Burson-Marsteller

Innovation & Insights

Media Survey

The state of the media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa: 2010

In early 2010, Burson-Marsteller media experts interviewed 115 senior journalists from 27 countries throughout the region to get an inside view of how they perceived the state of their industry in their countries.

In particular, our aim was to understand how the economic crisis was affecting the industry; the effects of the digital revolution; and how PR and media relations professionals can best adapt to the rapidly transforming media landscape.

In the survey, a strikingly common response was that enormous numbers of journalists were being put out of work. All across EMEA, media organisations are significantly downsizing their editorial teams.

Even for journalists lucky enough still to remain in full-time employment, there was little to cheer, with job uncertainty, vastly increased workloads, demands for multi-platform content, less editorial space to put that content into and (often) moves to ‘dumb down’ the content and editorial agendas in general.

There was broad agreement among the journalists interviewed that the quality and standards of their trade were being diminished, both as an inevitable result of the austerity measures, as well as a direct effect of the new media explosion.

There was no consensus, however, about whether the digital revolution taking place in their industry was a positive or negative development.

Most agreed that new digital tools had given them unprecedented access to information, all at the touch of their fingertips. However, the increased competition – as well as the de-professionalisation of their trade through citizen journalism – were all cited as serious causes for concern.

The key findings of the survey were:

• 81% of journalists surveyed said their organisations faced budget cuts
• 22% of organisations had cut editorial jobs
• 30% had cut the use of freelances

As a result

• 20% of journalists surveyed said they had less time to research stories
• 13% said they had less time to attend press conferences
• 20% said there was less time or space for their editorial content