Summary

Welcome to Trends in Newsrooms 2008, the best-selling publishing paradox. Much of the material in here comes from the internet, many of the debates are about the integration of print and online but TiN nevertheless appears – by public demand – in both print and digital format.

This edition contains the results of our second Newsroom Barometer, conducted in association with Zogby International and Reuters. As in 2007, this survey of just over 700 editors worldwide banishes any idea that editors are gloomy or pessimistic about the future or that they have been slow in adapting to the changes which digital technology has wrought. As you will see from John Zogby’s summary of the results, editors remain confident about a mixed-media future and have quietly got on with the business of integrating their newsrooms. The optimism is not universal and it is tempered by anxiety that newspapers are not investing enough in recruitment and training for the future.

Newspaper managements might reply that investment remains risky when it isn’t yet clear where the income from digital publishing is supposed to come from. But newspaper businesses are made by content which creates and sustains demand. The first newspapers did not come about when someone assembled advertising platforms, distribution networks and hardware and afterwards looked for content to put into that system.