’re likely to see more external monitoring of media performance this year as with this gender gap tracker of the Canadian media (currently showing an over-representation of male contributors in top outlets). Expect these tools to start to illustrate lack of diversity in other areas too.

Ratio of male and female sources by news outlet

See also
Lucy Kueng, ‘Handling Inter-Generational Tensions in News Media

1.5 New Golden Age of Audio, but Where’s the Cash?

It looks set to be another big year for podcasting, with over half of our publisher respondents saying they would be pushing various types of podcast initiative this year. Our recent report on News Podcasting and the Opportunities for Publishers13 found that the success of the Daily from the New York Times – and growing interest from blue-chip advertisers – was encouraging publishers. We identified 60 daily news podcasts in five countries, the majority of which started in the last 18 months – and more are on the way. The Times of London is one of many that will launch a daily news podcast in 2020. Others are investing in chat/interview formats or documentaries, with Le Monde, for example, recently releasing three new podcast series adapted from investigative articles.14

Important audio initiatives for 2020

Q10. There are new opportunities opening up in audio and voice with growing audiences and advertising revenue, to what extent will the following initiatives be important for your company in 2020? N=217

Bigger audiences, better measurement, and easier access have combined to change the economics of news podcasting. In turn this is encouraging publishers to invest in creating more quality content and platforms to invest in better distribution and monetisation, in a virtuous circle of growth. Publishers see podcasting as a chance to attract younger audiences, build habit, and bring in additional revenue.

In the US podcasting revenue is projected to grow by around 30% a year to reach over $1bn by 2021,15 but elsewhere revenues have been slower to build and, despite the clear audience opportunity, many publishers are still holding back:

The problem [with] audio is the difficulty of monetisation, since advertisers are currently not investing in Spain.
–Vicente Ruiz Gómez, Managing Editor Digital, El Mundo, Spain

Audio and voice feels increasingly important but we’re still some way from generating enough engagement or revenue to provide any sort of return on the not inconsiderable investment required to do it to any reasonable standard.
–National publisher, UK

Subscription-based organisations are holding back for different reasons. There are few opportunities to make premium audio work – and little platform focus in this area. Meanwhile broadcasters have no option but to invest in a range of audio-on-demand options to protect their market position and to attract younger and diverse audiences. Public broadcasters are experimenting with new on-demand audio for voice devices, developing short bulletins and trialling interactive formats. The BBC is investing hard, along with NPR, ABC in Australia, and Swedish Radio (SR), but there is huge concern that platforms will use this content to build their own businesses in this area.

This year we’ll see further tension between broadcasters and platforms, with ‘content boycotts’ and a greater use of windowing strategies where content is released first on broadcaster apps.

We have ambitious plans for live, podcasts, and news clips. The strategic choice ahead is how much to do and release to external platforms like Spotify and Google.
–Olle Zachrison, Head of News, Swedish Radio

The international roll-out of Google’s audio news aggregation service, and Spotify Drive, which mixes music playlists with short news audio content, could be another flashpoint. Broadcasters fear their direct connection with audiences will be lost in these aggregated services.

Some publishers are boycotting audio aggregation services from Google and Spotify

Print publishers have less to lose, though many remain wary about repeating past mistakes:

Publishers have rightly held back on providing audio content for aggregated news services, until there is a clear path towards monetisation. Google will spend money effectively licensing audio news content in 2020, so we will see whether it can become a financially sustainable news product.
–UK news publisher

What to Expect in 2020?

Podcasting beyond the English language. Much of the action so far has been confined to the US and a handful of English-speaking countries, but this is set to change. Brazil is now the second largest market for podcasting in the world, according to some measures,16 and will be a major focus for both Google and Spotify this year. Spain and France are also seeing strong audience growth and the development of independent podcast studios.

Audio articles as standard. Improved technology is enabling new opportunities for publishers in quickly reversioning text output into audio. In Canada, the Globe and Mail is one of the first publishers to use Amazon Polly, a text-to-speech service that sounds far more natural to the human ear than previous versions. Subscribers can listen to selected articles in English, French, and Mandarin and choose their favourite voice.17

In Denmark, ‘slow-news’ operation Zetland provides all its stories with a (human-read) audio option. Around 75% of all stories are now listened to rather than consumed via text (pink block in chart below) – perhaps a sign of things to come for other publishers. Meanwhile in Brazil the newspaper Estadão has teamed up with Ford to create a human-read daily audio service for Spotify. Each part of the newspaper has its own album, each news story has its own track. Many publishers see connected cars as a new opportunity to reach audiences and audio as a key way to deliver journalism in the future.

Platform wars? Apple’s dominance over podcasting is being eroded by Spotify, which has invested $500m in improving discovery and acquiring original content. It has doubled its market share in the last year in many countries18 and is looking to become the dominant platform for podcasting within a few years. But expect Apple to fight back this year, while podcast specialists like Luminary in the US, Sybel in France, and Podimo in Denmark and Germany, are all vying to become the ‘Netflix of podcasting’.

1.6 Doubts Emerging over the Role of AI in the Newsroom

A recent report from the LSE revealed myriad ways that AI (or at least machine learning) is already being deployed in journalism, at the same time as highlighting the ethical challenges that lie ahead.19 The report set out the different ways that AI is being used in (1) newsgathering, (2) production (including different kinds of newsroom automation), and (3) distribution/recommendation.

In our digital leaders survey we can see that most focus this year will be on creating more effective recommendations (53% saying very important), followed by commercial uses such as using AI to target potential subscribers and optimise paywalls (47%), and ways of driving greater efficiency in the newsroom, such as using AI to assist subbing or improve the consistency of tagging (39%). Only a minority of publishers felt that robo-journalism (12%) or newsgathering (16%) would be important areas to explore this year.

Which newsroom uses of AI will be most important in 2020?

Q11. To what extent will the following uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) be important to your company in 2020? N=218

Some publishers make a clear distinction between editorial and non-editorial uses of artificial intelligence. The Times (of London), for example, uses the slogan ‘written by humans, curated by humans, distributed by robots’ to help focus its efforts. This year it will be extending its AI-driven recommendation engine, James, from emails to a wider range of web and app-based recommendations. Publishers have started to experiment with electronic editing assistants such as Tansa and Grammarly to automate some subbing tasks:

At the moment it is not at the stage where it can do the whole job but it can certainly do 80% of the legwork.
–Chris Duncan, MD Platform Partnerships, The Times and Sunday Times

Scandinavia-based publisher Schibsted has gone further, delegating some curation tasks to AI-driven algorithms, with semi-automated front pages for titles like Aftenposten and VG. The aim of its ‘Curate Project’ is to replicate the workflow of front-page editors to ‘free up time for more creative tasks’.20 Though some respondents worry that AI could be used by unscrupulous owners to drive further job cuts, most were optimistic that it would ultimately benefit journalism.

It is a gift, offering us economic benefit and efficiency. It doesn’t replace journalists. It allows journalists to return to their primary function of breaking stories, uncovering facts, and delivering the news.
–National newspaper editor, Canada

For others, AI is opening up new opportunities. The BBC has experimented with automated language translation, and improved synthesised voice technology in developing its Japanese video service, though the live output is currently produced manually.21 News agencies are focused more on turning financial and sports data into automated stories, expanding the speed and range of their output. The BBC used similar techniques to publish 689 semi-automated local stories in just a few hours on election night (December 2019) while the Guardian published its first automated story on Australian election funding in 2019. News agencies and business publications like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal have been using AI to quickly produce stories on company earnings and are looking for other ways to drive commercial benefits of data at scale:

We are at the forefront of automating news stories for machine-driven trading. We are also an industry leader with our propensity paywall, that can adjust to the likelihood of a reader converting to a subscriber.
–Edward Roussell, Chief Innovation Officer, Wall Street Journal

Despite general optimism, there were also significant concerns revealed in our survey.

