News as a feature

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That is beehiiv.com/trb. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey.

I'm joined today by Jim Egan. Jim works at the Reuters Institute, and they just completed... I always like it. All the news nerds love, love the, the, the annual drop of the [chuckles] of the report on, on the state of the news industry.

Jim is a longtime executive in the industry. I think we got to know each other when you were at BBC and then at FT Strategies. But welcome, Jim. Looking forward to this.

Thanks for having me on, Brian. All right. So for those who do not know, just explain the Reuters Institute and also this, this annual report that, that is put together. Sure, yeah.

So the, so the Reuters Institute is part of the Department of Politics and International Relations at, at Ox- Oxford University. We receive foundational funding from the Reuters News Agency, hence the, hence the, the name. But it's essentially, it's, it's an academic research institute focused on the study of journalism. So what's, what's happening both in terms of consumption trends in journalism and other sort of big policy issues and, and so on.

The Digital News Report, as you say, is a, is an annual publication. So this year is the fifteenth edition of the report, and it's a study that covers both attitudes towards news and also consumption of news across forty-eight markets globally. So we collect this data in January and February each, each year and publish it in June. Yeah.

I think the big headline that came out of this, at least for me... Th- my, my, my headline is that news, news is a feature, not a product anymore. And by that, I mean, you know, if, if audiences are, are increasingly less likely to go directly to news publishers, they're far more... There's a growing likelihood that they will consume news through, you know, social media platforms, video networks, and that is a major shift because I think you guys, across the forty-eight markets that, that you had surveyed, using social media and, and video networks, and these are the big platforms, is, for the first time, the most widely used way of accessing news.

I mean, that's pretty profound. I mean, this has been going on for a while, but it's crossed the threshold. It's been going on for a while and, and, and this year is, is, is the year in which the lines crossed. It's worth saying that that's not so much because of the ongoing and unstoppable rise of social media and video networks, although that, that, that plays a part.

It's also got something to do with the ongoing decline of what you might call traditional sources of news. And, and, and under that umbrella term, traditional, we would now include news websites and, and apps. So owned digital, digital properties are sort of tracking TV news in, in terms of their di- direction of travel. And as a consequence of those two trends of social growth and reductions in, in the use of traditional sources, as you say, third-party platforms are now the most widely used way of getting to the news when, when we look at things globally.

This has been happening, you know, around the world at slightly different speeds for, for, for a while, but that's, that, that's now the overall global perspective. Y- yeah. But I mean, like, so for, like, a generation, it was about the digitization of, of news publishing, moving from analog distribution to digital distribution, and that usually was centered on, on sites and apps, right? Like you're gonna...

You were publishing a newspaper or a magazine and, and now you're publishing a website and an app and, and there was various distribution mechanisms that were used to get people there, but the, the goal was to get people there. And that seems like it's less tenable as an overall strategy because I don't necessarily see in this data evidence that this is a blip and that you can just... Like th- this, there seems something structural. And, and by that, I mean, 'cause when you dig into the demographic data, it's one thing if you're someone like my age who used to get a newspaper delivered to their door and even delivered newspapers, if you will.

You have that, like, sort of latent habit. But younger generations simply don't have that, that, that habit at all, right? No, that's, that's, that's, that's right. So, so the way I sort of think about it shorthand is that please don't think that currently younger news audiences are going to grow up and acquire the news habits of the- of their parents, right?

So, so in, in the, in the report, you know, we, we, we note that fifty-six percent of people aged twenty-four and under Have never been in a regular habit of reading a newspaper, right? So there, there is no reason to assume that these, these people are going to start to behave, behave like that. In fact, I mean, the way I would put it is that older people are becoming more like younger audiences rather than the other way around. And, you know, that, that shift I was talk- talk- talking about earlier, that's happening across all age groups, that people are moving from TV news, which historically has been, been the big platform, and from news websites and apps, which more recently has been, been the big platform towards third, third party con- consumption.

