The ways we consume news

I do not wish to give up the smell and feel of crisp newspapers piled up on my kitchen table in the morning. “You simply have to change your habits!” was the brutal response of a friend who retorted, without signs of sorrow, that the days of the newspaper are counted.

The MT news portal is a response to the way in which technological convergence is transforming news consumption and media businesses. Newspapers and some broadcasting stations appeal mainly to receivers who are over 45 years of age. The internet provoked the first significant tremors whereas mobile telephony and the iPad caused intensive aftershocks.

News is mobile, interactive and fragmented. Transformations were met by snail-paced responses from Maltese institutions, including the legal system. People embraced the technologies but posed very few questions.

• Should we pay for online content? There seems to be growing reluctance to pay for news. Newspapers, like London’s Evening Standard, are now distributed gratis whereas others have free online versions. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is waging a war against free online content and placed the internet editions of two newspapers behind a pay wall. Will Maltese consumers be ready to pay for online news? Can news media survive if their existence depends on free news portals? How is the Maltese advertising market adapting?

• How does interactivity empower us? We are now able to post online stories, audio visuals and blogs. We can choose content. The ‘haves’, who acquired both the technologies and competencies, are empowered. We have had commendable campaigns to promote internet diffusion and ICT literacy. Yet, the potential of mobile telephony is hampered by prohibitive prices; four times more than in the cheapest service in the EU.

• What is the impact of audience-driven content? Journalists claim that they base their choices of news on ‘news value criteria’ but editors are under greater pressures to select stories that attract the highest quantity of hits. In audience-driven formats, the personal and the sensational have wider appeal.

This also counts for blogs; we have all read blogs that became extensions of village gossip and served the same functions of traditional forms of social control. When less popular content about macro political and economic processes is sidelined, the “we media” become technologies of a very self-absorbed but weak “me generation”.

The questions are endless and Malta needs autonomous spaces where stakeholders can engage in a discussion about the implications of mobile and interactive channels. Debates should not merely involve the political class, businesses and regulators. Consumers and civil society should be at the forefront.