The participants at this national roundtable noted that, since its very beginnings, the story of the media has been interwoven with power (and the ability to call it to account). This was the case of the first gazettes to emerge in the seventeenth century in various European cities, though it was felt that other crucial milestones on this journey are also worth remembering, such as Voltaire’s “Treatise on Tolerance“, which, through an indictment not at all far removed from that of modern media campaigns, achieved important results for eighteenth-century French society. It was acknowledged, however, that while this interrelationship between the media and power characterized the nineteenth century (during which newspapers, particularly in Britain, honed their faculties of scrutiny and constructive skepticism) as well as the twentieth century, this does not explain the current transformation the press is undergoing, which, among the various branches of the media, seems to be the most prone to the changes brought on by an increasingly “hyper-connected” society.
It was further observed that technological advances and the advent of a powerful new distribution channel such as the web are not sufficient on their own to account for the decline of newspapers and the shift in business model that has been foisted upon media groups worldwide. Indeed, the wane of the print media was cited as having started well before the spread of the internet, and could be regarded as coinciding with one of the highpoints of journalism, namely, the revelation of the Watergate scandal, through which, at the beginning of the 1970s, the role of the traditional media as the “watchdog” of American democracy was epitomized.
The problem – it was suggested – is that recent decades have led to changes in consumption patterns, with significant impacts on the media as well. While the twentieth century was a mass-oriented century (with goods for mass consumption, mass-membership parties, and even mass-readership newspapers), the new millennium was viewed as calling for new customized paradigms. Consumption is becoming increasingly centered on the individual needs of the consumer (culminating in the hyper-personalization offered by 3D printers), thus entailing a loss of ground even for the great ideologies that have animated politics and shaped newspapers. In short, it was felt that in a world where it is no longer possible to expect everyone to read the same thing, the media is in need of a transformation that is first and foremost a revolution not of technology but of content. Hence, in order to reprise its role as a scrutinizer and constructive skeptic of the exercise of power, the media must discover new ways of once again impacting on leaders, who these days seem more interested in analyzing polls than deciding on the best solutions to be adopted.
The participants were of the view that, in so doing, the media must on one hand think outside the box, and cease to identify – and this is particularly the case for the print media – solely with their own traditional distribution channels. If anything, newspapers need to become points of reference capable of directing readers in an online environment no longer dominated by a lack of news, but in which an abundance prevails that often makes it difficult to distinguish proper news from background noise.
On the other hand, it was stressed that the media must meet the challenge of new players that seem to simultaneously fill multiple roles, namely the large technology conglomerates that control the internet. These entities are becoming fully-fledged “digital republics”, capable of combining media power with political power (in the sense of the power to influence decisions at a supranational level). Forging a proper relationship – including of a business nature – with these actors could give rise to a new paradigm apt to ensure a future key role for media industry players, whether they be old mainstream brands or new entrants to the sector, offering to these successors of the gazettes of yore the chance to maintain their clout, whilst also enabling them to continue to galvanize, keep watch over and steer even new emerging forms of power.