stand in digital journalism?
IV. 4. What happened next?
Failure is essential to innovate. In recent years, the enthusiasm that has created some media products has been quickly dampened by the costs involved or the lack of technology.
Magazines and other editorial products for tablets are one such example. At the time this doctoral thesis was written, several media outlets were creating versions of magazines and supplements for tablets, or digital native magazines. Nevertheless, this enthusiasm quickly faded. The costs associated with these products, as well as the constant evolution of mobile phones (which have become the preferred devices for accessing the news) and the websites themselves (it has become much easier to be responsive) lead to this demise. However, other innovations seem to be here to stay.
In recent years, the new digital ecosystem increased the rhythm of change and broke old boundaries between creators and audiences. The convergence of media and new techniques resulted in hybrid forms of reporting and storytelling, and the traditional advertising model was replaced by one sustained by mixed revenue.
Parallel to this change, there was the rise of a culture of emotion, “one where emotion is granted a central place from the workplace to education and the media” (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019, p. 3). The role of emotion in journalism has also been the subject of academic research, regarding the production and circulation of “affective news” (Beckett & Deuze, 2016, p. 1).
In a time of emotional culture, leading to a fragmentation of the public and changes in information reception, the media needed to innovate. Therefore, new products and processes appeared as an opportunity to engage with readers or niche segments, curate content, and empower journalists. Of these, I would like to highlight three: newsletters, podcasts and vodcasts, and naturally, storytelling.
The newsletter was identified in The New York Times Innovation Report, from 2014, as part of a new newsroom strategy that would be focused on stand-alone innovative products.
At that time, the NYT was emailing approximately 30 editorial newsletters to 6.5 million subscribers. At the beginning of 2019, The New York Times was sending 64 different newsletters to 13 million subscribers. The new strategy appears to have been successful, and the newsletter was reborn as an effective way of engaging with the reader. Nowadays, free newsletters, premium newsletters, niche newsletters, single-subject newsletters, and newsletters just for subscribers are present in every media to maintain an ongoing conversation with the readers, as well as curating the news for them.
Another way to engage the reader has been through podcasts and vodcasts dedicated to specific or niche themes. Audio has the potential to engage the user in a more intimate and personalised way. The podcast in particular has the advantage of being easy to produce, with very flexible consumption (the computer, mobile devices, or even in the car), and reaching younger people; hence it was quickly used by non-journalists to involve their audiences. There are two reasons why we have come to such extraordinary numbers as 88 million podcast listeners in the USA in 2019 or a 31% increase in podcast listening since 2018 (in the 21 countries analysed in the Digital News Report 2020 of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism).
First, the rise in smartphone users and those who use the Internet to search for information;
secondly, the investment in the podcast market by giants such as Apple, Spotify, and Google.
Regarding innovation in storytelling, which can be understood as “a set of techniques and strategies used to tell and share a story to create added value to the news and generate public interest” (Casero-Ripollés et al., 2020, p 72), we can identify seven emerging storytelling formats. These are the most used in cultural journalism (and journalism in general).
I presented these models in a chapter I wrote called Inovação e Comunicação de Cultura
— Modelos Narrativos Emergentes (2021) (in English, Innovation and Communication of Culture — Emergent Narrative Models). I should note that since hybridism is a characteristic of contemporary narratives, most projects and journalistic pieces have elements from various narrative models.
Thus, we can define the narrative based on proximity, i.e., on a connection (geographical, cultural, affective, or social, for example) that unites users. This is what differentiates local and hyperlocal media or community media.
Another narrative model is the collaborative one. This model is created based on the contributions of several users at a global or international scale. The Historypin project, already mentioned in this book, records visual memories organised by themes provided by contributions from people all over the world.
We must also consider georeferenced narratives, which present content associated with a location. These have been used in the journalistic context and cultural tourism, mainly by apps offering different tours.
Narratives based on video, audio, or multimedia formats have evolved remarkably in recent years due to the evolution of technology. One of the most viewed articles in 2019 was
“An illustrated guide to all 6,887 deaths in ‘Game of Thrones´”61, published by The Washington Post, which combines data, illustration, hypertext, and georeferenced content to show the 6,887 deaths portrayed in the eight seasons of this famous TV series.
Transmedia narratives are another model that continues to gain traction in the cultural
61 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/game-of-thrones/ (last access on 15th December 2020)
industries. This model, in which the original story is unfolded into several stories, each with a particular meaning, and distributed by specific platforms, is not exactly new. Marvel heroes, for example, have used this strategy. Still, the expansion of social media and other new formats lead to the enrichment of this model.
Another narrative model is based on complex data, which is then presented via infographics, games, or interactive experiences. A good example of this model is “What was Leonardo da Vinci doing at your age”62, a piece created by CNN to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, and a winner of a Webby Award in 2020, in the “Arts” category.
Finally, narratives can use virtual reality, augmented reality, and other 3D features to provide an immersive user experience. Between 2016 and 2018, some media made significant investments in virtual reality (like The Guardian, mostly 360° videos) and in augmented reality (like The New York Times). However, the truth is that the costs associated with these technologies are still high, which led to a decrease in their use by journalists in the following years. However, it should be noted that Google Arts & Culture is one of the initiatives that most explores these formats, in addition to providing virtual tours to various museums around the world.
One of the most unexpected events in recent years with the most significant impact on culture, journalism, and of course, the world, was the Covid-19 pandemic, in early 2020.
Confinement, the requirement for remote working, changes in journalists’ routines, and the closure of cultural institutions led to the exploitation of the digital environment’s potential, especially video and audio. Shortly after the publication of this book, there will certainly be several lines of investigation on the impact of Covid-19 in all areas of society, including those explored in this book.
Finally, an updated note regarding paradigmatic innovation. In the last few years, the focus has been on a new business model: the audience-first and consumer engagement model focused on developing consumer relationships. The contemporary business model perspective
“involves creating new processes, products, and ways of presenting content, and changing the relationships between consumers and the enterprise” (Villi and Picard, 2018, p. 121).
In 2020, I published an article titled Paradigmatic Innovation in European Cultural Journalism, where I argue that paradigmatic innovation is the driver for all the other innovations, mainly editorial, and that positioning and coherence are key.
“There are no fire-proof models, but the key is to be coherent. For example, if The Guardian advo-cates open journalism, it makes sense to have a membership model, supported by an engagement strategy, rather than a paywall. If Monocle does not give away any free print copies, it makes no sense to give the magazine’s content away for free on the website.” (Santos-Silva, 2020, p.11).
62 https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/style/leonardo500/ (last access on 15th December 2020)