Smaller publishers worry that they could be left behind due to the complexity, expense, and scarcity of skills: ‘We do not have the technical capacity or budget to cope with AI to the extent we would like,’ says Esther Alonso Rodríguez, Marketing and Development Director at eldiario.es in Spain.

Others fear that lack of understanding in the boardroom will lead to an over-estimation of the capabilities of AI today. ‘It’s great for transcription, and translation, but still hopeless at actually writing stories,’ says a senior editor who has experimented with these technologies. ‘This is like asking about the impact of spreadsheets. They are useful but don’t really change the fundamentals.’ Others warn that the industry should be careful about ‘distracting itself with trends’ when it should instead be aligning technology solutions to core strategy.

What to Expect in 2020?

AI-driven fake news. ‘AI has the potential to boost disinformation campaigns as the 2020 election cycle in the US ramps up,’ warns a senior executive from one of the biggest and most respected national news brands. AI could make it easier to produce junk news in text, audio, and video and such potentially low-quality and misleading content masquerading as professionally produced news could further reduce trust in journalism.

Bigger focus, better reporting of AI. The application of AI and the implications for privacy and democracy will be a defining issue not just of 2020 but of the next decade. But many worry that the technology will run ahead of our ability to shine a light on the way these systems are being programmed or used. Our own research finds that most news reporting treats AI as a novelty and struggles to explain the more immediate and pressing implications.22 There are signs that this could change this year with more news organisations (Tortoise Media) making AI a pillar of their coverage.

1.7. Summary

This will be year when journalism looks to regain relevance and confidence in a fragmented and uncertain world. Buffeted by economic and political pressures, media companies remain on the backfoot, but across the world we also see many positive examples of fearless journalism and business innovation.

The shift to reader payment, clearly signalled again our digital leaders’ survey, is in full swing and will extend this year to countries as diverse as Spain, Hong Kong, and Argentina. Companies there will be hoping to emulate and learn from the success of large and small publishers in the US and Northern Europe who are focusing relentlessly on keeping readers/viewers happy and are beginning to talk about news as a ‘growth business’ again. But reader payment is unlikely to work for all and will require deep commitment over time as well as new skills and processes.

With more high-quality journalism disappearing behind registration barriers and paywalls, the democratic dangers may also become more apparent in the year ahead. The fear is that serious news consumption will be largely confined to elites who can afford to pay, while the bulk of the population pick up headlines and memes from social media or avoid the news altogether.

Our survey shows that some publishers are looking to tackle these deep-seated engagement problems though solutions journalism, events, and accessible formats like podcasts. More diverse newsrooms will also help to broaden the news agenda and modernise presentation. But gaining and keeping attention without compromising on quality (and trust) remains the key challenge for the news industry.

Against this background, artificial intelligence offers the possibility of more personal and relevant news services, as well as more efficient ways of packaging and distributing content. But platforms will need to play a role too – especially in helping publishers reach new and diverse audiences. In this regard, the growth of content licensing via the Facebook News tab and Apple News+ is an intriguing development that will be fascinating to watch, despite widespread industry cynicism. For Facebook in particular this initiative will be critical as it looks to win back trust from publishers.

More widely, publishers remain resentful about what they see as unfair competition from platforms and tech companies. With regulation looming, we’re likely to see publishers pushing their rights harder than for many years, even as most of our respondents are sceptical that policymakers will actually help publishers, and as some platforms seem to be considering how important news actually is for their main products and services.

At the same time, the overwhelming mood from this year’s survey is one of quiet determination not to be distracted by the latest innovations but to focus on delivering long-term value for audiences. There is no one path to success – and there will be many publishers that do not make it – but there is greater confidence now that good journalism can continue to flourish in a digital age.

Postscript

Once again, thanks to all those who have contributed to this year’s predictions and to those who completed our digital leaders’ survey. We’d be delighted to hear from you if you have comments or suggestions for next year at:

reuters.institute@politics.ox.ac.uk

Survey Methodology

233 people completed a closed survey in December 2019. Participants, drawn from 32 countries, were selected because they held senior positions (editorial, commercial, or product) in traditional or digital-born publishing companies and were responsible for aspects of digital or wider media strategy. The results reflect this strategic sample of select industry leaders, not a representative sample.

Base = 233 Digital Leaders surveyed, 32 countries, 29 November–31 December 2019

Typical job titles included Editor in Chief/Executive Editor, CEO, Head of Digital, Head of Innovation, Chief Product Officer, Director of Multimedia ,etc. Just over half of participants were from organisations with a print background (54%), around a quarter (26%) represented commercial or public service broadcasters, more than one in ten came from digital-born media (14%), and a further 6% from B2B companies or news agencies. 32 countries were represented in the survey including the US, Australia, Kenya, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, and Japan, but the majority came from European countries such as the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Austria, Poland, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.

Participants filled out an online survey with specific questions around strategic digital intent in 2020. Around 95% answered most questions, although response rates vary. The majority (80%) contributed comments and ideas in open questions and some of these are quoted with permission in this document

Nic Newman is Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, where he has been lead author of the annual Digital News Report since 2012. He is also a consultant on digital media, working actively with news companies on product, audience, and business strategies for digital transition. He has produced a media and journalism predictions report for the last 12 years. This is the fifth to be published by the Reuters Institute.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the input of 233 digital leaders from 32 countries, who responded to a survey around the key challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.

Respondents included almost 50 editors in chief, almost 40 CEOs or managing directors, and 30 heads of digital and came from some of the world’s leading traditional media companies as well as digital-born organisations (see full breakdown at the end of the report).

Survey input and answers helped guide some of the themes in this report. Many quotes do not carry names or organisations, at the request of those contributors.

As with many predictions reports there is a significant element of speculation, particularly around specifics, and the report should be read bearing this in mind. Having said that, any mistakes – factual or otherwise – should be considered entirely the responsibility of the authors.

Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of the Google News Initiative.

1. Tendencias y predicciones clave para 2020

En esta sección exploramos asuntos clave para este año, integrando datos y opiniones de nuestra encuesta a directivos. Para cada tema proponemos algunos indicios sobre qué puede pasar después.

1.1 Las perspectivas para el negocio son las más positivas en años, pero persisten preocupaciones sobre el periodismo

Casi tres cuartas partes de los encuestados (73%) se sienten confiados o muy confiados sobre las perspectivas de sus empresas para 2020. Se trata de un dato sorprendentemente positivo teniendo en cuenta la incertidumbre constante en áreas editoriales y comerciales, aunque refleja el optimismo de muchos que consideran que el ingreso vía lectores y la diversificación de estrategias empiezan a dar sus frutos.

Esos mismos ejecutivos, no obstante, tienen menos confianza en el periodismo en general (46%) y en el periodismo de interés público en particular. Hay una inquietud extendida por el debilitamiento de la información local y las presiones políticas y económicas a los periodistas que tratan de controlar a los ricos y a los poderosos.

“Me preocupa que los periódicos locales y tradicionales estén golpeados por deudas corporativas, la caída del ingreso por publicidad y una transición lenta a las ganancias digitales”.
Jeremy Gilbert, director de Iniciativas Estratégicas del Washington Post

“Es deprimente y preocupante ver los continuos ataques de jefes de Estado contra medios independientes”.
Karyn Fleeting, Reach plc, Reino Unido

Confianza en mi compañía y en el estado del periodismo

Preguntas 1 y 2: ¿Hasta qué punto tiene confianza sobre las perspectivas de su compañía y las perspectivas del periodismo para 2020? Respuestas: 230.

