Sheer luxury

 
René Worni on free quality journalism. 
Shortly after this issue of Werbewoche is published, the German journalistic community will meet at the annual conference of the Netzwerk Recherche in Hamburg to "sound out the inner workings and quality" of German journalism. Those gathered (including over 100 speakers) want to celebrate journalistic research "as an instrument for improving all journalistic genres". This is no coincidence. The German journalists are reacting to the apparently catalytic effect of "Flat Earth News", a recent all-out attack on the British media by Guardian special correspondent Nick Davies. In it, he states that journalists trapped in the "professional cage" of their "news factories" only rewrite agency reports without doing any research themselves. Sixty percent of over 2000 reports from Britain's quality newspapers (Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Times etc.) analyzed for Davies' book were practically PR material. Only twelve percent of the stories were actually researched. "The basic problem is that commercial logic has replaced journalistic logic," says Nick Davies.
In America, the beleaguered publishers are going one step further. International reporting and investigative research are increasingly seen as a luxury that is no longer affordable.
Ex-WSJ editor-in-chief Paul Steiger has therefore launched the Pro Publica project. It is dedicated exclusively to investigative research and is financed by two billionaires (see page 16). This means that these stories - a delicate flaw - remain disconnected from the value chain and thus from publishing responsibility. Then you can only speak of "free quality journalism" and thus undermine its value.
This should give local publishers pause for thought. How much longer will it be before revenue models collapse in times of forced free content and private sponsors have to step into the breach?
René Worni, Editor