IN the lead up to the screening of the first episode of The Papers documentary about The National and The Herald on BBC Scotland on Wednesday it is fair to say that some of us felt a degree of trepidation.
There were, after all, a number of things which could go very wrong.
We could have come across like the inhabitants of a real-life The Office – excruciating, embarrassing idiots, expert only in looking foolish. And if it really was like The Office who would be David Brent? Obviously we all felt likely if reluctant candidates for that particular role.
And if we avoided that fate would we simply be so boring that viewers would switch off in their thousands? After all, we spend most of our time looking rather blankly at computer screens. Our working lives are as far from an action blockbuster as it is possible to imagine.
Four days after the first of the two-part documentary went out I think it’s fair to say that neither of these nightmare scenarios came to pass, thanks to the skills of the film-makers rather than through our own endeavours. I’ve spent those days reflecting on whether we were right to allow the cameras into the office and what we hoped to achieve by doing so.
For me it seemed important to capture something of the challenges journalism – and in particular Scottish journalism – faces at this point in a communications revolution which is sweeping away old ways at breakneck speed. I hoped that if we did so honestly we would at least spark a debate about the value of journalism and how best to protect it.
In some respects The Papers has been successful in doing just that. I hope that it caused some viewers to reconsider a few assumptions. Here are just three:
1: Print is dead.
The truth is that millions of people still buy a newspaper every day. Newspapers still regularly set the agenda for the day, week or month.
They still bring to light important stories that the public have the right to know and will benefit from knowing. Newspapers sell fewer copies than they did 20 years ago and, crucially, attract substantially less advertising. That means they make less money to pay for journalism, which makes our job more challenging. But they are far from dead. And even if print does die, the important issue is that journalism must survive. The survival of just one of the many formats which deliver that journalism is hardly a matter of life or death.
2: Newspapers have only themselves to blame for their current predicament because they have resisted the digital tide.
The truth is that most newspapers were quick to take advantage of digital technology. They launched websites, introduced podcasts, experimented with video. But they had to do all that with dramatically reducing resources. When advertising revenues slump that’s going to hurt. And believe me, it does really, really hurt. Have all newspapers reacted in the right way to all the challenges the new age presents? Of course not. But when you are in uncharted territory there isn’t a road map to get you safely to your destination.
3: Newspapers are not necessary when you have social media.
The truth is that if there were no newspapers social media chats would soon dry up. And journalism isn’t just about breaking news. It’s about analysing the relative importance of news events and placing them in a context that makes them comprehensible. That takes skill and talent. Not everyone will agree with the way that’s done but that’s life. And there’s always social media to challenge it.
If The Papers gets people talking about these and other related issues then I think our decision to take part will have been justified. In any event, I hope you enjoyed the first part and tune in to the second this week.
Episode two of The Papers, Banging Out, airs on BBC One Scotland at 9pm on Wednesday. For a 21-day free trial of a monthly premium plus digital subscription to The National, visit thenational.scot/subscribe/freetrial/
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