Just. Welcome to Feature of Journalism, a podcast from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
I'm Fisica Cherubini, head of Leadership Development at the Institute.
Use a special series of Apple Podcasts and its dedicated regional news report.
2022. Over seven episodes with diving into the most comprehensive piece of research on news consumption around the world.
In this episode of the series, we're joined by lead author of the report, Nick Newman.
Nick is co-author of Chapter that looks at which individual journalist news audiences pay most attention to.
We look at whether these journalists represent traditional mainstream media or
newer digital born brands and whether they are known for reportage or opinion,
for example. Nick, welcome to the podcast set again.
So this is the first time the digital news report has asked people to name which individual journalist they follow most closely.
So it's a complicated subject, but what it is about today's media environment and made you ask this question in the first place.
Well, obviously, digital and social media has opened up the opportunity for anybody with a phone
and an Internet connexion to create content and distribute that content for free,
effectively to do some of the roles that journalism and journalists did.
So we've seen the rise of citizen journalism, blogging now podcasting.
So basically, you know, you don't need to be attached to a traditional media company to be a journalist anymore.
And then in the last few years, we've seen the development of a series of platforms that allow people to make businesses out of it.
So the most obvious one is probably Substack,
which is a platform that allows any individual journalist really easily to charge money for a newsletter or a podcast.
And this is kind of really game changing because it gives the structure incentives
to allow individuals to become media companies and to make a living out of it.
So there's a lot of hype about this change, about the creator economy.
And we wanted to see how that's working out in in journalism.
When people think about journalists, do they think of these creators?
They think about people working in the mainstream media.
What countries did you look at and why?
So we just looked at six countries because we wanted to go deep rather than wide.
And we our starting point was the U.S. because that's where the sort of creator economy is really sort of going fastest.
But then we also looked at Finland, Germany and the U.K., which we know from other work, has strong brands.
And so that we expected to see some stronger brands and and a lower role for individual journalists.
And then we looked at France and Brazil, countries where we know individual journalists have traditionally played a bigger role.
A large part of this chapter is based on a survey line asking respondents to write the names of five journals they pay attention to.
I have a big caveat around the data should be that less than half of all respondents name a single journalist.
Did you see that as an indicator that many people just don't follow the news closely, don't don't have many names in mind?
I mean, partly that but I think it's also a function of surveys.
People to surveys don't like to spend a lot of time on questions like this.
So we probably shouldn't read too much into it. But but we do know that that people struggle, too, to name journalists beyond maybe, you know,
television newsroom readers who've been in their lives, you know, every evening for for many years.
People pay attention to stories, but not necessarily to to the journalists.
And, you know, it was interesting to see that confirmed to some extent, at least in that statistic.
Well, we look a bit of specific names in a moment, but I'm just curious whether any names are you surprised to see any known,
particularly non-traditional journalists that kept coming up the use of about.
Generally, no. I mean, people people named broadcasters and also print journalists.
And they tended to name those who had either been around for a while or had been controversial in some way.
And and in almost all countries, we found that the vast majority of them traditional journalists.
But in the US, we did find a much, much bigger proportion.
Something like 15%, many of whom I had not heard of at all.
So effectively are really long tail people you might not think about as journalists.
So we tagged them.
We coded them alternative and independent, and they included YouTubers, include podcasters, they include comedians, authors and academics.
There's another sort of interesting category social media influencers. This was more in the U.S. and in other countries, but we saw that, too.
In Brazil, for example, there's a, you know, a name that came up regularly called Zoe Martinez, who is a young vlogger.
And she combines political and social discussions with sort of her personal vlogging adventures, if you like.
In Germany, there's a young YouTuber and podcaster called Tyler Young who has the sort of
persona of of a naive young man and asks his guests very basic questions around.
The news came up a lot in the US, Joe Rogan, obviously, and actually in other countries as well.
He who is obviously huge on Spotify, but many people wouldn't think about it as a journalist.
And then finally, I think there's a category of politicians as well.
So we found a lot of people who we ask about, journalists you pay attention to, and they gave us politicians because of course, the line is blurring.
You have many politicians who now anchor radio and television programmes.
Nigel Farage in the UK is an it is a prime time anchor on on a channel called TV News.
Eric Zimmer,
one of the you one of the candidates in the French presidential elections this year was an anchor with would see news or commentator would see news.
And so I think this sort of line between journalists and other types of professions is sort of blurring all the time.
I want to ask you more about names, but first, did you find that people follow individual journalists more than news brands?
And what's what explains the findings?
Right. So so right at the beginning, we asked everyone in the survey, do they identify more with a news brand or with an individual journalist?
So this is obviously not not the way people think about it's a rather crude way of looking at it.
But but it really did show some really quite surprising country differences here.
So, for example, 90%, roughly 90% in Finland, Denmark, some of these Nordic countries say they mainly identify with the brand.
So only a tiny percentage said they they identified with the journalists.
That's also true in the UK.
And we know from other research we do, these are traditionally very strong, have very, very strong brands and very strong connexions with individuals.
Whereas in France, Brazil and to some extent in the US we have a much higher proportion who say that they identify with the individual journalist.
