The Century of New Media

How advertising, mediums, and funding affect how we consume media

By Lindsey Addawoo, Staff Writer

We’ve been seeing them for years now. Futuristic ads on television screens for technology we have yet to comprehend, but we’re still blown away by its shininess. New Apple software. New smartphones. New updates for the newest products that need bugs fixed. And their slower “competitors” that have a hard time keeping up, like Microsoft.

They’ve been around since the consumer age of the 60s.

New technology often leaves us with a slight emptiness and craving for more, mixed with a bit of agitated anxiety to remain relevant in today’s ever-changing current. In essence, it would seem analog people have no place in a digital world…or do they?

Mike Kasprow of the advertising company Trapeze calls it the “more things change syndrome.”

“We think things have changed dramatically, but fundamentally they have stayed the same,” he says, while demonstrating some of Apple’s first generation computers from the 80’s in comparison to today’s.

And like traditional journalism, online media has outnumbered and overtaken print. Many mainstream newspapers have resorted strictly to an online presence; creating websites, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages to keep up with their respective readership. Others, like Gawker and Thought Catalog, were created through their own online websites and specifically designed for those who consume media through the web.

The digital world has resorted to various streams of online journalism, and as expected, is starting to replace traditional print media like newspapers.

Surprising?

Not really. Our technologically driven society made the shift years ago to incorporate new media (i.e. Internet, at the time) into financial and social prowess. Online content meant faster spread of information that was able to reach a much wider audience (versus print circulation in specific areas), and the introduction of inclusivity with its readers.

The question media analysts are probably better off asking, is why on earth it took so long? We know the obvious benefits of online news consumption, but just how realistic is it for newspapers?

It depends on the type of news outlet and its demographic. In terms of readers, prestigious newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post already have invested readers who wouldn’t mind paying the extra dollar for quality content. Niche newspapers like the Wall Street Journal often provide insight on specific financial news that can’t be aggregated from other newspapers as well.

As much as newspapers would like to believe it, revenue from corporate sponsors, subscribers, and advertising simply cannot be made up with digital paywalls. For smaller, start-up media outlets this is especially problematic. Not many readers are willing to pay for information easily accessible on various other sites free of charge.

The question then is: what exactly are readers paying for? The New York Times is highly acclaimed for its editorials and investigative journalism, often exploring issues of public interest in great depth.

In Ontario, newspapers like the Toronto Star, one of Ontario’s largest newspapers, have an online website widely accessible to the public. It features entertainment, business, sports, lifestyle and other main areas of interest on its main page. According to the Toronto Star journalist Bob Hepburn, newspapers like the star are first and foremost media organizations, not electronic print.

“[The Toronto Star’s] background is in print, and now more and more in digital,” says Hepburn. “It is the future.”

But not all quality news outlets need to charge for content. Canadian news organizations like Global News, that are backed by their TV brand,  are financially sound enough to fund digital expansion, dismantling the need to charge service fees.

“Bigger online [audiences] means rising digital ad revenues, and hopefully means the online unit is profitable on its own – though many ‘pure play’ digital news organizations struggle with that presently,” says Jamie Sturgeon, a Global News business reporter.

Newspapers such as the Toronto Star are able to retain audiences through print and online with brand recognition and reputation that’s decades old. But for start-up digital media with a less established audience, it is increasingly difficult to attract and retain a substantial follows when information can be found virtually everywhere.

Where does this leave the state of journalism?

Well, in order to predict a future, one must turn to the past.

In 1824, William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scottish immigrant and journalist published The Colonial Advocate, one of Canada’s more provocative newspapers of the 1800sin York (now Toronto). Initially, Mackenzie sought out funding from wealthy officials he labeled the “Family Compact”, who controlled a large part of revenue in Upper Canada.

The Colonial Advocate unlike others at the time set itself apart from other newspapers in a multitude of ways. For one, it had been rejected by the “Compact” due to pledge to retaining on impartial stance in Upper Canadian affairs.

Secondly, since it had been rejected, the Advocate held no political allegiance or partisanship, and was thus free to publish freely. This meant complete creative control and freedom from government appointed announcements, services, or political agendas.

However, since it was not a government-controlled entity, it could not reap the financial benefits either. Mackenzie and the Advocate were forced to rely solely on subscribers. Since this defeated the purpose of Mackenzie creating the newspaper, and his letters to wealthy subscribers often went unheard, these same wealthy partisans eventually became subject to slander in his newspaper.

This undoubtedly affected production. Not only was the Advocate being sporadically published, it also affected the type of journalism printed.

Today this can translate to the types of media widely available on the Internet, versus mainstream media privately owned by media corporations like Shaw, or government-controlled like the CBC.

Gawker, DailyBeast and even the Huffington Post all provide their readers with the type of news readers want to see: entertainment, lifestyle, beauty, gadgets and blog posts. Though they may not receive government funds, they are free to publish as they please with less restriction or regulation.

And all good things must come to an end. Readers who continuously revisit sites are usually asked to pay for full access through digital subscriptions after a certain amount of time. Certain newspapers like the star offer access to certain sections of newspapers without it counting towards an online pay meter.

Even for big newspapers like the star, ad revenue still supersedes revenue generated from circulation.

“It’s difficult to foresee a day when the losses from print ad revenues and subscriptions can be fully offset by digital ad and subscription revenues,” says Global News reporter Jamie Sturgeon.

“Newspapers simply can’t aggregate the audiences and ad dollars they once could – a problems for all media to be frank,” he concludes.

Difficult or not, newspapers do take a loss in overall print revenues the longer they take to follow suite with cultural shifts. The New York Times knew this, switching over to the Internet roughly two years ago. It now rings in a whopping $150 million a year from over 700 000 paying subscribers.

Gawker put out an interesting article outlining the effects of introducing online paywalls. In it, writer Hamilton Nolan writes, “ If readers don’t want to pay for content online that they happily paid for in print, that content will eventually go away, due to the fact that it costs money to produce real journalism.”

“Paywalls will work for content that is worth paying for,” he continues.

It may not simply be the type of content that’s reader-worthy. It’s debatable whether content on any site that hasn’t reached an overwhelmingly large readership is worth paying for.

It’s scary to predict a world in which ads generate such high revenue. Native advertising, meant to disguise ads as seamless or natural transitions from traditional copy to advertising, can be seen on almost any news network or event.

Advertising, mediums and overall revenue shift the discussion to the type of media being produced, and in turn, what our culture demands of its news producers. Judging from the amount of “freebie” news outlets, it would seem that journalists now are become more privy to engaging in a discussion about social issues accompanied by hard facts.

Where are the Mackenzie’s of today’s print culture?

Lindsey Addawoo is a fourth year student in Ryerson University’s RTA School of Media. In the past, Lindsey has interned at Global News and written for various student publications, such as The Ryerson Free Press and McClung’s Magazine.

Photo courtesy to mashable.com & huffingtonpost.com