At the Online News Association UK event last week, Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) said research he’s conducted [don’t have any other citation] told him there’s a total audience of approx 800,000 readers for political blogs in the UK. Non-newspaper blogs do break some real news and practice some real journalism, and MSM does a lot of PR regurgitation…

I agree that many people still look to established news brands to a degree to validate and give deeper context to news. But there’s also a lot that those brands don\‘t or rarely do. That’s where — beyond badgers — independent blogs and others online ventures that really plough their furrow can make a play. But as Staines said last week, there’s marginal-to-zero VC cash for such ventures in the UK, compared to what the likes of HuffPo have basked in, so starting up requires some pockets or serious mettle.

On the flipside however, most of our national broadsheets are not very profitable or actually running at a loss. Did you see the piece on Mumsnet on Newsnight the other night? The political parties court them furiously. Interestingly all the profitable UK-based online publishing venures Staines mentioned in his talk (slides: http://www.slideshare.net/guidof/what-the-hell-is-journalism-anyway-what-is-news-2906100 ) are blog / community-based.

Collectively the 7 websites cited in the last slide command more profits (allegedly) than our broadsheets.

So there’s two conflicting trends here: the persisting bedrock of journalism pertaining to newspapers, and the growing power, mindshare and profitability of mainly or partly news-based niche communities. Ergo, trust *is* leaking away from newpapers albeit gradually. The ones that survive the next decade will probably retain a good deal of trust, but it’s a more diffused picture emerging in terms of authority overall, I’d hazard.

On a related note, Staines also mentioned that he thought financial journalism and news was an area where there was really scope to make a dent on the UK\‘s MSM incumbents, even in the wake of the success of the FT’s (http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/) Alphaville blogs. But against this on the finance beat ViewsFlow — from the UK\‘s “http://azeemazhar.com/”>Azeem Azhar and still in early beta — is staking itself as a filter not an original source, and doesn’t currently seem to be overtly seeking a UK audience in the feeds it curates from finance coverage (happy to be corrected though as I haven’t registered for the full service).

So maybe this is a sign that the needle is just twitching not moving, and UK indies’ deep-pockets won’t be deep enough for more than the rarest of journalism players. If so, at least in terms of that niche, you’ll be wholly vindicated :-)