There is some advice on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) website which was devised early in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the one hand, it recommends that we listen to advice and recommendations from our national and local authorities, and follow trusted news channels. On the other hand, it also says to “minimise news feeds”.

To all in the business of news, it is a recommendation that we need to take seriously and consider carefully.

We are, no doubt, well beyond the worst days of the pandemic. But how many of us can say that even now, there isn’t some degree of validity to what the WHO recommended a few years ago?

And there’s more.

In May this year, the United States Surgeon-General, Dr Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health. He recognised that social media use is, of course, almost universal among our youth, and it does have some benefits.

But, there are “ample indicators” that social media can also pose a risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.

He called for urgent action by policymakers, technology companies, researchers, families and young people “to gain a better understanding of the full impact of social media use, maximise the benefits and minimise the harms of social media platforms, and create safer, healthier online environments to protect children”.

To the list of people for whom urgent action is needed, I would add us – editors and journalists. After all, in seeking to reach them on those very platforms that they inhabit, what service or disservice are we doing? How, and how best, can we on the one hand recognise the downsides of social media and work with others to mitigate them, while on the other continue to provide content that keeps them on those same platforms?

The state of the news media today

The talk of “disruption” has always been an indelible part of our lexicon. But what may be the most important disruption is the one that threatens the core of what we do, and that is the relationship that we have with our audiences.

The Reuters Institute this year reported the sobering fact that direct access to news publications through our URLs or apps has continued to decline annually.

When we talk about terms such as “news avoidance” and “news fatigue”, we need to recognise these as symptoms of an insidious, but very understandable, malaise that could threaten our work much more than technology, if we do not take the right lessons in addressing them.

Some of this can be attributed to general fatigue. After all, following years of a generational surge in news consumption during the pandemic, who can begrudge the natural human reaction to turn it all off, whether it’s the war in Ukraine, or now the war in the Middle East?

But we do have soul-searching to do as journalists. We have questions to ask, and ask of ourselves.

One might be to ask how much of this is not just fatigue, but a more active avoidance, born out of diminishing levels of trust or perceived relevance.

Another would be how much of this growing avoidance is a consequence of our societies’ own unmistakable trends towards polarisation. What is our role in fomenting it or mitigating it?

And finally, what can and should the news media do? Especially those of us who call ourselves “mainstream”, and who aspire to the best of public service journalism.

The balance between trust and reach

Whatever the answers to these questions, it is my belief that much of it will revolve around the increasingly difficult balance that has to be found between growing trust and reach within our societies.

As the Reuters Institute also reports, trust in the news has fallen across the board internationally, reversing gains that were made during the pandemic.

In Singapore, we have been fortunate to maintain high levels of trust in media relative to major publishers around the world. Seventy-three per cent of respondents deem The Straits Times trustworthy, a 3 percentage point increase from 2022.

We also saw a two-point increase in online reach from 40 per cent to 42 per cent, alongside this increase in trust. Others, however, have seen both scores diverge completely.

As many across the world will attest, being trusted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re widely read, and being widely read doesn’t always mean you’re trusted. And maintaining trust is not about to get any easier.

Trying our best to build a broad mainstream trust will increasingly come up against the wall of stronger friction and opposition. Attacks on journalists and journalism have become mainstream around the world. Fake news and misinformation – terms that almost sound old-fashioned – are on the verge of a rebirth, driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and scammers.

It’s an uphill battle for all newsrooms on multiple fronts. 

There is also a growing group of readers out there avoiding the news, especially news that distresses them or feels distant and irrelevant to their lives. But they are still reading, watching and listening.

Therein lies another challenge to our newsrooms. It’s just that the stories they are drawn to may not be what we once thought were typical products of our newsrooms.

One of the best read stories in The Straits Times a few months ago was about a sun bear in a Chinese zoo. July and August were unusually heavy months for political news in Singapore. But the bear, as it turned out, ate major political news stories for breakfast.

Still, a professional newsroom cannot live on sun bear stories alone. If we tried, you can surely expect the trust scores to dip.

Broadening our range, deepening our relevance

So what are newsrooms to do amidst these realities? I can only provide in broad strokes what we hope to do here at The Straits Times.

