“That four thousand word report from the Syrian refugee camp…will not be read as much as ‘10 cats that have got thoughts about Syria’,” New Statesman‘s Deputy Editor Helen Lewis said in her opening statement on the second panel of the Grapevine event at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 January.

Read highlights of the first panel discussion here.

Merope Mills, Luke Lewis and Pete Picton

The chair head of journalism at City University, George Brock, got straight to the point and asked the panel ‘is traditional media actually dying and does it matter?’

Deputy publisher of Mail Online Pete Picton said categorically:

“If journalism is what we’re talking about then no absolutely not, in fact it’s thriving.”

Editor of Buzzfeed UK Luke Lewis:

“It’s an amazing time for journalism, not just for new outlets like Buzzfeed, the traditional ones are thriving. It was only a week or two ago that The Telegraph posted their figures of a £60million profit last year. The Guardian has had their best scoops in their history.

“Media is a really big place and we don’t need anyone else to fail in order to Buzzfeed to succeed.”

All the panelists agreed that, while media isn’t dead, the business model has to change.

http://twitter.com/rebeccacmyers/status/426478712826368002

Editor of the Saturday Guardian Merope Mills:

“The way people approach print media has to change…the traditional media money making model is dead.”

"There is still an appetite for print journalism, but the business model has to change." Merope Mills, @guardian #fbj

— Sarah Biddlecombe (@_sarahstweets) January 23, 2014

http://twitter.com/bspeed8/status/426469810109939713

H Lewis said that there is a real problem with public interest journalism:

“Who is going to be in an online only economy commissioning that four thousand word report from the Syrian refugee camp – I just don’t see that that’s a viable business model for anybody because it won’t be read by enough people. It will not be read as much as ’10 cats that have got thoughts about Syria’ – no offence to Buzzfeed.”

Buzzfeed taking a hit for cats – good retort from luke lewis #fbj

— Tom Witherow (@TomWitherow) January 23, 2014

L Lewis:

“Yes most of it is entertaining lists, you’ll also see some other stuff in there… Max Seddon we’ve got on the ground in Kiev at the moment, he wrote a series of explosive reports on what’s happening in Kiev as good as impact reporting you’ll see anywhere.”

@lukelewis says that he wants Buzzfeed to eventually supply as trusted news as the @nytimes #fbj

— Max Benwell (@Max_Benwell) January 23, 2014

Mills noted the changes she’d recognised in print media:

“There is a theme among the [print publications] that are growing and they do tend to be those longer analytical – the New Statesman is one… Nobody wants to read breaking news anyone, we all know the Victoria Line’s flooded with cement and that will be old by tomorrow.”

Mills echoed the comment made by Mona Chabali in the first panel of the evening:

“All the reporters have to be reporting a more in depth piece, the why’s of the ‘gays in Russia’ rather than the just ‘gays are being beaten up’. That is the piece you want to read at the end of the week.”

In reference to another signifying characteristic of Buzzfeed the idea of a move away from display to native advertising.

L Lewis:

“It’s nothing new, people talk about sponsored posts like it’s a new thing…[in magazines] advertorials have been around for decades. The only thing you have to worry about is that there’s a clear dividing line between what is editorial and what is commercial.”

A question from the audience asked, if you don’t charge for it how can you put a value on it?

Picton said:

“You value it in time. It’s far more competitive to get our readers to read us… time is a big currency now…that’s one of the key metrics for us now, to keep them on the site.”

Time spent engaging with online content is the new form or readers' currency. #fbj

— Hari Sethi (@Hari_Sethi) January 23, 2014

Another audience member asked the panels opinion on maintaining journalistic integrity in the battle for getting as many clicks as possible in light of the recent CNN headline which seemed to go a step too far.

@MartinBelam @jburnmurdoch @alexparsons CNN had a go & got it fairly wrong today #fbj: pic.twitter.com/uwukxg3UrE

— dan barker (@danbarker) January 23, 2014

The panel agreed that the headline missed the mark on the sensitive issue, L Lewis said about the wider topic of click bait:

“You keep hearing this word clickbait and it really annoys me because it suggests there’s another kind of headline you don’t want people to click on. I don’t know who these journalists are who are writing articles that they don’t want people to read.”

http://twitter.com/rebeccacmyers/status/426477918437801985

H Lewis added:

“Isn’t it sad that the art of the pun is now dead? I loved a good/bad pun.”

To which L Lewis replied:

“I think the pun’s had a good 200 years.”

Following the success of their events, Grapevine are launching a data-focused site in the coming months. Get in touch with Harry Lambert (@harrylambert1), Max Benwell (@maxbenwellreal) or Rebecca Choong Wilkins at contact@grapevinevents.co.uk.

Watch and listen back:

A reception and two discussions about the future of British journalism was held at the Fronline Club on April 17, 2013.

