The Future of Journalism: In an Age of Digital Media and Economic Uncertainty

Book excerpt: The development of digital media has delivered innovations and prompted tectonic shifts in all aspects of journalism practice, the journalism industry and scholarly research in the field of journalism studies; this book offers detailed accounts of changes in all three arenas. The collapse of the ‘advertising model’, in tandem with the impact of the continuing global recession, has created economic difficulties for legacy media, and an increasingly frenzied search for new business strategies to resource a sustainable journalism, while triggering concerns about the very future of journalism and journalists. The Future of Journalism: In an Age of Digital Media and Economic Uncertainty brings together the research conversation conducted by a distinguished group of scholars, researchers, journalists and journalism educators from around the globe and hosted by ‘The Future of Journalism’ at Cardiff University in September 2013. The significance of their responses to these pressing and challenging questions is impossible to overstate. Divided into nine sections, this collection analyses and discusses the future of journalism in relation to: Revenues and Business Models; Controversies and Debates; Changing Journalism Practice; Social Media; Photojournalism and visual images of News; Local and Hyperlocal journalism; Quality, Transparency and Accountability; and Changing Professional Roles and Identities. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the prospects for journalism and the consequent implications for communications within and between local, national and international communities, for economic growth, the operation of democracy and the maintenance and development of the social and cultural life of societies around the globe. This book was originally published as special issues of Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice and Journalism Studies.