It kind of helps to explain why Substack is doing better in the U.S. than is in the U.K. but also in France and Brazil,
over 50% said they mainly identified with individual journalists.
So I think this is really kind of interesting because it suggests that maybe, you know,
if you're thinking about monetisation, sustainability, maybe there are different ways to go here.
Maybe for, you know, some of the strong brand countries, you know, you're really pushing on the brand.
But maybe if there's more identification with journalists,
you want to make more of your individual journalists and you want to maybe tie that into a brand subscription.
So you want to develop some stars who can really sort of bring that connexion, if that seems to be what the data is telling us.
Let's get some more specific. Who were the most closely followed journalist?
That survey responds. Notified if we start for the UK with example, for example.
Well, the top the top ten list had actually a couple of political journalists at the top.
So Laura Kuenssberg is the BBC political correspondent and Robert Peston, ITV's political correspondent.
And that's I guess because they have been on screen constantly and on social
media constantly for four years talking about Brexit and talking about COVID.
So, you know, every night in people's living rooms, every night on people's social media feeds.
You also had a correspondent from a newspaper paper career from The Mirror,
who has broken a lot of the exclusive stories on party gate, for example, the scandal involving Boris Johnson in the UK.
And I think, you know, this is quite encouraging.
It shows that that the people recognise news journalists who break stories, not just, you know, opinion TV journalists, I should say.
We also have Piers Morgan who who who is in the top ten list,
who is well known for his more opinionated views and television shows in the US and Australia.
And the UK has just launched a new show on TV.
But interestingly, you know, also opinion columnists from The Guardian, which is kind of free in terms is not behind a paywall.
Three of those make the top ten list, including. Which is a sort of real testament to that left leaning publication and the value of opinion.
So you've got traditional, impartial based news on the one hand and then opinion as well.
If you look at the US, for example, was the list broadly comparable to the type of journalist in the UK?
No, I mean completely, completely different. I mean that the top ten list is basically all styles of cable TV.
So either Fox, MSNBC, CNN, I think this one from ABC in the.
And so that led by Tucker Carlson, you know, a fairly notorious presenter on an anchor on Fox.
Much of the content of this content is deliberately partisan.
So very much. In contrast, the UK, where the vast majority of the top ten lists have a duty to present impartial news in the US.
It's, it's very, very different. And I think that's kind of really interesting because it's showing the extent to which
people are exposed to much more partisan opinions in the U.S. and the power of television.
Whereas the UK less was much more split between print and and broadcast.
Yeah. And then I think the other really interesting thing is with diversity,
we looked at gender balance of in different countries and broadly across all of the countries we looked at about 70% of those mentioned women.
Also, they tended to be white and lower representing representation of ethnic minorities than the national population.
But what you have is broadcast media, particularly in Europe, tended to be much closer to sort of 5050 gender balance.
So there's been a lot of work on diversity within public service media, for example, and that was reflected in our data was about 50, 50%.
But top name print reporters and columnist in places like the UK and U.S. and Germany tend to be overwhelmingly male.
So so, you know, the gender balance seems to be distributed very differently depending on the media type.
Was there any other pattern that you were able to find in other countries do you look at?
I think one of the interesting things is the is the mix of print and television.
So television dominates it. It's not necessarily that they are only paying attention to these journalists in broadcast because
many of these television personalities have also developed social media presences as well.
But but in in in, you know, television kind of dominates but less so in the UK where you've got these strong brands,
less so in Finland, where you've got these strong print brands.
The print journalist seems to have developed much stronger presence and a much stronger connexion.
Again, I think it speaks to some of the trends that we were talking about in terms of monetisation and the
ability of some of the Northern European brands in particular to monetise that connexion with the brands.
You touched it before, but do you think news organisations find it beneficial or detrimental overall to their brands,
having prominent journalists within their ranks who can potentially reach millions of followers by directly?
I think it's a bit of a double edged sword. You know, I think clearly now top.
Journalists, star journalists play a key role in the performance and reputation of brands.
And we're certainly seeing a move to star journalists.
And the price of some of the top talent in terms of wages is going up significantly.
So, for example, Joe Rogan, who we mentioned earlier, is earning huge sums to present his Spotify series.
But you're also seeing stars being poached.
So stars from BBC, for example, a number of them have gone to global radio.
And in the UK you've seen the New York Times hiring a lot of top digital talent
and then some of that top digital talent being sold again because the power of
journalists who can work across different platforms is and host podcasts and
newsletters and sort of bring in different audiences is incredibly important.
So yeah, I think it's it's about the need to be distinctive on the one hand and having key talents part of that.
And I think it's also something to do with the changing nature of media as well.
Social media, podcasts, newsletters are much more vehicles for personalities.
And so it's partly, you know, media companies know that they have to embrace those,
those new channels, and that requires building up some more of those personalities.
The double edged sword bit is, you know, it can be detrimental if that person becomes the brand and it can take away from from the overall,
they can just leave and take their followers with them. Indeed.
A fascinating by complex topic. Nick, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.
Thanks. Our guest today was Nick Newman, lead author of the Digital News Report.
Thank you all for listening to this episode of Digital News Report 2022 Podcast Series.
You can catch up on other episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
If you want to read the full report in full, you can find it online and Digital News Reporter August 20, 22.
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