Newspapers and commercial broadcasters are seeking to diversify their revenue streams beyond traditional advertising and subscriptions.
This comes at a time when digital era is forcing newsrooms to re-adjust in a constantly evolving space.
A study by International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) on the state of technology in global newsrooms paints the picture of the transformations in the media industry.
ICFJ, in its report, says ewsrooms face an array of major challenges among them shifting revenue models, attracting loyal advertisers, engaging audiences, and developing new storytelling formats.
It states that newsrooms in the developing world struggle the most in shifting their business models and identifying new revenue streams.
"More than 70 per cent of organisations in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America/Caribbean identifying this as a major challenge."
However, 82 per cent of newsroom jobs remain in established roles such as reporters,editors, editorial writers, the study posits.
It revealed that about 18 per cent are new digital roles (social media editor, digital content producer, analytics editor).
ICFJ also found out that journalists use a limited range of digital skills.
"Of the 23 digital skills we surveyed, most newsrooms primarily use four: posting/commenting on social media (72%), taking digital photos (61%),engaging audiences on social media (58%), and distributing content across multiple platforms (56%)," the study says.
It also emerged that less than half of newsrooms (45per cent) consult analytics daily.
However, newsrooms primarily use analytics data to drive traffic to their websites.
"In an era when fake news and hacking have been proliferated, too few journalists are taking proper precaution," the researchers warned.
Only 11 per cent of journalists use social media verification tools, though most of them 71per cent ) use social media to find new story ideas.
“More than half of journalists 54percent and newsrooms 52 percent fail to secure their communications,”the report read.
Journalists also use social media to share and discover news, but few use social media verification tools.
ICFJ surveyed journalists on their use of 21 resources to gather information for their work.
Facebook and Twitter emerged as the clear leaders in this area, with 84 per cent of journalists saying they use Facebook and 74 per cent saying they use Twitter to gather information.
The surveys were disseminated online using the SurveyMonkey platform from February 15 to April 15, 2017.
A total of 2,781 respondents — 2,053 journalists and 728 newsroom managers — completed the surveys.