And of course, when you're consuming news on these third, third party networks, you are in a hyper-competitive environment, not just with every other news organization, but with, with every other demand on, on people's online time. Yeah. So the shift to, to video i- is, is highlighted in the report, and I think the... an important thing that, that drives home the point that we're talking about is that even as video, online video consumption has grown quite a bit on third party platforms, that mainstream news organizations have seen video consumption on their own apps and sites decline.

It w- w- went down 5%. Right. Right. So you've got, you've got a secular shift from text to video, and then news organizations are producing more video, but people are not coming to their, their sites and apps that they control.

That's right. You know, I, I, I think that's one of the most striking things that we, we, we see this growth, in particular of, of video networks, 'cause really in the past five year- years it's been about the growth of Instagram, TikTok and, and, and YouTube, and the growth consequently of video as a consumption format. But despite all the pivots to video, not only are news publishers losing market share, but they're actually losing in absolute terms. So the number of people saying that they are consuming video on publisher sites is, is going down, and over the last five years it's down 10 percentage points globally.

I think that has a lot of knock-on effects, right? Because, you know, look, we went through the pivot to video and, and that was... I don't know, maybe we sort of look back on it a- and it was like, "No, maybe that was actually completely correct" [laughs]. Because, like, getting...

You know, there has been an emphasis on, on developing consumer revenue lines, right? And I think when you're not getting people to your sites and your apps, your chance of converting them [laughs] is very low, okay? If they're running across you on Instagram and TikTok, even if you're, even if you're succeeding there, you're not gonna get them to pay. Now, the report found that paying for news is stable, but it's not growing, at least across, uh, 20 markets.

So paying for news, I believe it was about 17% across 20 markets. That's right. Yeah. And so basically, it seems like a ceiling has, has been hit when it comes to consumer revenue and, and that, you know, maybe that's just the breadth, right?

And I think you do see within a lot of publishers the emphasis shifting to ARPU and basically trying to make more off of the minority of people who are willing to pay. I mean, the idea that, that half your audience is gonna pay you is just probably unlikely for, for, for most. Abso- absolutely, all, all, all of that. Now what, what, what does, what does this mean for people?

I think, you know, the, the, the first thing is if, if you are seeing what's now starting to look like long-term structural decline in traffic to, to news websites and apps, that does affect the extent to which and the volume and, and the rate at which you're, like, filling the, the top of the funnel. Although I would say that the data kinda suggests that the, that the loss of audience to, to these sites may be the loss of what people sometimes call, you know, drive-by traffic, that actually, in reality you were never gonna convert- Right...

anyway, you know, people who are coming in once, once a week for a, for a single s- single story. So the focus quite rightly seems to be shifting towards addressing that market who are genuinely engaged, likely to convert, and of course retaining that, that audience. And yes, the, the data for a number of years has suggested that globally, you know, somewhere between 15 and 20% seems to be the, the average pop- population of, of people who will pay, pay for news. But within that, you know, we see this year a, a sort of growing diversity of the number of organizations that are managing to, to, to generate viable re- reader revenue, so it's not all going to traditional outlets.

It's going to a number of digital startups. It's going to some individuals through creative platforms and, and so on. And I think the, the other thing is there's an interesting diversity in the reasons why people choose to pay, pay for news. So there's a mix in the, in the data of people who are saying perhaps an obvious thing, but something worth remembering is the number one reason why people pay is to get access to unique, distinctive content they can't get elsewhere.

And I think, [laughs] you know, it's worth bearing in mind just how important that is for any re- reader revenue strategy. But also there, there are other sort of what we call kinda like social or values-based motivations, and for certain publishers in certain spaces with particular strategies, those can be useful ways of, of trying to get people, like, across the line into a paying relationship. Yeah. I mean, The Guardian's had success with that, with that model and- Yeah...

you know, you see a lot of people leaning into the sort of mission base. But I think, you know, the data shows that even in, even in markets like Scandinavia, which all of us wish that we, we lived in because apparently people are way more willing to pay for, for news content [laughs] in, in those markets, it's a transaction. You know, it's, it's, it's about getting access to, to information that they want access to versus some kind of social good. Right.

