The future of journalism — Why we’re supporting Scoop
Scoop came to Enspiral in June 2014 in crisis.
A bastion of investigative and public interest journalism since 1999, Scoop is part of an ever diminishing handful of independent news companies that still provide a home for quality journalism in Aotearoa.
At first glance, you might ask ‘what the hell is Scoop?’ If you’re not a part of the media, the civil service or deeply ingrained in politics and community affairs, you may not have come across it in your travels across the rapidly disintegrating news landscape.
I’m not exactly sure of when I first came across Scoop but I know why I did. Scoop was the little engine that could, it was plucky, thorough and opinionated but importantly, it was informative and unbiased in its record and reproduction of public record — a service so vital to public interest but otherwise absent from the news landscape.
Scoop has been providing a home for editorial, public notice and long-form investigative journalism for the last 16 years and its reporting has been invaluable in the service to the public.
Scoop was at the forefront of digital publishing in 1999, but things have changed rapidly, for the worse, for everyone.
The game has changed
Print media has relied on advertising, public notice and classifieds for funding since time immemorial. This revenue allowed news providers to resource journalists, designers, printers (and more recently developers) and distributors to provide valuable and timely content to their audience.
As audiences have gone digital, so have news providers and they’ve taken their old business models along with them (You’ve got people? We’ve got things to sell them!). Except that these models don’t work anymore and there are some new players in town, and they’re big and they’ve made their own rules.
My colleague and good friend Ela Alptekin put it succinctly:
Information is in a hurry to flow and if someone else comes up with a better, more direct way for information to get from one place to another, they’ll eliminate your reason for being.
Google and Facebook have rung the death knell for digital publishers worldwide.
The advertising revenue received by independent publishers like Scoop has fallen sharply since 2013. This has been a devastating and rapid loss of revenue for publishers, many have been left wounded — bleeding out staff and struggling to keep their platforms alive.
Enter: Shitty news
Media has responded in a number of ways. We’ve seen the rise of Advertorial and Native content accompanied by the increasing dominance of large media companies who continue to gobble up influential channels and consolidate hefty, transmedia platforms to push their advertisers’ content in ever more elaborate and invasive fashions.
Real journalism is becoming a side-note and increasingly is being relegated to the sidelines while snackable, shallow media is competing for diminishing reader attention.
Is that it for real journalism?
Scoop came to Enspiral last year with a vision, one where the provision of quality journalism wasn’t wholly dependent on advertising budgets and importantly, one that vested Scoop in the hands of the public.
Alastair Thompson, founder of Scoop and the driving force behind it since its inception, knew all too well that Scoop was in trouble. Revenue had dropped, staff had been cut, real editorial had less resource and the business was unable to invest in the community, design and technology it needed to stay relevant in the rapidly changing news landscape.
Fortunately, Scoop has some unique advantages.
Given its unfettered commitment to provide accurate and unabridged record of press releases, ministerial statements and public statement in an indexed format, Scoop has positioned itself not only as a provider of quality journalism and editorial but also, as an invaluable tool of reference for business, NGOs and government.
Earlier this year, Scoop initiated a massive change in tack with the introduction of its ‘Ethical paywall’.
Committed to being accessible to anyone, anywhere — Scoop saw the opportunity to licence its existing services to those using it professionally. Licences have been readily adopted by the commercial and public sectors and still hold substantial opportunity for a stable and sustainable revenue stream.
Where other news providers are erecting paywalls and limiting access to content to paying subscribers, Scoop isn’t. That’s not their style.
News is a public right and an essential public service but we can’t rely on policy makers to adapt to the breadth and pace of change that technological advancement demands.
Scoop has a strong (and rapidly growing) community of supporters and advocates that are committed to the vision of strengthening this stalwart of journalism and are actively investing their resources and expertise to ensure that whatever form the ‘new Scoop’ adopts, it remains adaptable, relevant and in the public’s best interest.
So where’s it at?
The Scoop Foundation become a registered charitable trust on September the 17th 2015, culminating 10 months of rapid transformation that began almost three years ago and priming Scoop to be a provider of the news, vested entirely in the public interest and ultimately, answerable to its members.
Scoop continues to undergo a process of rapid transformation and all the while, its community continues to grow. Positioning, strategy, automation, revenue, design, marketing, community — no stone will be left unturned.
Why we’re investing in the new Scoop
There’s opportunity in crisis.
Scoop’s future is not yet a sure thing but remains the best — maybe the only — opportunity to build on the foundations of one of NZ’s original Digital news providers and allow us to co-create the ‘new’ news — vested in the hands of the public and dedicated to the provision of informed research and long form journalism.
In support of this transition, we donated time and resource to kickstart a campaign entitled #takebackthenews. This campaign has so far, been successful in bringing on hundreds of new members and contributors and continues to attract more each day.
Personally, I believe that Scoop provides a real opportunity for us to build and share a new form for journalism. I’ve helped develop business processes, community engagement strategies and marketing efforts to help grow the business and its network of members and contributors.
The opportunities presented are immense and by no means exhaustive. As the media ecosystem continues to evolve, so too must the tools we have — ideally held and shared in the interest of the common good.
We’re not out of the woods yet..
Some of you reading this may be aware that Alastair Thompson is in the process of leaving Scoop.
Alastair has been a passionate, driven and unrelenting journalist who continues to strive ahead despite the substantial obstacles facing Scoop, but when swinging out like a double-edged broadsword, some things will fall by the wayside.
Alastair has acknowledged that it’s time to step back and make the space for others to take up the mantle. Last week, he made this plea explicit in his editorial.
And others there are! As a result of its efforts, Scoop now has a growing list of members and contributors (over 600 people), but still desperately needs one final push to see it through the next two months to the point of financial sustainability.
Scoop is striving to become a collaborative, transparent and open-source media organisation.
At the time of writing this, Scoop is at 68% of its pledge.me. With only six days left to meet its target of $50,000 in pledges, it needs our support to get it over the line.
If you value quality news and an informed society, join Scoop to #takebackthenews and help secure the future of journalism — for all of us.
