Journalists need to understand how their business is changing because of the new relationship between journalist and audience, argues Amos Gelb in an excellent article in Online Journalist Review. The audience is now in control, a consequence of fragmentation, new media outlets and increased competition.

Simply put, for the last century, journalists have had it too good. Journalism was an oligopoly where the choice of news providers was limited so audiences had a choice to either get their news from one of the established news outlets or not get news at all. It was a relationship where virtually all the power belonged to the journalists, allowing them to shape mainstream journalism with only passing regard to audience preferences.

Gelb writes about the US, but it’s easy enough to apply this on Europe. His recipe, derived from studies of the Washington Monthly, washingtonpost.com and Discovery Channel, is that journalists have to understand their product, know their audience and use unconvential marketing and competition strategies.

When the University of Bergen launched their new journalism course last fall, professor Martin Eide suggested ten preliminary answers to the question “what kind of journalists will we need in the future?” Answer number five states that there’s an “acute need for journalists who understand the structure they’re a part of, who understand the political economy of modern media”.

As Gelb says, “there is an alternative approach, one in which good journalism and good business are not incompatible.” The approach we’re all looking for, right?