Yeah. But I mean, uh, it, it, it is a transaction, but, but then tra- transaction can, can be... product of convincing people of, of that social argument and getting people to the point at which they're prepared to share, share, share their cred- credit card details. So there are, there are different natures to, to, to the transaction.

But yeah, in, in the end, it's, it's fun- fundamentally a, you know, it's a commercial financial decision for people, even if they're, you know, making it for slightly different reasons. Yeah. And the other thing that really stood out to... One of the other things that really stood out to me was around, around news avoidance, right?

And, and, and just basically interest in news. Now, when you're comparing to, say, 2017, particularly in, in, in the US market, like you've got the, the Trump phenomenon that... You know, I think he was actually correct when he said he was the best thing that, that happened to news organizations [chuckles] in some ways. They, they saw the Trump bump in subscriptions.

But there is fatigue that, that is coming. Is that cyclical or is that structural? And I think that that is to me a, a really important question when I, I think about whether, you know, news becomes a product or whether... or news remains a product or whether it becomes a feature as part of like a larger product set.

Because it, it clearly there's a, there's a shrinking portion of people who are kind of like news addicts that you've found. I think the data is suggesting that at least part of it is, is structural, right? You know, if we, if we look back at the five years since the pandemic, on an average level, people who say that they're extremely or very interested in news, you know, that that's down 13 percentage points across all, all of our markets. You know, there are, there are some countries, Italy is an example, where interest in news is down by 25 percentage points in, in, in the last five years.

I... and I doubt that's simply a cyclical phenomenon. But, you know, this is some- something that I'm, I'm, I'm... a word that I'm learning to use in the academic environment is counterfactual, right?

So- Yeah... so what's, what's the potential alternative to that? And just to go back very briefly to, to the video question, you know, if publishers hadn't pivoted to video, like the numbers might be even worse in terms of what was going on for, for video, video consumption. And to, to come back to the question of interest in, in news, you, you might argue that given how hypercompetitive the content environment is when people are online, particularly on, on third, third-party platforms, that actually interesting news is holding up quite well given, given the variety of other demands on, on, on people's time and, and so on.

But I think we are, we are in a situation where people are less interested in the news than, than they were before. Younger people are historically less interested than, than older people. But actually the decline in interest has been smaller among younger people than it has among older people over the last five years. Hmm.

And news avoidance has shot up quite a bit. Went up to 42% from 29% in, in 2017. That was in 2017. So that's- Yeah...

so o- over the last nine, nine years, yeah, the, the numbers have, have gone up. It didn't go up much- Mm-hmm... this, this year ac- actually. But yeah, 42% of people are saying that they avoid the news often or sometimes, right?

And you do... Yeah, that's a challenge for a, for a product if two-fifths of people are saying, "Well, I actively avoid it at least some, some of the time." Yeah. Now, the AI story is still very early days.

Like I... In, in the data that you guys collected, it's not... I mean, it's growing, you know, using AI chatbots for, for news is, is growing. But that isn't really their specialization, at least at the moment.

We haven't seen, you know, widespread adoption of agents that go out there and, and, you know, fetch the, the news that you want. That's a extraordinarily niche activity. But it has increased, I think it was like 7% to 10% using chatbots for news, right? Yeah.

So I, I mean, the, the way I look at this is it's, it's growing and it's growing quickly, but it's not exploding in the way that AI adoption and diffusion is, is growing in, in, in other aspects of, of, of pe- people's lives. There is significant international variation on it. So you see markets like South Korea and Brazil and elsewhere where the numbers have doubled and, you know, they're, they're closer to 15% than, than 10%. But also there are other markets.

