Journalism Health Check-Up: Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!

Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

edited by Marco Nurra

• This week, a Facebook executive suggested that your News Feed is likely to be “all video” in the next five years. “We’re seeing a year-on-year decline in text. If I was having a bet, I would say: video, video, video.”
• But a new report out Tuesday from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests that text may have a longer run, at least for news. Consumption of online news video is still a minority behavior around the world, the researchers found.
• The rise of distributed news consumption, along with a sharpening move to mobile and the widespread use of ad-blocking worldwide are three trends that combined are putting further severe pressure on the business models of both traditional publishers and new digital-born players.
• Spoiler Alert: Ad blocking is a serious problem, these four charts paint a clearer picture of just how bad it really is:

• Furthermore, people are increasingly heading to social media for news, making it more difficult for publishers to attract and make money from readers. Facebook is by far the dominant social media news source.
• That actually make sense: as Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said on Tuesday, “People want personalised recommendations (even as they worry about the consequences).”
• Young audiences trust news less and are more likely to get information from a wide variety of social sources. Without trust, why would audiences pay for a newspaper?
• While publishers have flocked to tools like Facebook Live, Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover to reach new audiences, they’ve also worried about changing revenue models and the threats platforms pose to their businesses. The Pew Research Center on Wednesday released its annual State of the News Media report, which examines these trends and shows that newspaper declines have accelerated.

• In a week when Pew Research and the Reuters Institute published major reports on the media, it was easy to miss an insightful paper from the Knight Foundation on owner Gerry Lenfest’s gift of the Philadelphia newspapers to a newly-formed nonprofit. The local newspaper owner and philanthropist donated the organizations within the Philadelphia Media Network — the Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com — along with another $20 million to a newly created nonprofit called the Institute for Journalism in New Media, which operates under the Philadelphia Foundation as part of its Special Assets Fund.

“For newspapers looking to make a bold move from for-profit to nonprofit, the approach in Philadelphia and other approaches highlighted in this report are not necessarily the right path or the only path.”

• Speaking of which, FOIA site MuckRock has also gone nonprofit. The collaborative news site that helps journalists as well as interested citizens with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests announced Wednesday that it’s going the nonprofit route.
• Does your newsroom have a public records strategy? Do you track how many Freedom of Information requests reporters make? Who do your reporters turn to for help if they are struggling to get records? Here are seven lessons from BuzzFeed’s FOIA-friendly newsroom.

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