Abstract

In this review and analysis article we try to describe which is the polyhedral scenario the media industry, and most specially the legacy media, are facing to try to solve the crisis provoked by the digital disruption. Media are in a hybrid system where some other actors and platforms are competing to attract users’ attention and to achieve the revenues generated by news reporting activity. Journalism, as we knew it, was the industrial society’s son. The new social and economic model is bringing major changes to media companies, an industry that opted for a rather conservative strategy of taking a position in the World Wide Web, a shy development and adaptation to the possibilities of the digital language. New media are giving their contents mainly for free, a phenomenon that only recently seems to be reverted in some way. In this article we analyze those movements, the nature of news, first a commodity and now maybe a utility, and its value in the digital market. Also, we discuss the business models that the media companies are intending to implement decidedly in the next future, the lobbying activity of that industry in order to modify legal structures such as intellectual property and copyright, and the position that journalists adopt in this complex scenario.