Una tendencia notable es la falta de confianza de los medios públicos (PSB), muchos de los cuales afrontan caídas veloces de audiencias por la creciente competencia de Netflix y Spotify y, en varios casos, ataques de políticos populistas y dueños de medios privados comerciales. Entre los encuestados de emisoras públicas el promedio del índice de confianza fue de 46%, frente a un 73% del promedio general. Estos números están influidos por recortes presupuestarios recientes o próximos en numerosos países, entre ellos Dinamarca, Australia y el Reino Unido.

Foco en los ingresos vía lectores

En contraste, los medios privados (especialmente aquellos que representan calidad en el mercado) muestran confianza creciente sobre el futuro de los contenidos de pago. Empresas grandes y chicas alcanzaron importantes hitos durante 2019. El New York Times tiene 4,9 millones de suscriptores digitales y de papel, casi la mitad de su objetivo de 10 millones.1 El Financial Times quebró la meta del millón de suscriptores, en tanto que el Guardian volvió a tener beneficios (tras años de pérdidas fuertes) al lograr más de un millón de contribuciones de sus lectores en los últimos tres años.2 Los ejecutivos en varios países dicen que los ingresos vía lectores representan ya una fuente estable y creciente, mientras que la publicidad ha permanecido volátil y muchos en 2019 reportaron resultados peores de los esperados.

“Las fuentes de crecimiento, específicamente el ingreso vía lectores, tienen perspectivas muy positivas. El ingreso por publicidad sigue siendo una preocupación principal”.
Jon Slade, jefe del Departamento Comercial del Financial Times

Fuentes de ingresos más importantes para mi compañía hacia el futuro

Pregunta 3: Pensando en su empresa, ¿con cuál de las siguientes declaraciones coincide más? El ingreso vía lectores va a ser el más importante hacia adelante/ El ingreso vía lectores y la publicidad tendrán la misma importancia/ La publicidad será más importante. Respuestas: 189.

Pero no sólo las grandes empresas están haciendo funcionar el ingreso vía lectores: las publicaciones más pequeñas también están teniendo éxito mediante una variedad de modelos de suscripción y membresía. El sitio neerlandés de investigación Follow the Money y el medio danés de “periodismo lento” Zetland figuran entre los que llegaron al punto de inflexión de rentabilidad.

“Gracias a una muy exitosa campaña de embajadores (miembros que traen nuevos miembros) este año tuvimos 25% de crecimiento en agosto y por primera vez nuestro presupuesto está equilibrado”.
Lea Korsgaard, editora jefa de Zetland, Dinamarca

“Tenemos una base sólida de suscriptores y sabemos que eso incrementa nuestra audiencia y mantiene baja nuestra tasa de cancelaciones. Estamos convencidos de que el modelo de suscripción tiene garantía de futuro”.
Jan-Willem Sanders, director de Follow the Money, Países Bajos

Opciones de pago on El Mundo

Este año veremos medios del sur de Europa inclinándose más por la suscripción. En España, El Mundo empezó a cobrar por contenido premium mientras que El País se prepara para seguir ese camino a comienzos de 2020 y ya pide registrarse (gratis) para leer columnas de opinión y artículos de fin de semana. Se trata de un notable cambio de dirección para medios que hasta hace poco perseguían una estrategia basada en escalar la cantidad de usuarios, lo que a veces ha provocado acusaciones de clickbait (artículos creados para generar clics fáciles) y periodismo de baja calidad.

Otras cadenas regionales españolas como Vocento y Prensa Ibérica instalaron muros de pago en la mayoría de sus medios, en tanto que el sector independiente se inclina más por las opciones de membresías y/o donaciones.

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

¿Se desmigajan las cookies? Los medios impulsarán de una forma más agresiva la estrategia de registro e inicio de sesión tras las regulaciones sobre privacidad de datos y las decisiones de navegadores como Safari y Firefox, que combaten el rastreo de datos para publicidad e impusieron mayores restricciones al uso de cookies. Recolectar información de primera mano será crucial, aunque beneficiará aún más a plataformas como Google y Facebook que tienen cientos de millones de usuarios autentificados y conectados. En contraste, algunos medios pueden pelear por persuadir usuarios para que inicien sesión. Siguiendo esta tendencia, se esperan más alianzas de medios como NetID3 en Alemania y Nonio4 en Portugal.

Más consolidación. La disminución en los márgenes por la caída de lectores y el creciente poder de las plataformas ha provocado ya una serie de megafusiones, lo que motiva nuevas preguntas sobre pluralidad y concentración de la propiedad. Las cadenas estadounidenses de periódicos regionales Gannett y GateHouse Media combinaron fuerzas en noviembre de 2019 para crear un conglomerado que tendrá aproximadamente una de cada seis publicaciones diarias en los Estados Unidos. Vice compró Refinery 29 mientras que Vox Media adquirió New York Magazine en operaciones que llaman la atención y al mismo tiempo crean escala y audiencias complementarias. En el Reino Unido la compañía que posee el Daily Mail sumó el periódico i a un grupo que incluye el gratuito Metro y concentra alrededor de un 30% del mercado nacional de diarios. El regional JPI Media está en problemas y en venta, y es probable que lo compre Reach plc o Newsquest, y se rumorea que también está en oferta el periódico nacional Daily Telegraph. En el pasado varias de estas fusiones destrozaron valor, por lo tanto probablemente el foco sea conservar las propuestas editoriales distintivas e integrar las áreas tecnológicas, los equipos de datos y la tecnología publicitaria.

Alianzas editoriales. Los medios se dieron cuenta de que no pueden cubrir todas las opciones y buscan cada vez más alguna oportunidad de alianza. En las recientes elecciones en el Reino Unido, Sky News se asoció con BuzzFeed News para tener más presencia en la conversación social. A cambio, BuzzFeed obtuvo acceso a exponer su marca ante una audiencia mucho más amplia. En el área del podcast, las alianzas están a la orden del día con Gimlet trabajando con el Wall Street Journal y Slate juntándose con The Economist para producir Secret History of the Future.

Se evitan las suscripciones. Más medios buscan nuestro dinero, la gente encontrará más y más muros de pago y los usuarios serán cada vez más conscientes respecto de cómo burlarlos. La mayoría está dispuesta a suscribirse a un medio digital o a dos,5 pero aún podría interesarle acceder a más. El vacío legal en torno a la navegación en modo incógnito se va cerrando mediante las estrategias de registro, aunque surgen sofisticados bloqueadores de muros de pago capaces de abrir los sitios más seguros. Los usuarios también sabrán aprovechar mejor las ofertas especiales a la hora de renovar una suscripción.

Ver también
“Construyendo el negocio que queremos”, por Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
“Lograr que los lectores paguen”, por Eduardo Suárez

1.2 La política de la posverdad y la respuesta periodística

Las elecciones en el Reino Unido constituyeron otro ejemplo de políticos tomándose los hechos a la ligera, evitando el escrutinio del periodismo y denigrando a la prensa. “Ha sido la elección más superficial, mentirosa y frustrante que puedo recordar, y una mala propaganda para la democracia”, declaró el veterano analista político Peter Kellner.6 Full Fact, organización independiente dedicada a la verificación de datos, dijo que la campaña de seis semanas mostró “tácticas inapropiadas y engañosas que no habíamos visto antes”. Eso incluyó una cuenta oficial del Partido Conservador en Twitter haciéndose pasar por una entidad de verificación y editando imágenes de un político laborista para mostrarlo como si no pudiera responder una pregunta sobre la posición de su partido sobre el Brexit.

