The article talks of factors which would have an impact on the "death" of print, such as a lack of revenue towards advertising, the change towards digitised media for news and future predictions to where the news industry will be in a few yeas. Also, the advantage of the digital age for news and the change that it will bring which is debated, in the article, as positives and negatives.
1) Do you agree with its view that it is ‘a cause for concern, but not for panic’?
For me, I do agree with the statement to an extent,that it is 'a cause for concern' as there is still the chance for news corps. and different types of news. News-aggregations like Google News brings different sources and news sites together from all around which the sources themselves can benefit from. Though this can deprave news sites as they will end up preferring Google News as a platform rather than the news sites themselves.
Newspapers such as the UK's the Guardian has now been able to gain half as many reader in the US showing how newspapers are able to gain a worldwide audience.
Citizen journalism, though become something of a social good has it's own disadvantages with it showing unreliable news and bias. However, the concern of the changing of news due to digital media is to be worried about due to decline in advertising revenue for these newspapers, more people reading news from the internet leading to a diminishing amount of people reading print thus a loss of jobs and decline in gatekeeping (professional and reliable journalists).
2) The article is 10 years old - an eternity in digital media terms. Have the writer's predictions come to pass? Use statistics from your Ofcom research to support or challenge the writer's argument.
In my opinion, the predictions are likely to come to pass as the decline of the industry is still continuing now. This can be seen with the use of newspapers . Newspapers are used by 29% of people (2016), not a significant decrease in 2015 where just 31% of people used newspapers to access news, which represents a decrease of nine percentage points since 2014 and 2013 (when 40% of UK adults said they used newspapers for news). However, this could be argued that it is due to the preferences of the readers in terms of demographics etc. Statistics show that reach of national newspapers varies by age group: 29.3% of 16-24s are print newspaper readers, compared to 67.9% of over-65. Ultimately there is no denial on the other hand that newspapers are in decline and this form of media is dying out, and there is truth in the writers predictions.
3) The Economist suggests that high-quality journalism in the future will be backed by non-profit organisations rather than profit-seeking media corporations. Is there any evidence for this? How is the Guardian funded? What do major stories from the last year such as the Panama Papers suggest about how investigative journalism is conducted in the digital age?
It could be the case that non-profit organisations will back high-quality journalism in future since the costs associated it as it is are too high for profit to be a concern. Employing journalists who actually undergo fieldwork spending months conducting research on certain investigations is too expensive, and perhaps having a combination of independent and citizen journalists is a lot more viable. The fact that the economist suggests that high-quality journalism in the future could be backed by non-profit organisations is true, with a prime example being The Guardian, which is funded by the public. "Good" journalism has come at a cost, now much of the news is now online meaning newspapers have to now invest more money into their news and what sought of platform they put it on. Many newspapers are being impacted, problems like a lack of advertising revenue so there is no surprise that websites such as The Guardian ask users to subscribe to pay monthly fees to keep it going. Stories like Panama Papers show that investigative journalism in digital age now need information released on the internet, opposed to information from inside jobs done by the organisations themselves. This can be seen as Panama Papers revelations were because of 11.5 million files leaking from a specific database onto the internet, reinforcing how newspapers must lookout on the internet as well as their more conventional way of finding things out.
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