The unclean sister
The structural crisis in the print media offers a good opportunity to dispel old prejudices. For example, that journalistic communication is more honest or even just more honorable than commercial communication.
Column The structural crisis in the print media offers a good opportunity to dispel old prejudices. For example, that journalistic communication is more honest or even just more honorable than commercial communication.advertising is communication: what a simple, even indisputable sentence. But for more than a century and a half, the moralists of this world have treated the combination of high-minded editorials with advertisements in the media as a perhaps necessary but nevertheless regrettable mesalliance. The relationship between journalism and advertising was treated like that between sausage and wrapping paper. Now that the mesalliance is becoming fragile because the classified ads (job, car, real estate market) are migrating to the Internet, the lamentations are beginning. Could it even be that the newspaper is dying? Is it dying because its impure sister, advertising, is looking for other ways?
As a Delphi study by our institute shows, the situation is quite dramatic. The experts surveyed predict that in the long term, daily newspapers will lose 20 to 50 percent of their revenues in the classified advertising markets to Internet competitors. National newspapers are therefore likely to lose half of their income from the job market business within eight years. At the same time, it is assumed that by 2007 half of all 14 to 59-year-olds will regularly use journalistic online offerings. Between 70 and 80 percent of the time spent in this way and around 80 percent of advertising money could be lost to existing media.
The newspaper will not die as a result, but many papers will have to increase their subscription prices because their usual income will be lost. In other words, the print media are currently experiencing an economic crisis that is being overshadowed by a structural one. This turning point is a good opportunity to dispel old prejudices. For example, that of the unclean sister.
Of course, advertising is generally an attempt at persuasion; a product, occasionally also a person (currently parliamentarians, for example), is to be sold. Persuasion is only one of three basic forms of communication. In addition to persuasion based on will, there is also communication of meaning and emotion. But just as the lion is no more worthy than the worm, the attempt at persuasion - to which the recipient is by no means helpless - is no more unworthy than a conversation about trees, books or federal politics.
This also means that the editorial is not the lion and advertising is not the worm. After all, the editorial is also persuasion: it wants to achieve the reader's approval of the Iraq war or anger over a subsidy and occasionally even bring about a decision similar to the act of buying, an act of voting. There are excellent editorials and miserable ones - just as there are first- and third-rate advertisements. Incidentally, this is the reason why intelligent recipients (and uneducated children) can enjoy advertising just as much as movies or commentaries. The cultural criticism that our popular educators - from public broadcasters, for example - make of it is often enough guided by interest.
This is not a revaluation of values. The mediation service of journalism is absolutely indispensable in a democracy. It is simply a reminder that communicating about products is just as much a part of life as communicating about George W. Bush. Especially in a market society.
> Peter Glotz is Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St.Gallen.
As a Delphi study by our institute shows, the situation is quite dramatic. The experts surveyed predict that in the long term, daily newspapers will lose 20 to 50 percent of their revenues in the classified advertising markets to Internet competitors. National newspapers are therefore likely to lose half of their income from the job market business within eight years. At the same time, it is assumed that by 2007 half of all 14 to 59-year-olds will regularly use journalistic online offerings. Between 70 and 80 percent of the time spent in this way and around 80 percent of advertising money could be lost to existing media.
The newspaper will not die as a result, but many papers will have to increase their subscription prices because their usual income will be lost. In other words, the print media are currently experiencing an economic crisis that is being overshadowed by a structural one. This turning point is a good opportunity to dispel old prejudices. For example, that of the unclean sister.
Of course, advertising is generally an attempt at persuasion; a product, occasionally also a person (currently parliamentarians, for example), is to be sold. Persuasion is only one of three basic forms of communication. In addition to persuasion based on will, there is also communication of meaning and emotion. But just as the lion is no more worthy than the worm, the attempt at persuasion - to which the recipient is by no means helpless - is no more unworthy than a conversation about trees, books or federal politics.
This also means that the editorial is not the lion and advertising is not the worm. After all, the editorial is also persuasion: it wants to achieve the reader's approval of the Iraq war or anger over a subsidy and occasionally even bring about a decision similar to the act of buying, an act of voting. There are excellent editorials and miserable ones - just as there are first- and third-rate advertisements. Incidentally, this is the reason why intelligent recipients (and uneducated children) can enjoy advertising just as much as movies or commentaries. The cultural criticism that our popular educators - from public broadcasters, for example - make of it is often enough guided by interest.
This is not a revaluation of values. The mediation service of journalism is absolutely indispensable in a democracy. It is simply a reminder that communicating about products is just as much a part of life as communicating about George W. Bush. Especially in a market society.
> Peter Glotz is Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St.Gallen.