Los medios integraron la verificación de datos en sus coberturas y controlaron a los políticos cuanto pudieron, pero cada vez menos gente sigue esos debates y esas entrevistas en TV. Y cada vez más los políticos tratan de evitar a la prensa y emiten sus mensajes directamente en redes sociales. Boris Johnson no aceptó someterse a las preguntas del entrevistador más duro de la BBC, Andrew Neil, y se escondió en una cámara frigorífica para esquivar otra entrevista televisiva. Channel 4 reemplazó a Johnson con una escultura de hielo que se derretía cuando se negó a debatir con otros líderes sobre cambio climático. Tras estos desafíos, los tories advirtieron a los periodistas que iban a revisar la licencia de Channel 4 y el mecanismo de financiación de la BBC.7

En nuestra encuesta, el 85% coincidió con la premisa de que los medios deberían hacer más para señalar las mentiras y medias verdades. Pero no queda claro si esto funciona con las audiencias, e incluso pueden endurecerse las críticas tanto desde la izquierda como desde la derecha.

Estos dilemas se agudizarán este año, mientras más políticos en el mundo adoptan el manual de Donald Trump para enfrentarse a la prensa. Desde lo sucedido en 2016, los medios han robustecido sus verificaciones de datos aunque varias empresas que tienen equipos de chequeo temen que eso no tiene “nada de impacto en amplias franjas del público”.

Los medios deberían hacer más para señalar las declaraciones engañosas y medias verdades que dicen los políticos

Pregunta 7: Hasta qué punto coincide con la siguiente frase: Los medios deberían hacer más para señalar las declaraciones engañosas y medias verdades que dicen los políticos. Respuestas: 223.

“La falta de consecuencias para un presidente que miente repetidamente ha incentivado a que toda una generación de políticos abandonara el compromiso con la honestidad. Es nefasto”.
Editor líder en los Estados Unidos

Ver también
“Periodismo bajo presión”, por Meera Selva

No obstante, las reacciones no son obvias y los medios muchas veces no ayudan al repetir o amplificar mentiras y narrativas engañosas. Incluso entre quienes tratan de atacar las falsedades e inventos descarados hay preocupación por si dedicar tiempo a la verificación de datos puede desviar recursos y atención de otras tareas periodísticas. Otros dicen que existe una delgada línea entre “señalar una frase y las percepciones de sesgo”, lo cual puede erosionar la confianza de lectores, oyentes y televidentes. Los medios también pueden tener en cuenta nuestra investigación, que muestra que el público a menudo siente que los políticos (y otras figuras públicas) muchas veces no reciben trato equitativo8 y que la prensa adopta una mirada excesivamente negativa de los hechos.9 Algunos esperan más matices que simplemente señalar a políticos cuando no dicen la verdad.

“Ciertamente necesitamos ofrecer verificación de datos, pero también contenido que explore las políticas de buena fe, lo que puede estar funcionando bien, cómo la política marca la diferencia. Si no, alejaremos aún más a nuestras audiencias de la política y haremos que confíen aún menos en ella”.
Mary Hockaday, directora en BBC World Service

“Siempre tengo optimismo sobre la industria. Pero este año me preocupa más que nunca el cansancio de los lectores y cómo evitan las noticias. Esto es claramente un problema para la democracia y el debate, no sólo para la industria”.
Sarah Marshall, jefa de Desarrollo de Audiencia en Conde Nast

El alejamiento de los lectores y la evitación de las noticias surgen como preocupaciones crecientes entre muchos ejecutivos. Contrarrestar el escepticismo y la negatividad probablemente sea este año un tema importante para los periodistas.

La responsabilidad de las plataformas

Al enfocar el problema de la desinformación, los periodistas son tan críticos con las plataformas tecnológicas como con los políticos. En la encuesta de este año son condenatorios sus veredictos sobre los intentos de las plataformas para solucionar el problema. Menos de uno de cada cinco (17%) le da crédito a Facebook por sus esfuerzos durante 2019, pese a que eliminó millones de cuentas, financió verificaciones de datos e incrementó la transparencia de la propaganda política. YouTube tuvo apenas 18% de aprobación, pese a que se dedicó a promocionar fuentes fiables sobre noticias de última hora y además presentó herramientas para señalar la desinformación. Las búsquedas en Google lograron un porcentaje algo mejor con el 34% después de sus cambios en el algoritmo para favorecer el contenido original y el periodismo local en sus resultados. Twitter llegó al 41%, posiblemente por su reciente decisión de prohibir toda propaganda política en su plataforma.

Cómo califican los editores a las plataformas según su lucha contra la desinformación

Pregunta 8: ¿Hasta qué punto usted cree que las siguientes plataformas han hecho lo suficiente durante el último año para combatir la desinformación? Respuestas: 221.

Pero el mensaje general de los editores es que esos esfuerzos no están cerca de combatir la escala y el alcance del problema.

“Todas las plataformas gastan una fracción ínfima de sus vastas ganancias y sus recursos tecnológicos en esta área, pese a que una prensa justa y transparente es un ingrediente absolutamente vital en una democracia saludable que funciona. La mayoría de sus esfuerzos parecen palabrería para calmar a los reguladores”.
Editor británico

Nuestra encuesta también revela los diferentes enfoques de Europa y Estados Unidos sobre dónde deberían estar los límites de la libertad de expresión.

“La mayoría de las plataformas aún mantiene la posición ‘Si no es delito, es libertad de expresión’, lo cual resulta inaceptable. Se llevan el dinero y dejan que el trabajo duro (verificación de datos, refutaciones, etcétera) lo hagan los periodistas que trabajan en medios”.
Vinzenz Schmid, estrategia en SRG SSR de Suiza

Es difícil separar la responsabilidad de las plataformas de las tensiones más amplias que existen en una sociedad y que alimentan esas tendencias. Y sin una guía clara sobre los límites de la libertad de expresión, cada vez más se pide a las empresas de Silicon Valley que tomen decisiones editoriales sobre qué contenido debe eliminarse o degradarse. Hagan lo que hagan, es complicado que logren satisfacer a editores o políticos en 2020.

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

Regulación de plataformas. En algunos países (como el Reino Unido) es probable que este año haya un regulador tecnológico con poder para supervisar un código de conducta aplicable a las empresas más grandes como Facebook y Google, y nuevas reglas para darles a los usuarios más control sobre sus datos. Pero los asuntos vinculados a libertad de expresión y elecciones van a ser mucho más difíciles de regular. En gran medida los políticos van a eludir estos desafíos otra vez en 2020.

El foco en la elección estadounidense. Las redes sociales van a estar en el centro de atención en los prolegómenos de los comicios presidenciales de noviembre: habrá actividades coordinadas de campaña y más acusaciones de parcialidad a las plataformas, tanto desde la derecha como desde ciertas voces de la izquierda. Se esperan más calumnias contra candidatos y más actores domésticos intentando armar campañas coordinadas en distintas redes, desde discusiones hasta bronca sobre qué mensajes políticos falsos o engañosos deben ser verificados o sobre si hay que darles menos relevancia. Concentrarán cada vez más atención los grupos cerrados en Facebook y WhatsApp, donde es más difícil controlar y refutar información falsa.

1.3 Las plataformas y su relación con el periodismo

Nuestra encuesta a líderes digitales muestra que se mantienen más positivos sobre Google y Twitter que sobre Apple, Facebook, Snapchat y Amazon en cuanto a las iniciativas para apoyar al periodismo. Más de la mitad califica a Google con un 3 o más en una escala de 0 a 5, pero las otras plataformas obtuvieron más opiniones negativas que positivas y en términos generales existe una considerable cantidad de escepticismo sobre sus motivaciones reales.

