10 tendenser for nyhedsmedier

1. Newspaper vs. Viewspaper: the compact revolution
   The debate in 2005 will not be whether or not to switch to a compact format, but rather how a paper’s content will be affected by the transformation.
2. From blogs to participatory journalism
   The most interesting characteristic of weblogs is not that they are seen as a 'new source of information', rather that they have the potential to change the entire information process. Many see the blogoshpehre as being more 'democratic' than traditional journalism.
3. The watchdog challenge: who fact-checks whom?
   In the wake of the influence of the blogosphere, 2004 can be seen as a landmark year for media watchdogs. The term watchdog encompasses fact checkers, those who scrutinize individual reporters, as well as those who survey the media for prejudice or inappropriate conduct.
4. How amateur photos are transforming photojournalism
   In 2004, the universally published amateur photos of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, their fake British counterparts in London’s Daily Mirror, the photos and videos of hostage beheadings and the Asian tsunami images all revealed the major challenges facing traditional photojournalism. Amateur photos require more fact checking, which means more personnel, contradictory to the present trend of minimizing newsroom staffs. Consequently, newspapers could begin to 'outsource' their fact checking staffs, turning to organizations such as Reuters, AFP and Corbis for their photos, saving time and money.
5. Search is king: RSS feeds and online aggregators
   The quest for the most efficient search, initiated by Google’s revolutionary algorithm, was continued in 2004 by the growing popularity of RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and online aggregators. They have created a sort of new 'information hierarchy', one that concentrates on rapidly connecting the consumer to the latest relevant news. In the future, this new hierarchy could oblige different media groups to work together, integrating RSS and aggregators.
6. Convergence is back on the agenda
   It appears that the «'C word' is now focused on two main domains: first, small and medium sized papers that own -- at a local level -- TV and radio stations; second, the restructuration of existing newsrooms to set up a 24/7 newsroom or a 'continuous news desk' as at The Washington Post.
7. Free or paid-for, targeting young readers
   In 2004, newspapers on all over the globe made aggressive attempts to attract the ever-elusive young reader. New publications in Germany, the US, and India among other countries focused their formats, news, and pricing towards youth, hoping to break into what has historically been a stubborn market. Some papers have even tried to attract young readers by incorporating text message alerts and giving young readers a chance to respond to articles online.
8. Evolving business models in print
   When famous newspaper owner and investor Warren Buffet makes public his bleak opinion about the future of newspapers saying that, "the economics of newspapers in the United States are very close to certain to deteriorate over the next 10 to 20 years," it can be assumed there is a problem. In dealing with these problems and adapting newsrooms accordingly, the World Editors Forum isolated the continuation or emergence of five principal ideas.
9. Evolving business models online
   Two media executives raised the two primary issues for the coming year. Referring to statistics done last year by the U.K.’s Aegis Group entitled "Digital at the Tipping Point" which concluded that by 2007, 50% of all media will be digital, a number which will increase to 80% by 2020, the editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger said that evolution of online editions may prove to be a more important development in 2004 than the transition to compact! Consequently, the World Editors Forum studied three major developments in order to adapt the traditional offline newsroom.
10. Looking to 2010: the interactive 'daily me'
    Looking towards 2010, the future presents the newspaper industry with some good news: for instance, the combination of newspapers with various media, especially mobile technology, is predicted to be profitable. By 2010, many people’s main source of news could be their mobile phones.