08/05/2008

Despite falling sales, a deluge of freesheets, and more readers going online for their news, newspaper editors around the world remain “overwhelmingly optimistic”, according to a new report.

In one of the largest surveys of the worldwide news industry, 85 per cent of editors said they were optimistic about their newspaper's future, reports The Guardian’s media website. However, a rising number predict that print and online news will both be free in the future.

Editors also see the web as becoming the dominant news source in ten years and many believe journalists will need to be trained in a host of new skills to adapt, according to the second Newsroom Barometer, compiled by the World Editors Forum and backed by Reuters.

According to the MediaGuardian reporting, of the 704 senior news executives who took part, 31 per cent  said they were very optimistic and 54 per cent said they were somewhat optimistic. That compared with 24 per cent and 61 per cent, respectively, in the last survey compiled in late 2006.

George Brock, president of the forum and Saturday editor at The Times, is quoted, saying: "This is a survey of editorial opinion. Most pessimism is a survey of commercial opinion."

The report, carried out by Zogby International, signalled that as more newsrooms face layoffs and tight budgets, editors are increasingly seeking to safeguard editorial quality. Brock said respondents were concerned about the dangers of newspapers "destroying what you have got" in a bid to become "lean and mean".

In the survey, 35 per cent  said training journalists with new media skills would be their first action if they were given resources to invest in editorial quality. The second most popular priority was recruiting more journalists, cited by 31 per cent  of editors.

Editors continue to see comment and opinion as a way of adding value to their publications as they compete with rival news channels. Two-thirds believe opinion and analysis pages will increase, unchanged from the 2006 report. And two-thirds believe that "traditional editorial functions" will be outsourced, which Brock cautioned against. "If newspapers can't make
claims to original content they are very unlikely to succeed," he said.

Editors' diverging views of the value of their content were reflected in responses to the question of whether they thought the majority of news, online and in print, would become free. Overall, more than half - 56 per cent - said yes. But only 48 per cent  of western European editors said
yes, with the report noting: "Many still think that users should pay for quality editorial product."

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