Cómo califican los editores a las plataformas en función del apoyo al periodismo
Porcentaje de respuestas de 3 o más en una escala de 0 a 5

Pregunta 9: ¿Hasta qué punto cree usted que las siguientes plataformas han hecho lo suficiente para apoyar al periodismo? Respuestas: 221. * Estas cifras son bajas en parte debido a la cantidad de respuestas “No sé”: 13% para Apple, 26% para Amazon y 38% para Snapchat, comparado con apenas 2% para Google y 3% para Facebook.

La calificación más alta para Google se refleja con varios encuestados que tienen o han recibido fondos de innovación de esa empresa (DNI o GNI) y con quienes colaboran con la compañía en sus productos relacionados con la información. La puntuación baja para Facebook puede vincularse a la histórica desconfianza por la serie de cambios en la estrategia del producto que dejaron a algunos medios financieramente expuestos. En 2019, de todos modos, Facebook reforzó su compromiso con el periodismo mediante varias iniciativas nuevas y la promesa de invertir en los próximos años alrededor de 300 millones de dólares en proyectos relacionados con el periodismo.

No obstante, la sensación general de nuestro sondeo indica que los editores no quieren limosnas de las plataformas: prefieren un escenario parejo para competir en condiciones justas y obtener una compensación acorde con el valor que aporta su contenido.

“Pocas plataformas se toman en serio el negocio del periodismo. Fondos y pequeñas migajas de compromiso no alcanzan. La industria necesita modelos de negocio reales y significativos para el periodismo. Apple News+ logra lo opuesto, que es ofrecer beneficios a Apple mientras las condiciones para los medios son horribles”.
Líder de un medio global

Los legisladores siguen hablando de diferentes tipos de intervenciones para ayudar al sector de los medios. Incluyen imponer las nuevas directivas de la Unión Europea sobre copyright, a menudo denominadas “impuesto al enlace” porque implican que la plataforma pague por el contenido que aparece en sus agregadores de noticias sin autorización. Se trata de un resultado directo de la presión que ejercieron los grandes grupos mediáticos, aunque todo arrancó de forma escabrosa en Francia, el primer país miembro que lo implementó: Google optó por mostrar menos información en los resultados de búsquedas en lugar de establecer un precedente costoso. Con los medios recurriendo a la Justicia y ambos bandos atrincherándose, parece que los únicos ganadores este año serán los abogados.

La Unión Europea tomó otros caminos más positivos para colaborar con las organizaciones periodísticas, como permitir que sus miembros exceptúen a los medios digitales de pagar el impuesto al valor añadido (VAT), al tiempo que varios gobiernos en el mundo abordan cuestiones de transparencia y precios excesivos en el mercado de publicidad digital.

Como hemos documentado en un informe reciente, los legisladores tienen un rango de opciones factibles si pretenden crear un ambiente más propicio para el periodismo digital independiente, incluyendo acciones para proteger la libertad de prensa, mejorar la sostenibilidad del negocio informativo y ayudar a que la industria y la profesión trabajen hacia su futuro digital.10

Aún no se sabe si los legisladores van a dar esos pasos, pero en nuestra encuesta los editores sienten que tales intervenciones son más propensas a dañar el periodismo (25%) que a ayudarlo (18%) y la mayoría cree que no marcarán la diferencia (56%).

¿Las intervenciones legislativas este año van a ayudar o a dañar al periodismo?

Pregunta 13: ¿Espera que las intervenciones de legisladores ayuden o dañen al periodismo este año? Respuestas: 217

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

Se hace global la pestaña de noticias de Facebook. Al desplegarse más allá de Estados Unidos, se pueden esperar más discusiones sobre qué medios deberían estar y cuánto se les debería pagar. Sin embargo, quizá la pregunta más importante es si los usuarios van a prestarle algo de atención a un jardín amurallado repleto de medios fiables. Nuestra investigación sugiere que Facebook no es un destino para informarse: ahí las noticias corresponden más a una cuestión fortuita y cambiar esos comportamientos puede ser difícil. Mark Zuckerberg públicamente mencionó su objetivo de tener decenas de millones de usuarios, es decir, apenas un pequeño porcentaje de los 2.000 millones de usuarios que tiene Facebook en el mundo.

Noticias controladas fuera de las plataformas. La pestaña de noticias de Facebook es parte de una tendencia más extendida de las plataformas que buscan crear ambientes informativos confiables y curados en lugar de mezclarlos con el contenido generado por usuarios. YouTube empezó a impulsar medios confiables cada vez que surge una noticia importante y Google ofrece una selección cuidada de noticias en productos apoyados en inteligencia artificial como Discover. Vemos también más personas involucradas en el proceso: las plataformas contratan editores para manejar ciertas sutilezas.11

1.4. Diversidad y talento en la redacción

En los últimos años la industria despertó frente a la falta de diversidad en las redacciones y las complicaciones que eso crea a la hora de representar a las sociedades de manera justa y rigurosa. La mirada mayormente se ha concentrado en el género al compás del movimiento #MeToo, la exposición de las diferencias salariales en el Reino Unido y las arraigadas actitudes sexistas en redacciones francesas. Pero a raíz del Brexit, Donald Trump y las protestas de los “chalecos amarillos” también hubo introspecciones sobre falta de diversidad política en el periodismo y la incomprensión sobre qué preocupaciones tiene la gente que no vive en las grandes ciudades.

Varios editores dicen en nuestra encuesta que dieron grandes pasos sobre diversidad de género: tres cuartas partes (76%) creen que su medio está haciendo un buen trabajo. De todos modos, se ponen peor nota en cuanto a diversidad en zonas no metropolitanas (55%), en diversidad política (48%) y en diversidad racial (33%). Los críticos dirán que estos números relativamente altos indican cierta autocomplacencia entre los ejecutivos y que es necesario hacer mucho más.

Mi medio hace un buen trabajo sobre…

Pregunta 5: ¿Hasta qué punto coincide con las siguientes frases? Respuestas: 227.

En esas cifras podemos detectar diferencias significativas según la región, con los escandinavos mucho más seguros de la diversidad de género que sus colegas de otras partes de Europa. En general, las mujeres se muestran mucho más escépticas que los hombres en términos del progreso que hubo.

“En Francia somos particularmente malos en cuestiones de diversidad. En mi redacción pienso que esa conciencia no llegó aún al nivel adecuado”.
Líder de un medio gráfico francés

Otros reportan progreso en las franjas de empleados menos experimentados, aunque a menudo las decisiones editoriales siguen en manos de hombres:

“Los medios portugueses están muy equilibrados en cuanto al género… excepto entre los directores”.
Catarina Carvalho, directora editorial de Diário de Notícias

En nuestro sondeo se registra un amplio reconocimiento de la necesidad de expandir el reclutamiento de personal más allá de las élites liberales urbanas. Los medios nativos digitales en particular han recurrido al trabajo remoto para incrementar la diversidad, pero en países como Sudáfrica se trata de una modalidad laboral difícil de implementar y su rentabilidad muchas veces no cuadra:

“La presión de los costes y un país muy dispar geográficamente implican que es difícil cubrir suficientemente áreas periféricas, y la mayoría de los medios se concentra en zonas metropolitanas”.
Editor sudafricano

Un reciente informe del RISJ sobre diversidad y talento12 concluyó que los periodistas deben llegar a audiencias cada vez más diversas, al tiempo que las redacciones se tienen que hacer más atractivas para nuevos empleados a quienes es necesario convencer de que el negocio de los medios tiene futuro.

Según nuestra encuesta, los directivos sienten que será una tarea más fácil en las áreas editoriales (76%) que en ciencia de datos y tecnología (24%) o en producto (39%), donde existe una intensa competencia con las plataformas tecnológicas y las grandes marcas que frecuentemente pueden ofrecer salarios más altos, más estabilidad laboral y una cultura en la que las personas pueden producir su mejor trabajo.