Sam Coates, Banking Editor at The Times, hosted the first panel of young journalists and addressed the audience of representatives of 35 of the country’s best student papers:

“I wanna give you a flavour about what is brilliant about journalism. About why it is the best job. It’s a job that my friends now are jealous of.”

Joshi Herrmann, Lucy Fisher and Jennifer O’Mahony were giving helpful advice to student reporters.

The panel included James Ball, data journalist at The Guardian and City tutor, Joshi Herrmann, feature writer for The Evening Standard, Lucy Fisher, world affairs journalist for The Sunday Times and Jennifer O’Mahony who works at the Online News Desk for The Telegraph.

All four got into full-time journalism jobs through different paths: Fisher “jumped at every internship opportunity and slept on friends’ couches,” O’Mahony started blogging in France, interned in Malta and in the US then got into freelancing, Ball worked for a small trade publication in Crawley and Herrmann edited The Tab in Cambridge.

Advice to journalists who think it's cute not to understand data from @jamesrbuk "if you don't know numbers, piss off right now" #FBJEvent

— Jenni Russell (@jennirsl) April 17, 2013

Herrmann recommended:

“I think there is a slight danger in student papers when they are commenting on national events(. . .). When you show your cuts in an interview, editors often want to see what things you have discovered in your university. That shows that you could transfer that skill. If your portfolio only shows opinion pieces about the Middle East, that will have less appeal for editors because they already have people who are great at that.”

When the discussion was opened up to the packed forum, a member of the audience asked if and how the interests of owners and advertisers affect their jobs.

The panel agreed they have never been told what to write or when to be kind to people, although Ball addressed a more subtle problem:

“When you do a story, you want it to get as much space as possible. You are always serving a particular readership. I know what story would go on page one and what would go down on page seventeen, and that affects what story I chose.”

When Ball asked Fisher whether the only future for print will be the Sunday papers, Fisher replied:

“I definitely think that Sunday journalism will and should remain in print because part of the joy of the Sunday Times is that it’s got these beautiful supplements. (…) The photography is world-class, and it’s just not the same even on a shiny new iPad. I think in terms of daily journalism, there is more need for it to be 24-hour online, whereas weekly journalism is much more investigative.”

Relating to the value within online journalism, a student raised the controversial question about whether the future are pay walls. O’Mahony summarised:

“We [The Telegraph] have gone into a system that is very similar to the New York Times: You get 20 articles for free and then start to pay. Before working for a a national paper, I was coming from a blogging background. A lot of the time that’s people who are very committed to open-source and who want all content for free. I no longer believe that’s right. I don’t see why my colleagues in Syria who are risking their lives every day should come for free. I hope that people always pay for quality.”

Ball ended the first discussion with optimistic closing remarks:

“Today, more people are reading journalism than ever before by a huge number. We’re not diminishing, we’re growing. We just have to work out a way how to not run out of money”

Been on a panel with @samcoatestimes @LOS_Fisher and @jamesrbuk at the Frontline Club. Now the big dogs are up. pic.twitter.com/koHK79ind4

— Joshi Herrmann (@joshi) April 17, 2013

After a break for drinks, nibbles and networking, the second panel discussion began. Hosted by Steve Richards, chief political commentator at The Independent, a team of editors from the UK’s most influential papers came together to discuss issues such as the funding of investigative reporting and the future of magazine publishing.

 John Witherow, Editor of The Times, said:

“I think this is a fantastic age for journalism. People are under such scrutiny now, people who know a lot more about you as a journalist and are gonna comment on it. So all the time, standards are rising in the quality of what you’re reading about. (. . .) I don’t think people realise that newspapers today are so much better than 50 years ago. Back then, they were pretty mundane.”

Addressing some of the problems of investigative journalism, Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of The Guardian, concluded:

“Investigative journalists produce a relatively small amount of words per year but often they are the most important ones. But they need a lot of legal and expert support. The big challenge is how we fund that. What we see around the world now is that there are a lot of non-profit foundations who support the work of these journalists. It must be at the core of what we do.”

Steve Richards, Ian Katz, John Witherow and Sarah Baxter were addressing issues like pay walls, funding of investigative reporting and ways into the industry.

Sarah Baxter, Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine was asked about whether magazine journalism was as vulnerable as the rest and how its future looked, particularly online:

 “I think it’s one of the great myths that people don’t enjoy long pieces on the web. One of our exposés about Goldman Sachs had a great impact in America, that wouldn’t have been possible without the web. (. . .) I find it’s a great test. If a story keeps me me engaged on my iPhone, I know it’s a winner. It’s either good journalism or it isn’t and I don’t think we should worry too much about platforms.”

The event was sponsored by City University London, Cardiff University , Teach First and Orillo. It was organised by Grapevine Events.

Watch both discussions here: