I Read the News Tomorrow, Oh Boy!

Declining newspaper sales are not a crisis for journalism, but an opportunity to save it

There’s a crisis in print journalism. Newspaper sales across the board are facing an inexorable decline. Worst affected, with the notable exception of the Daily Mail, are the tabloids. The Mirror, once the country’s best selling paper, has seen its circulation plummet 49% in the last seven years, losing almost a million readers. The Sun, meanwhile, finds its sales figures down 16% from 2002. The bigger they come, it seems, the harder they fall. The quality papers are not unaffected, however. The Telegraph’s sales are down 14% in the same period, whilst The Guardian has lost around 60,000 readers. Only The Independent, the country’s lowest selling quality paper, remains relatively untouched.

With sales in a nosedive, it’s little wonder that the big media corporations are taking drastic measures. Earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch announced his intention to charge for online content. Meanwhile the Evening Standard, owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, went in the opposite direction, becoming a free paper this month in an attempt to recapture the glory days of circulations in excess of 600,000. Whatever means the moguls use to shore up support for their brands, there is one unavoidable truth. In the digital age, newspapers just aren’t as popular. And whilst the internet offers them new means to distribute their content to a potentially infinite audience, it not only presents a challenge to their profitability, but to their hegemony.

Should we mourn the terminal illness of print media? As an aspiring freelance journalist always on the lookout for that next big credit, my gut reaction is yes. But the more I think about it, the more I see the decline of the old newspapers not as a crisis, but an opportunity for progressive investigative journalism. The print media, overwhelmingly owned by massive, multinational media conglomerates, has always been dominated by the right. Of all the mainstream national daily papers, only three – The Independent, The Guardian and The Mirror – can really be considered left of centre. The others, to varying degrees, push a conservative agenda, in many cases manufacturing moral panic, most notably on immigration, through doctored statistics and sloppy reporting led more by editorial ideology than a commitment to uncovering truth.

The decline of print media and the rise and institutionalisation of the political blogosphere offers the potential for a much greater plurality of opinion and journalistic endeavour to be represented in the mainstream media. Falling newspaper sales, then, represent an opportunity to redress the political balance in the public sphere. Of course, the internet itself is no guarantor of balance. As has been widely noted, the right, and conservative bloggers, have thus far made much greater progress in this new medium than the left. Wikio’s list of top political blogs in the UK is dominated by the right. Of the top ten, only one, Liberal Conspiracy, is genuinely left-wing in its outlook. But, as the site’s editor, Sunny Hundal, notes, the times may be a changin’. The blogosphere emerged under a Labour government, the right-wing bloggers were born on the offensive. Under a Conservative government, however, it will be the left-wing activists, free from the unhealthy shadow of an unpopular party, who are newly fanged and going for the jugular in the way that energises and engages readers looking for an alternative point of view.

But, as Sunny points out, it is no longer enough for the left-wing bloggers to simply stand on their soapboxes. To truly step into the oversize shoes being fast vacated by the right-dominated print media, bloggers must champion original reporting and thorough investigative journalism. This is a philosophy The Third Estate has always embraced and we wholeheartedly support Sunny’s call. Earlier this year, we broke the story of Dana Ali – an Iraqi immigrant held in Oakington detention centre because a Home Office blunder failed to recognise his marriage to a British citizen – when no national newspaper would. Dozens of left blogs rallied to support his campaign and together we helped free him from Oakington and convince Conservative-run Waveney District Council to back his fight against deportation. In doing so, we proved the impact we can make.

It’s not going to be easy. Most bloggers are unpaid, their words are a labour of love, or hate. Between holding down a steady job and maintaining a semblance of a social life, they do not have the time to commit to chasing stories. Even the largest group blogs lack the resources of the international media corporations necessary to break big news. It’s a challenge, but it’s one the blogosphere, and the left in particular, must answer if we are to become truly relevant. In this opportune confluence of circumstances, with the decline of the right-wing newspapers and the rise of a right-wing government, what we can achieve is beyond measure. We have in our power the chance to save the true values of honest journalism, clawing genuine progressive investigation back from the morass of celebrity scandal and moral panic that dominate the daily headlines.

“A journalist’s responsibility is to be honest, to attempt to tell the truth,” Nick Davies, author of the oft-quoted Flat Earth News, told The Third Estate. The ailing tabloids have turned their back on honesty in a vain attempt to shift more copies. Now it’s up to us. The cost of failure is to be yesterday’s news. The prize is to be the news tomorrow.