Editors note: This article was originally published on Entrepreneurial Journalism, created by James Breiner. You can sign up for his newsletter here.

Publisher’s note: Four years ago, I was asked to identify some trends shaping digital journalism. The two trends I singled out have only accelerated, and the 10 resulting paradigms haven’t changed either. The media I mentioned as case studies are still going strong.

Trend No. 1. Publishers are pivoting toward users and away from advertisers and investors as their main source of financial support.

The business model that depended on advertising to support journalism is moribund and nearly dead. The automated buying and selling of advertising is controlled by the duopoly of Google and Facebook, which have more and better data about news publishers’ users than the publishers’ themselves.

Publishers have no way to compete with that dominance of programming and targeting of ads. It’s time to burn the ships and not look back.

Trend No. 2. Amid the flood of junk, misinformation, clickbait, and false information, the added value of a news organization will spring from its credibility. News media need to build credibility and trust by interacting more directly with their audiences, listening to their audiences, adopting transparency about their owners and investors, detailing their funding sources and spending practices, and, above all, doing investigative journalism that holds political and business leaders accountable for their actions.

More from The Fix: How publisher credibility creates economic value

Because of these two trends, there are 10 new paradigms for digital journalism:

More from The Fix: Reasons for optimism: The movement for trustworthy information

Photo by Barthelemy de Mazenod on Unsplash

Two trends that are driving new business models

James Breiner

Publishers are pivoting toward users and away from advertisers and investors as their main source of financial support.

Author

James Breiner

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