“Se intensifica la competencia por el talento en tecnología y datos. Google y Facebook contratan incansablemente en Londres. En 2019 se llevaron a algunos integrantes del equipo e indirectamente vemos también una presión significativa hacia arriba en los salarios”.
Editor del Reino Unido

Hay algunas zonas conflictivas más allá de la confianza general sobre retener personal en el área editorial. The Athletic, que lanzó su servicio de suscripción deportiva en el Reino Unido, contrató a parte de los mejores reporteros regionales y nacionales, supuestamente duplicando salarios de varios periodistas. El panorama también es complicado en audio: hay una pelea por quienes tienen talento en este sector y por los productores de podcasts. Los medios gráficos y las emisoras compiten con plataformas tecnológicas como Spotify y con estudios independientes.

Confianza sobre atraer y retener el talento en distintas áreas
Porcentajes que afirman tener mucha o extrema confianza

Pregunta 6: ¿Cuánto confía en que su medio pueda atraer y retener el talento necesario en las siguientes áreas? Respuestas: 225.
Photo: Shutterstock/lassedesignen 

“Tenemos menos confianza respecto del personal editorial más joven (menos de 30 años). Tienden a dejarse llevar por el podcast y al ser digitales puros se alejan de redacciones más apoyadas en textos”.
Troels Jørgensen, director digital de Politiken

En líneas generales, muchos editores se abrazan a la esperanza de que el “entusiasmo de trabajar en los medios y ser capaz de lograr un impacto positivo en la sociedad” seguirá atrayendo talento, incluso aunque el salario y las condiciones materiales sean mejores en otro lado.

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

Iniciativas para incrementar la diversidad. Algunos medios empezaron a imponerse objetivos de equilibrio de género entre los colaboradores. El proyecto 50:50 de la BBC arrancó con 500 equipos que se sumaron voluntariamente y la vasta mayoría (75%) logró la meta.

Más herramientas para ayudar a medir la diversidad. En otras partes, los medios digitales tienen cada vez más herramientas de software que dan datos en tiempo real a los editores. Probablemente veremos más control externo este año como el rastreador de diferencias entre géneros en los medios canadienses (que actualmente muestra una sobrerrepresentación de hombres entre los colaboradores de las principales publicaciones). Se espera que esta clase de herramientas también ilustre la falta de diversidad en otras áreas.

Proporción de fuentes masculinas y femeninas por cada medio

Ver también
“Manejando las tensiones intergeneracionales en los medios”, por Lucy Kueng

1.5 Nueva era de oro para el audio, pero ¿dónde está el dinero?

Todo parece indicar que será otro gran año para hacer podcasts: más de la mitad de los encuestados dice que impulsará diferentes iniciativas este año. Nuestro reciente informe sobre News Podcasting and the Opportunities for Publishers (Podcasts informativos y las oportunidades para los medios13) encontró que el éxito del producto The Daily del New York Times (y el creciente interés de destacados anunciantes) entusiasmaba a los editores. Identificamos 60 podcasts informativos diarios en cinco países, la mayoría de los cuales empezaron en los últimos 18 meses. Y hay más en camino. The Times de Londres es uno de varios medios que lanzarán un podcast informativo diario en 2020. Otros invierten en formatos de entrevistas o documentales. Le Monde, por ejemplo, acaba de sacar tres nuevas series de podcasts adaptados de artículos de investigación.14

Iniciativas importantes en audio para 2020

Pregunta 10: Se abren nuevas oportunidades en formatos de audio y voz, con audiencias e ingresos publicitarios crecientes: ¿hasta qué punto las siguientes iniciativas serán importantes para su compañía en 2020? Respuestas: 221

Audiencias más grandes, mejores mediciones y acceso fácil se combinaron para cambiar la rentabilidad de los podcasts informativos. Esto alienta a que los medios inviertan en crear más contenido de calidad y a que las plataformas inviertan en mejor distribución y monetización: un círculo virtuoso de crecimiento. Los medios ven al podcast como una oportunidad para atraer audiencias más jóvenes, construir hábito y arrimar ingresos adicionales.

En Estados Unidos se proyecta que el ingreso vía podcast va a crecer alrededor de 30% este año y superará los mil millones de dólares en 202115, pero en otras partes los ingresos andan más lentos y, pese a la clara oportunidad en términos de audiencia, varios medios aún se resisten:

“El problema del audio es la dificultad para monetizarlo, porque en estos momentos los anunciantes en España no están invirtiendo”.
Vicente Ruiz Gómez, subdirector y jefe digital de El Mundo

“El audio y la voz parecen cada vez más importantes, pero todavía nos queda camino por recorrer para generar suficiente participación o ingresos que den algún tipo de retorno frente a la inversión nada despreciable que implica hacerlo con un estándar razonable de calidad”.
Editor nacional del Reino Unido

Las organizaciones que se apoyan en suscripciones se resisten por diferentes motivos. Hay pocas oportunidades para que funcione un trabajo de alta calidad en audio, y escaso foco de las plataformas en esta área. Mientras tanto, las emisoras tienen que invertir en varias opciones de audio a la carta para proteger sus posiciones en el mercado y atraer audiencias más jóvenes y diversas. Las emisoras públicas experimentan con nuevos audios a la carta para dispositivos de voz, desarrollando boletines informativos cortos y poniendo a prueba formatos interactivos. La BBC invierte fuerte, igual que NPR en EEUU, ABC en Australia y Sveriges Radio en Suecia, pero preocupa enormemente que las plataformas usen esos contenidos para construir sus propios negocios.

Este año se verán más tensiones entre emisoras y plataformas, con “boicot de contenidos” y estrategias en las que el contenido se lanza primero en las aplicaciones propias.

“Tenemos planes ambiciosos para transmisiones en vivo, podcasts y nuevos clips. La decisión estratégica que debemos sopesar es cuánto hacer y lanzar en plataformas externas como Spotify y Google”.
Olle Zachrison, jefe de Noticias de Sveriges Radio

Con Google lanzando internacionalmente su agregación de audios informativos y Spotify Drive mezclando listas musicales con breves contenidos noticiosos en audio, puede ocurrir otro momento crítico. Las emisoras temen que esos servicios les hagan perder su conexión directa con las audiencias.

Algunos medios boicotean servicios de agregación de audios de Google y Spotify

Los medios impresos tienen menos que perder, aunque varios permanecen cautelosos para no repetir errores del pasado:

“Los medios, con razón, se han resistido a proveer contenido de audio a los servicios de agregación hasta que haya un camino claro para monetizar. Google va a gastar dinero para licenciar audios noticiosos en 2020, así que veremos si puede convertirse en un producto informativo financieramente sostenible”.
Editor del Reino Unido

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

Podcasts más allá del idioma inglés. Hasta ahora, la acción se ha concentrado mayormente en Estados Unidos y un puñado de países angloparlantes, pero esto va a empezar a cambiar. Brasil ya es el segundo mercado mundial de podcast, según algunas mediciones,16 y este año será un objetivo central para Google y Spotify. España y Francia también experimentan un fuerte crecimiento en las audiencias y en el desarrollo de estudios independientes para producir podcasts.

