:00:00. > :00:04.about. The important thing is that she is safe now. We will have much
:00:04. > :00:07.more for you at the top of the hour on the situation in Syria and the
:00:07. > :00:16.discussions at the G20. Now it is time for us to meet the author,
:00:16. > :00:20.Professor George Brock. In the last 20 years, the business of journalism
:00:20. > :00:21.has changed out of all recognition. Traditional newspapers are finding
:00:22. > :00:28.it harder and harder to keep going. New forms of activity which call
:00:28. > :00:34.themselves journalism have started up in the digital world. A new book
:00:34. > :00:40.looks at where journalism has been and where it may be going. The
:00:40. > :00:43.author is George Brock, once a senior editor at the times, now
:00:43. > :00:49.professor of journalism at city University in London. George Brock,
:00:49. > :00:51.you say in this experiment, but it is not in ruinous
:00:51. > :00:59.experiment, but it decline. If I were working for an
:00:59. > :01:04.old—fashioned newspaper, I might have a problem with that because it
:01:04. > :01:08.looks pretty ruinous to me. If you do work for a newspaper, of course
:01:08. > :01:09.things don't look that good. There's nothing wrong with that point of
:01:09. > :01:12.view. But there's more than nothing wrong with that point of
:01:12. > :01:13.view. But there's more than newspapers, and it's more than the
:01:13. > :01:17.newspapers that are threatened. What newspapers, and it's more than the
:01:17. > :01:20.has happened in the disruption it has occurred is that the business
:01:20. > :01:25.model of big, Dailly, General interest newspapers is very
:01:25. > :01:30.magazines, other kinds of magazines, other kinds of
:01:30. > :01:35.newspapers, television and online. One wants to be careful that you
:01:35. > :01:40.don't see the whole scene just as pictured by a small, threatened
:01:40. > :01:44.subspecies, which are the big newspapers. They will have a tough
:01:44. > :01:47.time. More proportionally to the overall journalism world, but high
:01:47. > :01:52.profile and significant. What is it that has put them in such peril?
:01:52. > :01:54.Their business model, which depended on advertising, is broken, is that
:01:54. > :01:57.it? It is the decline of it? It is the decline of
:01:57. > :02:01.advertising. People don't any advertising. People don't any
:02:01. > :02:03.longer, in lucrative volume, want to buy adverts in newspapers on the
:02:03. > :02:08.same scale that they used to do. The same scale that they used to do. The
:02:08. > :02:13.first sign of it was the newspapers that were dependent on small ads,
:02:13. > :02:17.classified ads, jobs, houses and cars. That kind of information
:02:17. > :02:22.web. And it could be done on web. And it could be done on
:02:22. > :02:26.different business models, and that meant the decline of newspapers that
:02:26. > :02:29.were heavily dependent on classified advertising. That is one of the
:02:29. > :02:33.reasons why America newspapers declined so
:02:33. > :02:35.dependent on advertising of that dependent on advertising of that
:02:35. > :02:38.kind. That is why they slumped early on. One of the things that seems to
:02:38. > :02:47.online, as journalists and news be happening
:02:47. > :02:50.organisations look for new ways to organisations look for new ways to
:02:50. > :02:51.survive and make money will store we are going back to a rather scrappy
:02:51. > :02:57.model of journalism which actually are going back to a rather scrappy
:02:57. > :03:05.was how journalism started in the 18th and 19th centuries. All sorts
:03:05. > :03:05.of people paying for it, all sorts journalism that has always been
:03:05. > :03:12.presented in the 20th ideal. For a very long time,
:03:12. > :03:22.journalism unsavoury. What you might call the
:03:22. > :03:25.highly modern period of big, daily papers really didn't last for very
:03:25. > :03:30.long. Roughly speaking, the second half of the 20th century. Big, daily
:03:30. > :03:34.papers as we know them in America and Europe came to their real power
:03:34. > :03:38.and influence in the 1920s and 30s. and influence in the 1920s and
:03:38. > :03:43.Actually, if you look at the Actually, if you look at the
:03:43. > :03:47.numbers, they began to go into decline in the 1950s. British
:03:48. > :03:52.newspapers, national newspapers began to slide downwards in the
:03:52. > :04:01.circulation of the Daily Mirror was circulation of the Daily Mirror was
:04:01. > :04:06.1966. So the internet is not solely responsible for the demise? It is
:04:06. > :04:11.not solely responsible. It has made things a lot tougher and harder, but
:04:12. > :04:18.of television, radio, satellite and of television, radio, satellite and
:04:18. > :04:22.cable, they were all hammer blows, driving down newspapers. A lot of
:04:22. > :04:25.journalism these days is digital, websites launched by organisations
:04:25. > :04:29.and newspapers. There's also and newspapers. There's also
:04:29. > :04:34.start—up websites, things that didn't exist in the past. If you
:04:34. > :04:39.wanted to characterise modern, digital journalism, how would you do
:04:39. > :04:43.it, what makes it different from the old—fashioned traditional
:04:43. > :04:49.journalistic approach? What it allows is greater choice. If you
:04:49. > :04:53.don't have a choice in the pre—digital age, it is likely that
:04:53. > :04:54.digital is going to supply. Take the example of America. American
:04:54. > :04:57.journalism on the whole, journalism on the whole, very
:04:57. > :05:00.serious, sober, respectable at the daily paper level. Not many papers
:05:00. > :05:05.that we would call tabloid Public papers in America would survive.