I mean, the, the UK and the US are in, are interesting. I think usage is 4% in the UK, it's 6% in the US. Also hasn't grown this, this year either. So it's, it's, it's intriguing to kind of dwell on why, why that might be.

I think part of the answer is that when we ask people, "Do you trust news from, from AI chatbots?" Like the percentages are very low. So 11% of people in the US say that they trust news from, from AI, AI chatbots. So that may be im- impeding take up.

But I think s- well, one other reason as well is, is, is likely to be that showing, showing the data. There's no kind of like real breakout use case for, for AI chatbots for news yet. There's a variety of different things that quite a few people are, are, are using, but either people or the platforms haven't yet found out, you know, a, a really killer way of making this something substantially and excitingly different than just sort of a better search engine. Yeah.

And you know, the one area that is growing quite a bit is creators, right? News creators. Yeah. Now, how do you guys define like a news creator?

Well, we define it a bit tautologically really. So, so, so, so we say a, a creator or an influencer, and we use those terms int- interchangeably, who ma- who mainly focuses on, on the news. So that's, that's how, how we, we define it. And we, we leave it to respondents of the survey to interpret whether or not creators main- mainly focus on the news.

But when we ask people, "Do you get content from news, news-focused creators?" 27% of people globally are now saying that they do. Again, sig- significant variation. So, you know, the US is, is one of the markets where the number's a bit higher.

So about a third of people in the US say they're, they're using news, news focus creators. And I th- I think the, the biggest market on the survey is Thailand, where just, just about half of people are, are, are saying this. So, so creators are certainly becoming an important part of, of, of the landscape and at least some news consumption from, from these, these news, news creators is, is, is happening for a lot... big numbers of people.

Yeah. Like, I think the question is always, like, whether this is a substitution product, right? 'Cause I think what a lot of news creators do, and again, this is a very broad term, right, is they contextualize news, they're entertaining, they have, they have followings. They're, they're good at the, the performance aspect, I've, I've, I've thought- Right...

better than, than traditional news, and particularly the packaging and distribution and whatnot. But it seems like from the data, you know, these people are more likely to consume traditional news sources. Like, it's not like a substitution for- Yes. Yeah, I mean- For news...

abs- abs- absolutely. So, you know, I think there are... This, this relationship between established media and, and creators, it has both sort of supply side and, and demand side aspects. Mm.

So, you know, you, you hear a number of news creators now saying, "Well, if we didn't have established media and those primary brands," and so on and so forth, "doing the hard yards of news gathering, breaking stories," and so on and so forth, "we'd have nothing to, to comment on." Yeah. And on the demand side, you see that a li- a little bit as well. So as, as you, as you've hinted, when we cut the data by people who are using some of these, these news creators, in just about every single one of the for- 48 markets, people who are using news creators are using traditional media more than the average respondent, right?

So that points to a complimentary relationship where... And I think this is actually quite encouraging. We were talking about falling demand and, and, and so on. People are finding time to make room in their, in their media diets for what news creators are doing.

And I, and I, and I think this kind of bursts the bubble a little bit on the myth that there's a sort of fixed amount of news time that, that people are prepared to allocate in their, in their day and, like, anything that goes to creators is at the expense of established news media. That, that doesn't seem to be what the data's su- suggesting at all. Yeah. And I think also, like, uh, you know, one of the questions that I end up having is, like, whether, you know, publishers should really sort of double down on going deeper with their highly engaged news lovers, I believe you, you call that.

Like, which is a- Mm... shrinking market, right? It's gone from 29% to 22% since 2021. Yeah.

But these are, these are solid audiences. I think the, the pivot to video got a bad rap because it was kind of fake audiences. These, these were, you know, three-second views on Facebook and whatnot. But, you know, if you, if you can have that, that loyal audience of people who are really into the news, they're far more endor- uh, they're far more durable.

You know? They've got higher engagement, much higher propensity to pay. Now, it's, it's a shrinking market, it would seem like, but how do you see that playing out? Yeah.

