Five best sources about trends in the media industry
Apart from the occasional off-the-grid person choosing to tune out the outside world, we’re all huge consumers of media and news. Yet in our role as consumers we rarely think about the underlying industry, its evolution and its challenges. For us at QN Technologies it’s critical to understand publishers, journalists and media professionals of all kinds. But what resources do we have to learn this? Here are five. And while the list is by no means exhaustive, I do hope it’ll provide the reader with a good starting point.
NIEMAN LAB
Operated by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Nieman Lab publishes high-quality articles on problems in contemporary publishing and journalism, from bias in reporting to business model challenges. They’re particularly strong at analyzing the business trends in the industry. The most illuminating article I read explained how digital subscriptions changed the media landscape, making revenue far more concentrated and starving once-august institutions like the L.A. Times.k.
THE POYNTER INSTITUTE
The nonprofit best known for operating PolitiFact and MediaWise, the Poynter Institute provides, so to speak, meta-news, such as their analysis of the recent coverage of the protests in the US after the death of George Floyd. The institute publishes multiple newsletters such as The Poynter Report and The Cohort. They’ve recently made waves in the tech news cycle by developing a WhatsApp chatbot dedicated to debunking coronavirus-related hoaxes.
AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE
A nonprofit institute publishing in-depth studies of media. As an example, we’ve thoroughly gone through this report on the demographic differences between print and digital subscribers.
STRATECHERY
OK, this is the techie in me speaking. The author, the by now legendary Ben Thompson, is an independent analyst covering tech strategy (generally focusing on the Big Five and their challengers). That being said, tech is a broad umbrella indeed these days, and its intersection and effect on media and reporters is considerable. For examples of his excellent writing on media check out Newspapers are dead, long live journalism and The local news business model.
AXIOS MEDIA TRENDS
A newsletter published by Axios reporter Sara Fischer, Media Trends covers novel developments in the media industry, from the The New York Times’ privacy-related changes to fundamentally new media products like TikTok or Quibi. A quick read, available every week.
So there you have it! With these sources you should be able to get a better picture on the media landscape in our brave new world. Got any other source you’d recommend? We’d love to hear about it!