:05:05. > :05:11.What digital has done is to give back to American journalism that
:05:11. > :05:15.fairly tasteless aspect of fairly tasteless aspect
:05:15. > :05:17.societies. It is what offended journalists would
:05:17. > :05:19.Market journalism, but some of it is Market journalism, but some of it is
:05:19. > :05:21.very bouncy, very clever, very quick, very funny. That is what
:05:21. > :05:29.people like. worries so many observers inside and
:05:29. > :05:31.outside journalism, is that it has become more and more difficult to
:05:31. > :05:38.sustain journalistic enterprises journalism properly. Surely that is
:05:38. > :05:45.the big threat posed by digital the big threat posed by digital
:05:46. > :05:49.media. It is. But one of the reasons that I wrote this book was to
:05:49. > :05:54.convince people of my own view, which is that I think the corner has
:05:54. > :05:58.been turned. The tilting point we've reached. You can look at some of
:05:58. > :06:03.these online news businesses and you can see the big possible journalism
:06:03. > :06:07.institutions of the future. These are not all tiny start—ups anymore.
:06:07. > :06:17.Some of these people are beginning to challenge the existing
:06:17. > :06:18.journalistic powers as disruptors. I visited one which reports near New
:06:18. > :06:23.York. Their target is the local York. Their target is the local city
:06:23. > :06:28.section of the New York Times. They've only got about ten people so
:06:28. > :06:33.far, but if they get to 20 people they say, we can take on that
:06:33. > :06:36.section of the New York Times, which employs 60 journalists, so we are
:06:36. > :06:39.three times better than them. It may turn out to be true. Coming back to
:06:39. > :06:42.newspapers, there's a newspapers, there's a lot of
:06:42. > :06:47.speculation that before long, some big titles in the UK will opt for an
:06:47. > :06:51.online, digital publication only, they'll get rid of the expensive
:06:51. > :06:54.business of dead trees, printing and distribution. Do you think that will
:06:54. > :07:01.happen, and which ones will go first? A lot of people when looking
:07:01. > :07:07.at British papers choose the at British papers choose the
:07:07. > :07:08.Guardian, because it's been very advanced and innovative online.
:07:08. > :07:14.was looking at it, I'd pick the was looking at it, I'd
:07:14. > :07:16.Financial Times to wind down its print version first. I
:07:16. > :07:23.it will happen quite that radically. I think people will go
:07:23. > :07:25.week, and they will see how that down to once a week or twice a
:07:25. > :07:26.week, and they will see how that works and whether they can keep the
:07:26. > :07:41.20 year scale on the outside will be people
:07:41. > :07:45.20 year scale on the outside will be there, some of them think
:07:45. > :07:50.between five to ten years. Two big things will happen. Happen. People.
:07:50. > :07:54.Switching off print, or not doing print every day. Very big journalism
:07:54. > :07:57.institutions. The other thing is that high—tech companies will start
:07:57. > :07:59.buying the newspapers. You saw it the other day with the Washington
:07:59. > :08:00.post.