Artículos en audio como estándar. Mejoras tecnológicas permiten nuevas oportunidades para que los medios generen rápidamente una versión en audio a partir de un texto. En Canadá, el Globe and Mail es uno de los primeros en usar Amazon Polly, un servicio de conversión de texto a audio que suena mucho más natural para el oído humano que las versiones anteriores. Los suscriptores pueden escuchar artículos seleccionados en inglés, francés y mandarín y elegir su voz preferida.17

En Dinamarca el sitio de “periodismo lento” Zetland provee todas sus historias con la opción de un audio donde una persona lee el texto. Ahora alrededor de un 75% de los artículos se escuchan en vez de ser leídos (ver el cuadro de abajo), quizá una señal de lo que viene en otros medios. Mientras tanto, en Brasil el periódico Estadão hizo una alianza con Ford para crear un servicio diario de audio leído por un humano y emitido en Spotify. Cada parte del periódico tiene su propio álbum y cada artículo, su pista. Muchos medios ven a los vehículos conectados a internet como una nueva oportunidad de llegar a audiencias, y al audio como una forma clave para distribuir periodismo en el futuro.

¿Guerra de plataformas? Spotify viene erosionando el dominio de Apple en el ámbito del podcast y ha invertido 500 millones de dólares para mejorar el descubrimiento de contenido original y comprarlo. En varios países durante 2019 duplicó su participación en el mercado18 y en pocos años quiere transformarse en la plataforma líder del sector. Sin embargo, se espera que Apple presente batalla este año, al tiempo que empresas especializadas como Luminary en EEUU, Sybel en Francia y Podimo en Dinamarca y Alemania compiten para ser “el Netflix del podcast”.

1.6 Surgen dudas sobre el rol de la inteligencia artificial en la redacción

Un informe reciente de la London School of Economics reveló innumerables formas en que la inteligencia artificial (o al menos el aprendizaje automático conocido como machine learning) ya tiene su despliegue en el periodismo, y también señaló los desafíos éticos que están por venir.19 El informe detalló cómo se usa la inteligencia artificial 1) para obtener información, 2) en la producción (incluyendo distintas clases de automatización en la redacción) y 3) en distribución y recomendación.

En nuestro sondeo los líderes digitales dicen que este año el foco apuntará sobre todo a crear recomendaciones más efectivas (53% califican esto como “muy importante”) seguido de usos comerciales como localizar potenciales suscriptores y optimizar los muros de pago (47%) y opciones para generar más eficiencia en la redacción, como ayudar a la edición fina (subbing) o mejorar la consistencia del etiquetado o tagging (39%). Solo una minoría de editores cree que este año será importante explorar áreas como el periodismo automatizado (robo-journalism, 12%) o el uso de inteligencia artificial para obtener información (16%).

¿Qué usos de la inteligencia artificial en las redacciones será el más importante en 2020?

Pregunta 11: ¿Hasta qué punto van a ser importantes para su empresa en 2020 los siguientes usos de la inteligencia artificial? Respuestas: 218.

Algunos editores hacen una clara distinción entre el uso de inteligencia artificial en el ámbito editorial y fuera de él. The Times de Londres, por ejemplo, tiene un eslogan para ayudar a enfocar sus esfuerzos: “Escrito por humanos, seleccionado por humanos, distribuido por robots”. Este año va a extender James, su motor de recomendaciones apoyado en inteligencia artificial, desde los correos electrónicos a una gama más amplia de recomendaciones en aplicaciones y en la web. Algunos medios empezaron a experimentar con asistentes electrónicos de edición como Tansa y Grammarly para automatizar tareas de edición.

“Por ahora no está para hacer todo el trabajo, pero ciertamente resuelve el 80% de lo preliminar.”
Chris Duncan, director general, The Times y Sunday Times

La compañía Schibsted, con base en Escandinavia, ha ido más lejos: delegó algunas funciones de curación en algoritmos manejados por inteligencia artificial, con portadas semiautomatizadas para medios como Aftenposten y VG. El objetivo de su “Proyecto Curación” es replicar el flujo de trabajo de los portadistas a fin de “liberar tiempo para hacer más actividades creativas”.20 Aunque a algunos encuestados les preocupa que dueños sin escrúpulos usen la inteligencia artificial para recortar más puestos laborales, la mayoría se muestra optimista y cree va a redundar en un beneficio para el periodismo.

“Es un regalo que nos ofrece beneficios económicos y eficiencia. Pero no reemplaza a los periodistas: les permite volver a su función primaria de hacer noticias, descubrir hechos y entregar información.”
Editor de un periódico nacional en Canadá

Para otros, la inteligencia artificial abre nuevas oportunidades. Traducciones automatizadas, subtitulado y mejor tecnología para sintetizar voces han permitido a la BBC relanzar su servicio de video en japonés con mínima intervención humana.21 Las agencias de noticias apuntan más a transformar datos de deportes y finanzas en artículos automatizados, para expandir la velocidad y el alcance de su producto. La BBC usó una técnica similar para publicar 689 historias locales semiautomatizadas en apenas unas horas durante la noche de las elecciones (diciembre de 2019), mientras que el Guardian publicó su primer artículo automatizado en 2019 sobre la financiación de las elecciones en Australia. Agencias de noticias y medios de negocios como Bloomberg y el Wall Street Journal vienen usando inteligencia artificial para producir rápidamente noticias sobre ganancias de compañías y buscan otras formas de beneficios comerciales a partir de datos a escala.

“Estamos a la vanguardia de la automatización de noticias para transacciones operadas con máquinas. También somos líderes en la industria con nuestro muro de pago según tendencias, que se ajusta a la probabilidad de que un lector se convierta en suscriptor”.
Edward Roussell, jefe de Innovación en el Wall Street Journal

Pese al optimismo generalizado, nuestro sondeo también revela significativas preocupaciones.

Medios más pequeños temen quedar atrás debido a la complejidad, el coste y la escasez de habilidades: “No tenemos la capacidad técnica ni el presupuesto para solventar el uso de inteligencia artificial como nos gustaría”, dice Esther Alonso Rodríguez, directora de Marketing y Desarrollo de eldiario.es en España.

Otros tienen miedo de que la falta de comprensión entre los ejecutivos lleve a una sobreestimación de las capacidades actuales de la inteligencia artificial. “Es genial para transcripciones y traducciones, pero aún es inútil para escribir historias”, dice un editor experimentado que ha usado estas tecnologías. “Es como preguntar sobre el impacto de las hojas de cálculo: son útiles, pero no cambian lo básico.” Otros advierten que la industria no debería “distraerse con tendencias” y sí, en cambio, debería alinear las soluciones tecnológicas con la estrategia central.

¿Qué esperar en 2020?

Desinformación producida por inteligencia artificial. “La IA tiene el potencial de impulsar las campañas de desinformación mientras se acerca la elección de 2020 en Estados Unidos”, advierte un alto ejecutivo de uno de los medios nacionales más grandes y respetados. La inteligencia artificial puede facilitar la producción de noticias basura en texto, audio y video, y ese contenido potencialmente de baja calidad y engañoso, disfrazado de información profesional, puede reducir aún más la confianza en el periodismo.

Foco más amplio y mejor cobertura sobre inteligencia artificial. La aplicación de la inteligencia artificial y sus implicaciones para la privacidad y la democracia serán un asunto decisivo no sólo en 2020 sino en la próxima década. Pero muchos temen que la tecnología irá por delante de nuestra habilidad para echar luz sobre cómo se programan y usan esos sistemas. Nuestra investigación revela que la mayoría de los reportes noticiosos tratan a la inteligencia artificial como una novedad y cuesta explicar sus consecuencias más inmediatas y apremiantes.22 Hay señales de que esto puede cambiar este año, con más medios (Tortoise Media) teniendo la IA como un pilar de sus coberturas.

1.7 Resumen

Este será el año en que el periodismo busque recuperar relevancia y confianza en un mundo fragmentado e incierto. Empujados por presiones económicas y políticas, los medios siguen a la defensiva pero también vemos por todo el mundo varios ejemplos positivos de periodismo valiente e innovación en el negocio.

