Fög Yearbook: Media Quality Continues to Decline
The Swiss media are reporting less and less on relevant topics from politics, business and culture. The ability to classify events has also declined. This is the conclusion of the 2014 yearbook "Quality of the Swiss Media.
Overall, the quality of the Swiss media continued to erode last year, is - not for the first time - the main finding of the yearbook, whose fifth edition was presented on Monday. Almost all types of media lost quality, from SRG broadcasters to subscription newspapers, private television and online portals. The root of the evil: low quality is rewarded. "This is devastating," sociology professor Kurt Imhof, who launched the yearbook, told the media in Bern. At stake, he warned, is informed democracy.
"Pronounced free culture"
Those who produce quality are among the losers in terms of advertising revenue, according to the study. "The funds for quality journalism are collapsing," said study co-author Mark Eisenegger. Nearly one in three francs spent on advertising in the 45 largest Swiss newspapers now goes to the four free newspapers, according to the yearbook. According to the study authors, consumers' media budgets are growing, but spending on purely journalistic products is falling. This "pronounced free culture" is also reflected in the fact that Switzerland is far behind in the introduction of paywalls. In addition, entertainment, free offers and infotainment bring in not only advertising money, but also audiences. Media titles classified as "low quality" in the study already reached 66 percent of the population in 2013. In 2010, the figure was only 38 percent.
Breaking News Trend
In the case of subscription newspapers, the financial bloodletting is reflected in the fact that both the size of the papers and the proportion of in-house services are shrinking, the study says. Instead, media are increasingly relying on so-called soft news instead of hard news. Sports and human interest stories are displacing factual reports of political or economic relevance. According to the study, social networks such as Twitter are contributing to this development, as it is primarily soft news that is shared via these networks. Classification performance is also suffering under the pressure of cost-cutting rounds in media companies. Instead of explaining the world, there is a trend toward "breaking news," Eisenegger said.
Call for media funding
In view of the yearbook's findings, Imhof is clear: "Journalism must be promoted." In his view, the priority is to strengthen editorial offices, primarily in the cantons. Imhof rejected Avenir Suisse's proposal to turn SRG into a fee-financed free provider, as this would not strengthen editorial structures. Journalism, however, needs editorial offices - and not newsrooms, these "work halls, execution boxes," Imhof said. Peter Studer, media lawyer and former president of the Swiss Press Council, called on publishers to take off their "blinkers" with regard to direct media funding before the quality press disappears altogether.
Association: Quality is good
The Swiss Media Association was once again critical of the yearbook. The quality of the Swiss media is good, Director Verena Vonarburg stated in response to an inquiry from sda. "Complaints, such as those made by the authors every year, are not made any truer by repetition." Today, citizens have access to a diverse and attractive range of media that previous generations could not even have dreamed of.
The Syndicom trade union and the journalists' association Imprint, on the other hand, share the researchers' assessment. They see the declining quality as a consequence of the worsening working conditions of journalists, as they said on request.
Despite all the negative results of the study, Imhof says there is also good news: the debate about quality has grown, thanks to the contribution of Avenir Suisse, for example. "Five years ago we were lonely and got spanked, today we get spanked too, but we are less lonely."
The 2014 Quality of the Media Yearbook - Switzerland Suisse Svizzera was written by the Research Institute Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich. The study was financed by the Public and Society Foundation and the University of Zurich. (SDA)
The six main findings of the yearbook in brief:
Revenue: Entertainment beats information journalism
It can be stated that advertising revenues preferentially accrue to entertainment offerings at the expense of information journalism, and that the audience's willingness to buy entertainment offerings is also greater. The free culture has largely dissolved the price consciousness for journalism. Although consumers' media budgets are growing, spending on information journalism continues to decline.
Journalism: Reach displaces quality
The trend toward entertainment is also continuing within information journalism. Advertising favors those offerings in print, TV and online that satisfy entertainment needs with short soft news and thus achieve high reach. This development is reinforced by growing mobile consumption and by human interest needs in social networks: "Viral news" is predominantly soft news.
"At the bottom" quality does not need to be maintained, "at the top" it cannot be
The resources for diverse, professional information journalism are collapsing. As a result of this dynamic, the overall quality of information journalism is declining. In the case of low-quality offerings, it does not need to be maintained because of the high demand, so it continues to decline; in the case of offerings with a quality claim, under the pressure of savings rounds, click-rate orientation, and the pressure for topicality online, first the classification services decline, then the thematic relevance. Quality is not rewarded economically - on the contrary: the free culture undermines the most fundamental regulatory mechanism of the economy via relative prices.
Unbroken concentration and diversification
The difficult earnings situation for a diverse and professional information journalism leads via economies of scale to an extraordinary concentration process and to an equally shrinking diversity of offerings. The diversity of providers in the online sector is even more limited than in the already massively shrunken press sector. However, the revenue losses in information journalism are only having a limited impact on the revenues of the major publishers. These are developing into conglomerates through diversification and exploitation chains, in which journalism is becoming one business among others and must also generate returns alongside more profitable businesses such as the online sections. Among the big three publishing houses in the Swiss press and online market, only the smallest player, the NZZ Media Group, is pursuing a brand strategy that gives journalistic quality priority strategic importance. However, the brand is primarily cultivated through marketing.
Erosion of the journalistic professional culture
In order to maintain returns in the information market, an actual industrialization and marketing control of journalism is taking place alongside incessant rounds of cost-cutting. Production processes are controlled by content management systems (CMS), in which journalists produce uniform content in large newsrooms and increasingly for all channels and more and more media titles. This sets the further development dynamics in the big houses: Economies of scale can be achieved by using these newsrooms for more and more offerings; editorial departments, along with their departmental specializations and cultures, are losing importance in favor of the new workshops of all-round journalism. Above these workshops, more and more title makers, together with marketing, will bottle the news onto the in-house media titles. In addition, a small privileged guard of "noble feathers" will be employed, who will have to take care of the reputation of the media titles. Within the professional culture, whose standards, institutions and self-image should in themselves act as dampening elements against this dynamic, there is a little more resistance and reflection, but still little overall. As a result, the industry hardly perceives itself as an industry with central functions in society and allows the erosion of its standards largely without resistance. This weakens the Swiss media industry politically as well.
Loss of diversity and change in issue and actor resonance and agenda building.
Because the development dynamics are hardly slowed down by the profession itself, but are driven by revenue losses and reach optimization, agenda building and the topic and actor resonances in the language-regional media arenas are changing. Topics that used to belong to the niche of tabloid journalism are also being taken up by media titles with quality standards and are developing into short-term "media hype" that dominates the entire media arena. This dwindling of distinction between quality titles and tabloid topics is accompanied by an alignment of title agendas. In political terms, the resonance of political actors and topics also increasingly obeys the dictates of reach-oriented news values and no longer reflects the "slow drilling of thick boards," as Max Weber once described the task of political personnel. Accordingly, those actors and topics that are most provocative and can be morally and emotionally charged receive the most resonance. A media system under the dictates of reach presents us with a different world and a different Switzerland, namely a one-sided and polarized one.
Detailed explanation of the main findings (PDF)
Teaser image Kurt Imhof: Keystone