Well, I, I think the answer to that depends a little bit on where you're coming from. But i- if you are a commercial news operator, absolutely the focus should be on your, on your news lovers, your most engaged, loyal audiences and, and so on. And that's, that's normally the starting point for most, like, reader revenue strategies is, is to figure out on, out who, who these people are and, and how you're best, best going, going to address them and so on. Now, the answer's a little bit different if you are perhaps, you know, a public service media organization, as you know- Mm...

particularly in Europe and other parts of the world, those are really important, where you don't have the luxury of just saying, "Well, I'm only gonna focus on, on my, my news lovers." That, you know, you, you have a mandate to serve everyone in your respective geography and, and so on. So for, for organizations like NPR or BBC in the UK or the ABC in, in, in Australia, how, how you deal both with kind of this re- reduction in the proportion of, of news lovers and also with, you know, the increasing polarization and sort of widening identity politics of people in, in your audience, tho- those are particularly difficult challenges, I think.

Yeah. Let's talk about trust for a little bit, 'cause I always struggle with trust in, in kind of surveys. Like, you know, I've never seen a survey that asks if people, like, trust government that says, "Yes, absolutely." Similar, maybe there was, like, in decades and decades ago about, about the news media, but I don't think most people...

It's like politicians, at least here. People claim that they hate politicians, don't trust them at all, and then you ask them about their politician, they're like, "Nah, nah, he or she's a great, great politician. I like them." Well, I mean, you're, you're, you're right about the difficulties of, of, of serving it.

So, you know, for what it's worth, that's not the way we, we ask the question. We're quite careful about how, how we get into tru- trust ratings. But nevertheless, this is sort of snapshot data. What people really mean or how, how they interpret a question of do you consider this brand to be trust- trustworthy or, or, or not will vary from individual to, to individual.

But, but nevertheless, as, as the data this year indicates, there has been a significant downward movement in the percentage of people who say they trust most news most of the time in, in their countries. So that figure is now at 37%, which is the lowest in the 15 years of the report. And it seems to be pretty u- u- universal, and there are a number of markets where, you know, statistically, there's a very significant drop, drop in trust overall. But something that's intriguing to help try to understand what might be going on here is that in general- And there are exceptions to this.

In general, in most markets where you then ask people, "Well, how do you... Do you consider the top 15 news brands in your market to be trustworthy or not?" That we haven't seen the numbers change very much for those individual news brands. So I, so I think people are expressing kinda like anxiety, concern, lack of confidence about the news and information environment, and that is probably a mix of the news makers as, as well as where people are, are getting their news.

But actually, trust in those individual news brands, by and large, not everywhere, by and large seems to be holding up even if individuals' relationship with those news brands is more distant as it's sort of intermediated by, by social media. Yeah, and it's also, I mean, look, there's always a gap between what people say and what people do, right? Yeah. Like, 'cause so people say, "Oh, I don't trust news on social media."

It's far lower. It's 22%, right? Mm. Guess where people are get- increasingly getting their news?

Social media. Right. Right. "I don't trust creators."

Yeah, and where are they getting it? Creators. Yeah. No, there's a, there's, there's an apparent paradox in the, in, in the data that, that people are shifting their, their consumption to the platforms that they appear to trust least, and that's because, you know, convenience beats concern, right?

Yeah, and they also, I mean, not to, not to beat up on humanity here. We're all hypocritical in our own ways, right? They say they want news without a point of view, you know, 45%. Yeah.

Say, "Stick to the facts." And then in the market, guess who [chuckles] guess who wins? The most opinionated, the loudest voices. Well, yeah.