El cambio hacia el cobro a los lectores (claramente marcado otra vez en nuestra encuesta a líderes digitales) está en pleno auge y se extenderá este año en lugares tan diversos como España, Hong Kong y Argentina. Los medios ahí esperan emular y aprender del éxito de empresas pequeñas y grandes de Estados Unidos y Europa que se ocupan incansablemente de mantener contentos a sus lectores/televidentes y de nuevo comienzan a referirse a las noticias como un “negocio en crecimiento”. Pero es improbable que el cobro a los lectores funcione para todos, y requerirá compromisos más profundos y extendidos en el tiempo, y nuevas habilidades y procesos.

Teniendo en cuenta que más periodismo de calidad desaparece detrás de las barreras de registro y los muros de pago, los peligros para la democracia pueden lucir más evidentes en 2020. El miedo apunta a que el consumo de información seria quede en gran parte confinado a las élites que pueden pagar, mientras la mayoría de la población toma títulos y memes de las redes sociales o directamente evita las noticias.

Nuestro sondeo muestra que algunos medios piensan encarar estos problemas arraigados a través del periodismo de soluciones, los eventos y formatos más accesibles como los podcasts. redacciones más diversas también ayudarán a ampliar la agenda informativa y a modernizar la presentación. Pero ganar la atención y conservarla sin comprometer la calidad (y la confianza) continúa siendo el desafío clave de la industria informativa.

En este contexto, la inteligencia artificial ofrece la posibilidad de dar servicios más personalizados y relevantes, y también formas más eficientes para presentar y distribuir el contenido. Pero las plataformas también deberán asumir un rol, especialmente para ayudar a que los medios lleguen a audiencias nuevas y más diversas. Pese al escepticismo extendido en la industria, el crecimiento del contenido licenciado vía la pestaña de noticias de Facebook y Apple News+ es un desarrollo interesante y será fascinante verlo. Para Facebook en particular esta iniciativa será crítica para reconquistar la confianza de los medios.

Los editores siguen resentidos por lo que consideran es una competencia desleal de las plataformas y las compañías tecnológicas. Debido a la inminencia de una regulación, es probable que veamos cómo los medios defienden sus derechos mucho más de lo que lo han hecho en los últimos años pese a que la mayoría de los encuestados se declaran escépticos en torno a una posible ayuda de los legisladores y a que algunas plataformas parecen considerar seriamente cuán importantes son las noticias para sus principales servicios y productos.

Al mismo tiempo, el estado de ánimo abrumador en la encuesta de este año es el de una tranquila determinación para no distraerse con las últimas innovaciones y a cambio concentrarse en aportar valor a largo plazo para las audiencias. No hay un único camino al éxito (y habrá varios medios que no lo lograrán) pero ahora existe más confianza en que el buen periodismo puede continuar prosperando en la era digital.

Posdata

Agradecemos otra vez a quienes contribuyeron para las predicciones de este año y a los líderes digitales que completaron nuestra encuesta. Nos encantaría conocer sus comentarios o sus sugerencias para el próximo año en el correo electrónico reuters.institute@politics.ox.ac.uk.

Metodología de la encuesta

233 personas completaron en diciembre de 2019 una encuesta cerrada. Los participantes, de 32 países, fueron elegidos porque tienen puestos de liderazgo (en áreas editorial, comercial o de producto) en medios tradicionales o nativos digitales y porque tuvieron responsabilidad en algún aspecto de la estrategia digital o global. Los resultados reflejan esa muestra estratégica de líderes seleccionados, no una muestra representativa.

Base: 233 líderes digitales de 32 países, encuestados entre el 29 de noviembre y el 31 de diciembre de 2019.

Los puestos incluyeron directores o ejecutivos, CEO, jefes del área digital, de innovación y de producto, directores de multimedia, etcétera. Poco más de la mitad de los participantes pertenece a organizaciones con antecedentes impresos (54%), cerca de un cuarto (26%) representa a emisoras comerciales o públicas, más de uno de cada diez trabaja en un medio nativo digital (14%) y un 6% es de compañías B2B o agencias de noticias. Entre los 32 países representados figuran Estados Unidos, Australia, Kenia, Sudáfrica, México, Argentina y Japón, pero la mayoría de los encuestados vive en Europa: el Reino Unido, Alemania, España, Francia, Austria, Polonia, Finlandia, Noruega y Dinamarca.

Los participantes respondieron a un cuestionario online con preguntas específicas sobre estrategia digital para 2020. Alrededor del 95% contestó la mayoría de las preguntas, aunque la tasa de respuestas varía. El 80% contribuyó con comentarios e ideas en preguntas abiertas y algunos están citados en este documento con su autorización.

Sobre los autores

Nic Newman es investigador principal asociado en el Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, donde desde 2012 lidera como autor el Digital News Report. También es consultor sobre medios digitales y trabaja activamente en compañías informativas en áreas como producto, audiencia y estrategias de negocio para la transición digital. Lleva 12 años produciendo un informe de predicciones sobre el periodismo y los medios. Este es el quinto publicado por el Reuters Institute.

Richard Fletcher es becario principal de investigación en el Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, donde comanda el equipo de investigación. Sus áreas primordiales de trabajo son tendencias globales de consumo informativo, estudios comparativos de medios, uso de redes sociales en periodistas y medios y, en líneas generales, la relación entre tecnología y periodismo. Lidera la investigación del Reuters Institute y es coautor del Digital News Report, la encuesta anual más grande del mundo sobre consumo informativo.

Lucy Kueng es investigadora principal asociada en el Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism y experta en estrategia, innovación y liderazgo, con particular énfasis en digitalización y transiciones tecnológicas. Es profesora invitada en la Universidad de Oslo, donde enseña Innovación en Medios; consejera del NZZ Media Group de Suiza y consultora estratégica de medios. Escribió numerosos libros, incluyendo Innovators in Digital News y Strategic Management in the Media.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen es el director del Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism y profesor de Comunicación Política en la Universidad de Oxford. Su trabajo se centra en los cambios de los medios informativos, la comunicación política y el rol de las tecnologías digitales en ambos campos. Es autor, editor y coeditor de varios libros, incluyendo The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (2010, editado con David A.L. Levy) y Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns (2012).

Meera Selva es la directora del Programa de Becas Periodísticas del Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Periodista consumada con experiencias en Europa, Asia y África, llegó al Reuters Institute desde Handelsblatt Global de Alemania. Su trayectoria incluye varios años en Associated Press y tres años como corresponsal en África para el Independent, más colaboraciones sobre periodismo económico en distintos medios como el Daily Telegraph.

Eduardo Suárez es el director de Comunicación del Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Es un consumado periodista con experiencias en Europa y los Estados Unidos. Empezó su carrera en El Mundo de España, donde trabajó 14 años y fue corresponsal en Londres, Nueva York y Bruselas. Cubrió la campaña presidencial de 2016 en EEUU para Univisión y publicó tres libros sobre la política estadounidense. También es cofundador de El Español y Politibot.

Agradecimientos

Los autores agradecen el aporte de 233 líderes digitales de 32 países que respondieron un sondeo sobre los desafíos y las oportunidades clave para 2020.

Entre los encuestados hubo casi 50 directores, casi 40 CEO o gerentes y 30 jefes del área digital provenientes de algunos de los principales medios tradicionales del mundo y también de organizaciones nativas digitales (ver el detalle completo al final del informe).

Sus respuestas ayudaron a guiar algunos temas de este informe. Muchas citas carecen de atribución a petición de la persona involucrada.

Como en varios informes sobre predicciones, existe un nivel significativo de especulación, particularmente en torno a detalles, así que debe ser leído teniendo en cuenta eso. Por lo demás, cualquier error debe ser considerado total responsabilidad de los autores.

Publicado por el Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism con el apoyo de la Google News Initiative.