Jon Cornwell (pictured) is the co-founder and CEO of Newsflare, an online marketplace for user-generated news content. Prior to Newsflare, Jon worked as a management consultant and then launched his first venture: Clear Cell Group.
In the latest episode of All Things Video, we examine digital media’s transformation of the news business. With the advent of social media platforms and the smartphone revolution, we witnessed the rise of citizen journalism, as exemplified by the Arab Spring and the London Riots. Today’s media outlets are struggling to keep up with an ever-accelerating news cycle, fragmented audience attention, and a changing business model. (You can listen to this podcast on Apple or right here).
As a result, news media’s economic incentives are increasingly at odds with consumers’ informational interests. In order to satisfy advertisers, news publishers prioritize material and choose to present it in a way that will maximize clicks, views and ad dollars. As Jon said, “We used to believe that the news was objective, but now I think we’re seeing it for what it really is, which is essentially somewhere there’s an editorial decision. There’s a story that a journalist has or hasn’t chosen to cover. There’s an editor that runs this story and not that story because they’ve got to make certain ratings. […] All of these things are going on, but I think we’re probably seeing them more clearly than we ever did before.”
All this has led to a significant trust issue between news outlets and their audience. At a time when it’s all too easy to cry “fake news,” not only is the veracity of information being called into question, but the underlying motives and approach are subject to intense scrutiny. Clearly, the situation calls for change, and Jon predicts a future of news media that involves more aggregation, personalized content curation, and consumer-funded, rather than ad-supported business models.