Is more and more content really the answer to journalism’s problems?

The respected Nic Newman spoke to hundreds of editors, CEOs, and digital executives for the new Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report, ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024’.

Understandably, they’re worried about the drop in referral traffic and are looking to whatever they can do to attract and retain audiences (and make money).

But I’m not sure the answer is committing to making even more videos, more podcasts and more newsletters than last year, as they reveal in the survey. I don’t know about you, but I’m reaching saturation point!

Even more worryingly, over half of respondents admit their companies “are mostly focused on maximising attention rather than being more respectful of their audience’s time (37%)”.

As the BBC’s Naja Nielsen recently said, “I think we’re competing with everything you can do on your mobile phone.” We’ve got to have smarter approaches, especially with the rise in news fatigue.

Hopefully we’ll see greater use of technology and data to produce more focused, relevant and engaging content, and organisations being inspired by some great native content creators on the different social platforms.

The study also notes the huge interest in the use of WhatsApp for distribution, but the efforts I’ve seen so far have mainly been link spamming, with little incentive to tap on the post, let alone forward it to friends and family.

The issues facing journalism could also be applied to organisations’ communications challenges too – make it worth your audience’s time to stop and read or watch what you’re sharing. If you don’t, the chances are that they’ll be less likely to do so again.

It’s worth reading the Reuters Institute report on ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024’ in full – tap or click to go to it.