The Media Column: The newspaper industry is still fighting for life, but there is hope for the future

The industry has shed weight and fights for breath in a new world where the working day is never done

The newspaper business apeears in good health after being chastised following the phone-hacking scandal (Hulton)

For more than a decade, the newspaper industry has been portrayed as a dying entity, its once-powerful voice muted by the new-media economy, and its authority weakened by the corrupt practices of some of its less reputable elements.

But the editors of publications large and small who reconvene this morning on the edge of old Fleet Street do so in a new spirit of hope. They want to believe that the foaming waters of digital disruption are subsiding and that the press has almost made it safely across the river.

The newspaper business has been publicly chastised, has shed weight and fights for breath in a new world where the working day is never done, but its optimism for the future is not unfounded.

The Society of Editors’ annual conference opened last night with an upbeat speech from the former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger. The conference venue, a modern hotel alongside St Paul’s Cathedral, is significant. It’s across the street from the Old Bailey, where the phone hacking trial began two years ago. Amid the media frenzy around that case I used the Grange hotel’s wi-fi to file copy.

At the same famous courthouse the final trial in the four-year probe into press payments to public officials concluded on Thursday with the acquittal of two Sun journalists. Of 29 journalists charged in Operation Elveden only one was convicted by a jury. The former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, cleared of hacking, is already back at the head of News UK.

Sections of the press felt confident enough last week to launch a report called Leveson’s Illiberal Legacy, castigating the “toxic” impact of the public inquiry into the hacking scandal. Today, the editors’ conference will be addressed by the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, who is regarded as a friend by the big and regional publishers. He is likely to speak on the imminent prospect of newspapers being subject to exemplary damages if they are not members of a regulator backed by the Royal Charter.

Mr Whittingdale, I suspect, will speak positively about the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), which those same big and regional publishers set up a year ago in response to Leveson but without recognition under the Charter. In a room of press executives, the Secretary of State – who elected not to bash the BBC at the Edinburgh Television Festival – might take a tougher line over the public broadcaster’s long-running battle with the regional press over the dominance of the BBC news website.

On the economic side, editors will hear from the advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrell, who for years has been hurting print media by cheerleading for digital platforms but has recently re-emerged as a valuable ally of the news industry. Earlier this year, Sir Martin said there was “an argument” that newspapers and magazines were “more effective than people give them credit [for]”. Rufus Olins, the chief executive of industry body Newsworks, thinks this change of heart is symptomatic of a more confident press. “It feels we’re in a different place than we were even a year ago,” he says. “Sir Martin Sorrell has started singing the virtues of the engaging content created by our sector, and raising his concerns about the metrics provided by some social media and technology platforms.”

David Dinsmore, the former Sun editor and now chief operating officer at News UK, is expected to reveal research tomorrow showing the strong influence of established news brands at election time. Since Barack Obama’s success in 2008, there have been claims that voters are swayed by social media.

British newspaper brands have themselves built remarkable reach online, but that success is not reflected in financial terms. Raising revenue online is an ongoing conundrum, especially now that 200 million people worldwide are using ad blocking technology, costing $22bn (£14.25bn) in ad revenues. Douglas McCabe, a print media spokesman at Enders Analysis, says that after a “brutal” second quarter for advertising this year, the industry is “stabilising”. While he acknowledges that “generating revenue from both consumers and the marketing sector is becoming more challenging and complex”, he thinks that, ultimately, “great news brands will win out”.

But if the press has turned the corner it still needs to reflect the society it reports on. The industry still struggles with diversity in its newsrooms, despite laudable initiatives such as the Daily Mail’s Stephen Lawrence Trust scholarships and News UK’s Young Journalists’ Academy.

This month’s Asian Media Awards will give a further indication of how far the press has come. Mihir Bose, the veteran newspaper journalist and former BBC sports editor, has a long view on the subject, having started his career in 1974.

Sir Alex Ferguson teased him as “Booze” and the former Southampton manager Lawrie McMenemy wondered if he should be covering hockey. After reporting on a game at Norwich he was chased down a train and racially abused by an Arsenal fan. At Stamford Bridge, when working for the Sunday Times, he was asked if he was from the Southall Gazette.

One of the first journalists to combine a love of sport with a knowledge of business, Bose was treated better by newspapers on the political right. “It was the Telegraph and Mail that employed people of Asian background,” he says. “Many had nostalgia for the British empire.” But while British sports teams look very different from those of 1974, “diversity in the media is scarce – it’s still very much a white world”, he says.

Shuiab Khan, the awards organiser and a newspaper journalist in Lancashire, thinks recruitment shortcomings in the regional press hampered coverage of recent sex abuse scandals. “There are many towns where because of the population you would expect at least one or two Asian journalists in the newsroom and there is not one.”

Figures such as The Independent’s state school-educated editor Amol Rajan are role models that didn’t exist when Bose joined the media. But writer and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor says more needs to be done to improve social diversity. “Skin colour can blind us to a more insidious and dangerous discrimination, which is class, and that cuts across race,” he says.

Other groups are also under-represented, notably women. Eleanor Mills, chair of Women in Journalism and a Society of Editors conference speaker, compares the “tsunami” of female graduates wanting to enter the industry to the paucity of women in senior jobs and says news is viewed through a “stale, pale and male” lens. “You get a lot of women in the shallow end of features but not many on the backbenches or in politics or news,” she says. “In 20 years in newspapers I don’t think it’s changed very much.” Challenges remain. But the impact on government policy and public opinion caused by press coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis showed that newspapers still have the capability to surprise. Those who write them off should remember that.

The BBC’s licence fee battle is not yet won

The BBC Trust has released figures showing that a modernised version of the licence fee, including iPlayer, is the public’s favoured method for funding the BBC.

As someone who thinks the Today programme alone represents value for the £145.50 annual charge, I’m pleased there’s support for the traditional model.

But the BBC can’t be complacent. While 53 per cent of people backed this approach, the Trust buried away the figure that a hefty 15 per cent responded with the highest level of negativity. That’s more than one in seven vehemently opposed to the licence fee.

When the Trust suggested a hybrid model of smaller licence fee with some services subject to subscription fees, a majority (53 per cent) were opposed and 38 per cent scored it as negatively as possible. For a universal broadcasting service, that’s a sizeable rump of opposition.

Commercial TV faces threats from all sides

YouTube’s spectacular “Brandcast” event for advertisers last week gave insight into the Google platform’s plans to steal the lunch of commercial television. Brandcast wasn’t just about YouTube blowing its own trumpet about its scale (“over a billion views”) and reach (“100 per cent of 15-34 year olds in the UK”) as it marked its 10th anniversary (“this is just getting started”). It was an exercise in demonstrating the platform’s support among other media giants.

BuzzFeed’s chief creative officer, Frank Cooper, stepped up to say “mobile is the new TV” and “none of our success at BuzzFeed could have happened without YouTube”, which hosts the news site’s video channels. The big advertising energy company EE gushed about YouTube turbo-charging a video series called The Wembley Cup to a bigger audience than that which saw the Champions League final on television.

Alongside live Brandcast performances by DJ Robin Schulz and singer Rita Ora, James Corden appeared by video link to celebrate one million subscribers for his The Late Late Show with James Corden YouTube channel. Vlogger Grace Helbig told the advertisers: “The power of the YouTube audience is real, it’s honest, it’s special”.

Even the BBC chipped in, with Joe Harland, the “head of visual radio”, talking of how Radio 1 was the biggest radio station on YouTube.

Commercial broadcasters have reason to worry. But recent US studies suggest YouTube’s growing rival for video advertising is not television but Facebook.

Twitter: @iburrell