I mean, I, I, I find this interesting, and that is part of the reason why we, we returned this question that we originally asked- Yeah... in, in like 2020. So, you know, is the idea of impartiality dead, at least through, through the lens of do you prefer news that has a, has a point, point of view or not? And, and despite the tumultuous changes, you know, in, in every respect over the last five, five to six years, you still find very nearly half of people saying they prefer news that doesn't have a point of view, both for them and also- Mm-hmm...

for others in society, right? And actually, the percentage of people saying they prefer news that shares their point of view has gone down by, by four, four percentage points over, over the same period. Now, that may not be what people do. It may be what, what they say.

But nevertheless, kind of there, there is some sort of underlying enduring belief in what that aspect of impartiality stands for and, and, and so on. And I, I, I finally think, think that's interesting. Now, that doesn't mean that impartiality is a good business strategy, right? So, so going to market saying, "Well, we're just gonna play it straight.

We're not taking sides," I'm... I don't know. I'm, I'm not sure if that's a winning strategy. But I think what it does mean is being impartial is not necessarily an inhibitor to a good strategy that has, you know, other aspects to it.

Yeah, and I think also just, like, from a commercial point of view, you know, being polarizing, being opinionated, it's good for engagement, and a lot of the mon- a lot of monetization mechanisms are engagement based. And, you know- Mm-hmm... particularly when news gets into these environments where it's a feature, right? Like, when you go into a social platform or platform of any kind, whether it's YouTube, whether it's X or, or Facebook or whatever, you're competing with everything, everything- Yep.

Yep... for attention and engagement. And so people might say that they like the platonic ideal of impartial news. But I think this is the, this is the challenge when it comes to, you know, commercial aspects of it, because the way you compete a lot of times, and you see this with, you know, creators being...

getting, getting more engagement than, than, than news sites, is, you know, the, the incentives are such that it's better to do the play-by-play than [laughs] or it's better to do the color commentary than the play-by-play. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, as, as, as, as we've said, you know, the world is much more difficult now that, you know, people are not just faced with the range of alternative news choices they used to have at the newsstand on the, on the street or on the remote control. But they're, they're faced with everything as soon as they go online, and switching from one thing to the next is, is as easy as a, as a sw- swipe, swipe, of course. But, you know, ne- ne- nevertheless, you know, these ne- news organizations, you know, are holding on, at, at least some of them.

And rather than just saying, "Well, this is all a bit too difficult, I'm not, not gonna bother anymore," I think sort of the, the question is, well, what, what are we going, going to do about it? And, you know, a- again, I think this idea of distinctive content and something that is noticeably and importantly different in a worthwhile way from everything else that there can be online, where I think it's probably fair to say the average standard level is going down ra- rather than up, I think that, that really matters.

And it may well be that kinda like away from the editorial and the newsroom, that the idea of brand is really going to matter as well, that, you know, having, curating, and managing a desirable destination that people want to go to directly rather than having that in- intermediated, you know, that I think is increasing in, in importance. Yeah. I mean, it, it, it will be interesting to see if, if news publishers can pull that off, right? Because it's very attractive, this idea of people, you know, not relying on platforms for distribution, people coming directly.

They might be smaller audiences, but they're more durable audiences. But making those numbers work is really difficult when it seems like a lot of these trends are against going directly to news sources. I mean, that's a fundamental challenge. I mean, you guys address Google, Goo- quote unquote, "Google Zero."

The reality is fewer people are coming. Now, maybe they were less valuable, right? The- they're, they, they were- Mm-hmm... than people who typed in www newspublisher.

com. But, you know, it's i- at least in looking at this data and what people say- They're just simply far less likely to visit individual news publishers. So I, I guess I wonder is, like, do, do publishers have to really embrace the idea that they are going to be operating for the most part and, and reaching their audience for the most part through platforms that they don't control? I mean, we, we went through a generation where we saw a lot of the downsides to that, but look, you can't fight, you can't fight, like, user behavior at the end of the day.

You can sort of like cry about it and say it's unfair or it's bad for democracy and society, but it seems that people... this is what people want. Like, they want to get news through platforms in a lot of ways. Right.