First, we are recognising that it is precisely because of these challenges that now is the best time for us to be in a newsroom such as ours.

There is no better time than now for us to recommit to our vision of public service journalism. It will be an unwavering guide that will dictate everything we do.

We are also focused on broadening our range and deepening our relevance.

Earlier this year, we created a new team called ST Now to give our audiences a sense of what’s happening now, and what’s trending. The team keeps its finger on the pulse of what’s happening in Singapore and around the world, news that is starting online and social conversations.

The unique value that The Straits Times can bring is to tell these stories while being guided by the strong editorial ethos that has always defined our work.

Another way we are addressing news fatigue is to understand that much like our diets, variety does help.

In the opinions we publish, some of you might have seen a growing variety in views and topics that are finding a voice. Some might call this being “softer”. I’d rather see these as being more relevant to, and reflective of, the multi-faceted dimensions of our lives, interests and concerns.

This broadening range is already happening across all our coverage. It’s a gradual process, more about progressively widening news diets, rather than big statements about dietary changes. As we all know, big diet-related New Year’s resolutions often don’t work out.

This is also the approach we will take in providing for varied content in the form of feature, longer-form and narrative journalism.

Finally, we will also further commit to reaching our audience across platforms such as podcasts and the best in interactive and visual storytelling.

Will all this arrest news fatigue and stabilise and grow audiences? We don’t know.

But what we do know is that for audiences that do remain reading The Straits Times, they should find us a better proposition. If they are better informed, then we would have served our purpose in public service journalism.

Sharpening our senses

The second area involves what I would call “sharpening our senses” by recognising the importance of newsroom strategy. For this, we decided to have a team of journalists focus on several things.

First, it will study how the industry and our audiences are evolving. This will include long-term readership patterns, and trends in platform development in Singapore and beyond, which will then frame our daily as well as longer-term editorial and organisational targets and decisions.

Second, it will focus on how our teams can collaborate and work better together, and keep track of and regularly embed technological and cultural innovations into our newsroom that can serve our journalism.

For example, we have looked into generative AI and deployed a host of tools where appropriate. None of these is to replace journalists; the human touch will always be needed, especially in an industry where truth and accuracy are non-negotiable. But AI has helped our newsroom do more, with less, and the next steps for us will be to sharpen our own capabilities in knowing when to use it.

A newsroom culture for the future

Underlying everything that we do is the culture that shapes us. This is the third broad area of focus for our newsroom.

Culture is what makes things work, and what makes journalists enjoy the work that we do.

First, when it comes to data, and especially audience data, the ethos we must have is one that embraces it, and allows it to inform our editorial discussions and decisions. But we will also not become beholden to or be blindly driven by it. Layered on top of data will always be the editorial judgments that we make as journalists and editors.

It calls for courage. Courage to learn from what audience data tells us, but equally, courage to still make editorial decisions that are demanded of us; in other words, to sometimes say no.

Second is what I could call the courage to test.

Whether it’s testing new ideas or new work processes, the newsroom of the future must be one that encourages experimentation, promotes creativity and accepts the inevitable lessons that come from mistakes and failure.

Third is in building a culture that recognises, builds up and supports our talent in a coherent and long-term way. It is what I call newsroom development. Whether it is in mental well-being, training, recruitment, job growth or career development, there is no other option than for our newsroom to be an ever-evolving and improving employer of choice.

The courage to celebrate

I’ve touched on courage in various forms, but I wanted to end with a virtue we don’t often talk about in the news business. And that is joy.

We can all often get quite glum talking about our challenges, but I dare say there still remains a lot of joy and meaning in what we do. The thrill of the scoop. The satisfaction in seeing a good story come together. The sense of mission in working with others on something which is bigger than ourselves or even our publications, and the privilege of having a platform. There is still so much in this job that helps us get up every morning and face those challenges.

Yet, all anybody ever hears about journalists and the news industry relates to our challenges or our failings. We should also shout a bit about the joys of what we do and the tremendous impact we have. And I dare say, that takes courage too.

• Jaime Ho is editor of The Straits Times. This is an edited excerpt from his speech delivered at Wan-Ifra’s Digital Media Asia 2023 Plenary.