Triggered by a serious crisis in a media group, Portuguese journalists are starting to come together in search for solutions for the survival of journalism.

Recently, one of the largest media groups in Portugal, owning well-known newspapers and a radio, announced a contract cancellation programme covering 200 workers, justifying with the need to counteract a complicated financial situation. There was even a delay of around 25 days in the payment of December’s salaries to the newspapers’ workers.

This was the moment when the country realised that no one really knows who owns Global Media Group (GMG). In September, 51% of the two companies holding 50.25% of GMG were sold to an investment fund based in the Bahamas, and it is completely unknown who the shareholder behind the fund is.

This case demonstrates that the current fragile business models in media entail risks of appearing opaque economic interests, unavailable to comply with the purposes for which journalism serves.

There are historic newspapers in question at this time. One of the titles owned by GMG is Jornal de Notícias (JN), the only national generalist newspaper based in Porto – the second largest city in the country. With GMG’s management plan, 40 workers from this newspaper can leave, which would mean to cut the newsroom in half.

In the end, this situation has definitively revealed the crisis situation in the Portuguese media. “GMG is the tip of the iceberg”, said the president of the Portuguese Press Association at a TV debate, since the scenario is “dramatic” across the country. Cláudia Maia affirmed that 25% of the Portuguese counties (which means more than 70) are news deserts, that is, don’t have any journalistic outlets. This association has been trying to warn about this reality and has been meeting with political parties over many years, but Maia revealed that when it tried to meet with the current government it did not receive any response.

The perfect storm

Traditionally, Portugal is a country with a very low financial contribution from the state and civil society to journalism, with no structured incentives for the activity. Furthermore, many journalistic titles are grouped and owned by a small number of private conglomerations, often possessed by shareholders from various business areas like banking, real estate and tourism.

As a result of these and other factors, Portuguese journalism is going through a serious financial, labour and ethical crisis. Of the journalists interviewed in a recent Portuguese survey, 59% said that they have never received training from their employer, 48% have high levels of exhaustion, and for 52%, working conditions do not allow them to act with independence, integrity and security. As a Portuguese journalist said, “we have the perfect storm”: a crisis in the traditional financing model, difficulty in perceiving other financing possibilities, and a decreasing number of readers.

However, no one has paid attention to this problem in the last decades, not the political authorities, not even the journalists themselves. The Portuguese Congress of Journalists met again this year, in January, but it had not been held since 2017 and it was only the 5th edition since the first in 1983. Also, although it was already scheduled many months ago, the majority of the inflow was generated because of the recent case in GMG, as before it had almost no registrations.

This is because “the class is absolutely unconnected”, Pedro Coelho, the president of this congress’s organising committee and award-winning investigative journalist, told The Fix. “Not even in newsrooms do we communicate things that have to do with our profession.” Now “we realise we’ve hit the bottom”, the profession itself is under threat, so the time has come for journalists to discuss together what the pillars of reconstruction should be, Coelho advocated.

Journalism is a public good

The discussion of new models that can support sustainable journalism in the future was, inevitably, one of the main topics under discussion at the congress. There is already a convergence of the need for public investment in journalism, even on the part of almost all political parties, now it is necessary to reach an agreement on concrete measures.

One of the proposals defended by Coelho focuses on preserving quality journalism – in a country where investigative journalism is practically non-existent – by replicating the academic model, in which journalists would apply for public grants that would be assessed by a jury made up of academics and journalists, independent and legitimised by peers.

Then, there are proposals more targeted towards companies, still with public funding (for example, tax exemptions), depending on important and objective criteria: how many journalists the company has, what salaries it pays, whether it is concerned about producing quality journalism, etc.

There is also a suggestion, already with international experience, to directly support consumers themselves, materialising in the distribution by the state of vouchers to citizens who, in turn, would purchase subscriptions to the media outlets or projects of their choice.

Different support mechanisms and innovative instruments already exist in other countries. In the same TV debate mentioned above, a former government responsible for the media in Portugal said that we should study these examples and that they necessarily involve a reinforcement of the state’s role in supporting the media. Some measures mentioned were: offering the news agency service to media organisations; giving ‘blind’ support, for instance to all media outlets that have local correspondents; tax benefits. He argues that these should be indirect incentives to guarantee the independence of the media.

Attention has also been drawn to the importance of giant digital platforms contributing to aid the media. It would probably have to be negotiated through the European Union, but one proposal is to force platforms to benefit journalistic projects in the algorithms’ competition, and another is to create a fee relating to the advertising revenue generated.

Source of the cover photo: DALL·E

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Portugal wakes up to the crisis of journalism business models