Right. And a- as, as, as you say, you c- you can cry about it, com- complain about it, and, and so on. And it, I suppose, you know, if you dislike it so much, we have a choice either individually or corporately to exit the market. But- Yes...

a number of it did continue to st- st- stick around for reasons that are, I think, in large part non-commercial as- Right... as, as well as commercial, and those are for, like, important, you know, factors to do with vocation and, and pers- personal mission to what this stands for. So, so the question is, given those realities about the way, you know, con- consumption is, is moving and, and the shift, you know, what, what am I in my particular business going, going to do about it?

And I do think that if, if we're in a world where generally most people are getting news from s- social media alongside, you know, and, and a, and an enduring but smaller role for the, for these direct platforms, I think that the, the question of, well, what is my social media strategy really doing for me? I think, I think that comes into sharp focus, right? So, you know, for s- for some people it may be fine as a, this is basically owned media that's replacing marketing dollars that I might be spending on, on brand ad- advertising elsewhere.

Mm-hmm. But for others, perhaps it's a way of starting to fill the funnel in the hope of conversion. I'm, to be honest, I'm a, I'm a bit bearish about, about, about that personally. But, you know, if you're, if you're neither building audience nor revenue through your s- s- social media strategy, then it's kinda really important to ask, well, what is that ac- actually doing for me, I think.

Yeah, I mean that's the, that's the, that's the [laughs] that's the enduring paradox, right? It's like, okay, you've got, you've got particularly younger cohorts, but just, you know, the, the direction of travel is you gotta compete on these platforms. You gotta... And this is where people say that they're increasingly consuming news.

This is where they're going. You have a mission, and you wanna go and reach those people. Let's say you also have a commercial model. At the same time, you know, even treating these as marketing tools, people are not coming back to, to, to the website where you can monetize them.

So the monetization on these platforms is, obviously it's less robust than in, in environments that you c- control. But like it's a, it's a, it's a tough choice to make about like it's, you know, just turning off those kind of audience saying, "We're not gonna focus there," you know, that, that's a way to become less relevant, right? Like, so it's a, that's a, a difficult balance. Yeah, and it's a, it's a gutsy publisher who says, "I'm, I'm just pulling off s- social media al- altogether."

Although there are some in, in the Nordics and, and elsewhere who, who have done that. But I, but I think, you know, both for, both for big publishers as well as some very small local pub- publishers, so big ones like the New York Times and the, and the Financial Times, as well as, you know, some, some, some of these local startups, you know, I, I think people running those outlets would say they have a very measured and a cautious social media strategy. There's more nuance than just saying, "Well, I'm not gonna play there at all," but I would imagine they'd look at it through, through the lens of what is this actually doing for me in terms of either kinda like brand awareness, profile, conversion, audience building, and, and, and so on.

And being sort of quite disciplined about that is going to be, be really important because if you simply say, "Well, all of the audience is moving there, that's where I've, I've, I've got to me, got to be," but it's not actually doing anything for your, for your, for your bottom line. You know, that can't be the answer either, right? Yeah, totally. What are, what are a few other signals that you would highlight from the report?

I mean, 'cause it's, it's... I, I'll be linking to it. It's, it's in-depth, does, has a lot of country specific reporting in there too. But what are, what are a few that maybe I missed that you would highlight?

Well, it's, it's, it's not for everyone, but we do ask about the, the social role of news from, from public broadcasters and pub- public media. We, we ran that- Yeah... those questions in, in tw- 26, 26 markets. I think that's, that's quite interesting kinda in the aggregate and also for the, the national variation that you see, see in answers to those, to those, those questions where, you know, we...

Five of the 26 markets, people on balance thought that news from their public broadcaster was bad for the country ra- ra- rather than, rather than good. Wow. And then I think if you cut the data by political leaning, you get some very interesting answers where people of different political persuasions often give you quite a, a different answer and a kinda like starkly different answer to that question of whether or not public broadcasters are, are good, good for, for life, life in y- in y- in your country.

