European Digital Journalism Survey 2009

The Oriella PR Network undertook a survey of over 350 journalists across Europe to determine what impact the advent of the Internet and widely-available broadband had had on the world of journalism.

In June and July 2009, over 350 journalists were polled from broadcast, national, regional and trade media across Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK to monitor the evolution of the daily role and routine of a journalist in Europe.

As expected world economic crisis was named as the biggest negative impact on journalism. Many journalists think that industry as well as economic and financial businesses will not be able to exist and act in the way they did before the crisis. Most media outlets generate their incomes from advertising, but its overall volume has decreased by more than 10% during the last year.

A third of polled journalists said they feared their employers – traditional media outlets (print media, radio and television stations) may vanish from market. It’s noteworthy that 1/5 of respondents said their media outlets had already been closed down. 75% of polled UK-based journalists said they were afraid their media outlets could be closed down, Belgian and Dutch journalists are much less concerned about closures, only 25% of polled journalists there think that various media outlets could be closed down.

The good news is that internet offers the closed traditional media outlets the online platform, where they can continue to operate. 10% of interviewed journalists admitted that their media outlets have fully switched to internet publications or internet broadcasting. They also believe that growing amount of online advertising fully covers the amounts that are needed for operation of online media outlets; that means other traditional media outlets could also move to internet.

60% of the polled believe that print media will experience downfall. Two thirds of polled German, Swedish and British journalists think that many print media outlets will cease to exist. At the same time 53% of journalists believe that internet media isn't a profitable media so far because its business model isn't quite well-developed yet.

It should be noted that the survey indicated some positive expectations: more than 50% of the polled hope that development of new media will attract new customers and create new markets, which will be very beneficial and interesting for journalists in future.

New Era and New Technologies

Last year's survey showed that journalists are forced to adapt to development of new technologies, therefore they're trying to use blogs, podcasts and other services in their everyday activities.

One of the biggest phenomena of 2009 in that sphere was Twitter (micro-blog with elements of social networking). More than a third of European media outlets have a Twitter channel, which broadcasts all published articles.

Besides, journalists said that 25% of their articles eventually end up on internet, because more than a fourth of all readers get their news only from internet.

A new trend in journalism has appeared – more and more journalists pay attention to and use the so-called user-generated content (UGC) in their activities. More attention is given to commenting – contrary to the existing tradition the users have more opportunities to leave their comments on news websites, criticize or praise a journalist's work. That enables editors and journalists to understand the needs and interests of potential users as well as evaluate a journalist's work and take into consideration the users' interests in future.

Despite the fact that world economic crisis of 2009 has turned out to have the biggest impact on journalism and news services, the journalists still say that they're happy with their profession. In their opinion, thanks to the current instruments of new media journalism has been improved and level of professionalism has become higher.

The full results of the survey can be viewed at: www.europeandigitaljournalism.com