The evolution of media

Over the past three weeks, several media workers were sent home, with companies citing difficult economic times, declining profits and redundancy.

They join they more than 2,000 people retrenched this year, in part the ongoing consequence of a contracting economy. But is there something more at work within the media industry? Social media has exploded the idea of the “mass” underlying traditional media for the last century and a half. TV, radio and print no longer offer exclusive access to audiences and advertisers are taking their dollars elsewhere. Globally, the development has seen a reorganisation and consolidation of media concerns to cut costs, innovate and remain relevant over the last decade and a half. In a world where most people now get their news on their mobile phones, print has been the medium hardest hit with hundreds of closures of regional and national newspapers in the US alone.

For a long time, print has enjoyed a privileged position in the Caribbean, with circulation numbers growing even as newspapers were closing their doors elsewhere.

Are the retrenchments a sign that this worldwide trend has finally arrived at our shores? The journalist too has enjoyed a special status as the person who “broke” the news, but as one of our interviewees pointed out, at least two to three times in a given week, currently, front page and top of newscast stories have been coming from social media.

What becomes of the professional journalist in this environment? “Mainstream media is dead,” said Dane, a mid-40s, 20-year veteran of TV, radio and print. He now focuses his attention on the production and design aspects of print.

Dane illustrates with figures like Donald Trump, who built massive online followings, arguably, without traditional media, largely buoyed by the use of mobile phones, whose number he places in the range of 750,000 in a country of 1.3 million.

Ron, who wasn’t so quick to pronounce on the death of the traditional media, nonetheless acknowledged that mobile was the “delivery method of 2016”. Ron is a veteran journalist who has moved his content online.

“More people have cellphones in their hand during the day,” he said.

Brent, though, doesn’t see the movement to social media as a complete break with the past but more akin to what happened with the introduction of radio and television.

“When radio became a big thing, print didn’t die. When TV became a big thing, radio didn’t die. It changed. Now the Internet is a big thing and people are saying traditional media will die.” Brent, who is in his late 20s and spends most of his days out on the field reporting said the Internet will not kill mainstream, but has made it more unstable.

Employees will have to become more accustomed to rapid, sometimes unpredictable change, becoming part of their work environment.

Media workers, particularly journalists will now have to become multi-skilled creating engaging content on multiple platforms.

“You can’t be a one trick pony anymore. You can’t just be a reporter. What’s that?” said Dane.

Ron believes that while basics like the 5Ws will remain, the journalist will no longer at the vanguard of the news.

If something happens before a journalist gets there, somebody is likely to have already posted it. Our job now then becomes fact checking, verifying than it is breaking the story.” he said, “It may mean that they will have to become better writers. There news is already out there.

We are going to have to package it in a way that people will care about what you have to say.” In this new environment, said Melissa, a field reporter and television producer, stories have to get online, even before the journalist begins writing their story for print, radio or television.

“People will need to understand how to write for web, how to upload video to web, how to shoot for web, getting the right apps on your phone to shoot and to edit for web,” she explained.

And this reorientation should not just be for journalist, but for managers as well. She thought media managers were slow to accept the pace at which the industry was changing globally.

“The people who are running media houses are catching up to the idea that we can’t keep doing it the archaic way, even if society may galvanise around the old, conventional forms of media. I think they are a little slow to realise that they need to revolutionise a lot faster than they are.” Brent said there also does not seem to be the desire to invest in training or new technologies. But this will have consequences, he warned, if TT remained “desperately behind international standards”.

“We are playing catch up. Facebookers, Tweeters, mobile site users, young people using social media are already five, ten steps ahead of media houses, which are becoming more and more irrelevant.” “It used to be that it took 24 hours to generate a story,” said Dane, “The news cycle has shrunk to an hour. If you are an hour late, you are no longer and influencer.” Worse than irrelevance perhaps, is the movement of dollars to online platforms, a problem which no one in traditional media seems yet able to solve. These are valuable dollars, that will salvage jobs and keep doors open.