So that's, that's one thing. I'd say the... Perhaps the, the one other sort of interesting area is, and we sort of link this to the impartiality questions, so kind of we ask people about the way they think news should be, and then we have a question about what people think about the way news is. So, so we ask people whether they think the news media is doing a good or a bad job of covering six long-running global stories in which we include the conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East, inflation, the cost of living, Donald Trump's second presidency, climate change, and, and immigration.

And in many markets, people on a net view are negative about the way news media is, is, is covering those, those stories. And one that's really striking in the European context- Is that just about everywhere people are negative about the way immigration is, is being covered in Europe, and whether you're a commercial broadcaster or in particular, if you're a public broadcaster, trying to get that story right is proving extremely difficult for outlets. Yeah. And, you know, interest- I, I, I took note in the US figures that actually, you know, there, it, it isn't that negative on how news organizations are covering Trump, surprisingly.

Well, among people on the right, that's, that's the, that out of those six stories, people on the right in the US are, are, are most unhappy with the way Donald Trump's second presidency is being, being covered. I think ov- overall, and certainly among people on the left, that it's coverage of climate change is, is where people are, are least happy in, in the US context. Yeah. Any other, any other sort of findings that you would highlight, particularly international trends?

I'm very US focused, but I'm always interested in, in other markets when it comes to, you know, trends that, that will eventually arrive to, to the US. Well, I think, you know, one, one of the, one of the great privileges and, you know, occasionally a joy [chuckles] of, of doing this work over the last 12 months has just been to see how interesting diff- diff- different markets are. And we do note in a number of Latin American markets, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and S- and South- Southeast Asia, you know, if, if you think video news is big in North America and, and, and Europe, I mean, the numbers of people who are using YouTube and TikTok and so on for their news is, like, really striking, you know.

Up to and, and north of si- 60% of the, of the audience, and the extent to which inside those markets news is platform led, video dominated, like heavily populated by, by creators and, and, and so on. I'm not saying that that's the way all news is going to be everywhere in, in future, but seeing those kinda like really distinctively different c- complexions of, of markets in, in other parts of the world is really fascinating. Yeah. And it, and it seems to point to, I mean, having platform, having robust platform operations does, you know, is...

I mean, it's, it's necessary obviously. But it'll be interesting to see if, you know, we actually do see the growth of YouTube centric, Y- almost YouTube only news brands. You know, I think that there was, there were a lot of attempts to create news brands that existed solely on platforms, and- Mm-hmm... most of those did not work for, for a bunch of different reasons.

But I think in many ways that they were ahead of their time in that this is where the audience attention and focus has continued to go, and people are increasingly fitting their news consumption within all the other things that they're doing on these platforms. So that would seem to be an obvious, an obvious one that we'll see more of. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I, I, I think that YouTube in particular, but, you know, for, for all, all of the video networks is, is really interesting to see that... Well, now let's, let's, let's dwell on YouTube. You know, the, the data we have in the report shows that video duration viewing on, on YouTube is much more plural than, than you might expect, right? So it's not all about short form up, up to two-minute videos.

That actually, I think we have about a fifth of people who are either watching videos or longer than 20 minutes duration and watching live, live news as, as, as well on, on YouTube. And interestingly, if you dive into one, one of the chapters, younger people are doing that more than older people, right? And so it's, so it's not all about short form video, nor is it all about the mobile device, right? So a quarter of our respondents are now saying that they are using the television to watch news on YouTube.

Mm-hmm. So kinda like to, to your point about these kinda YouTube new- news brands, you know, maybe that was the right idea, but, you know, slightly at the wrong time, and perhaps we are gonna see more of those things em- em- emerging as, as YouTube for news and other third party vid- video networks are, are, are important and meaningful destinations, not just on the mobile, but also on the television set. Yeah. Awesome.

Jim, thank you so much. Really appreciate you going over this with us. [upbeat music] Great talking with you, Brian. Thanks.