I'm a self diagnosed addict - crack, alcohol, sex (?)... no something far less interesting but equally as seedy, newspapers.Full of gossip, outrageous opinions and oh yes, news. Cheap and totally portable, you can read them anywhere; tube, plane or bath. With each page throwing up something new, interesting and just plain weird.
Yes I know I need help...
On reading the headline "Web overtakes newspapers as source of news in US survey" I began to stare into cold turkey hell. The Internet and its instantaneous communication of news stories, free to user and the destruction of the newspapers advertising business model is Napoleon's Waterloo for once mighty titles.
Or that is how it seems - if you have been reading the commentary on the subject in newspapers. As Rupert Murdoch pointed out in a recent speech, many journalists are too busy writing their own obituary and trying to protect their outdated interests to be excited by the opportunity offered by the web.
Love him or hate him the doyen of News International is correct when he says that journalists must not be so fixated on the paper - it's the content that matters - and there will always be a market for well written, edited, fact checked, filtered copy with commentary.
In the 90's I set up a small travel magazine supported by advertising and most of bills were due to printing and distribution with a relatively small amount spent on the thing that really mattered - the content. Today the web has solved my major headache having democratised distribution making it quick, easy and relatively free to reach a potentially huge audience.
The barriers to entry are much lower now than then when I was pushing bankruptcy with every print run. I was caught up, all be it on a smaller scale, in the same insane cycle that our newspapers are today i.e the cost of paper, the finite nature of paper, the cost of delivery and selling as many ads as possible and fitting the content around them.
The web is diffusing power away from the old press barons and their bureaucratically organised forms of journalism that, traditionally, have required massive capital investment. The cost of online advertising is far lower than for traditional advertising and the revenue generated would struggle to fully pay for today's professional media organisation with its army of journalists, editors, sub-editors, production editors, photographers, administrators, etc.
As we bail out bankers from their mismanagement the same logic can be applied to helping ailing newspapers survive. They too can point to being a vital public service.
However this would merely slow down the inevitable, beyond all the arguments about what it would do to the concept of a free press.
If today's news titles are to survive they will need to rethink their business model. Power is now shifting towards spontaneously organised journalists who can gather and disseminate news with little or no barrier to entry.
As popular as citizen journalism and it's peer reviewed content is, it can never fully fill the breach left by the demise of professional reporters working on a well funded newspaper. There is and will continue to be a demand for high quality journalists and the titles they work for to prevent misinformation. Although to professional journalism's discredit in the UK only 23% of the public count newspapers as a highly trusted source of information.
Citizen and professional journalists need to recognise and utilise each others strengths to counter the spin of corporations and governments. We need these vital services as a society, so that we can make decisions about important things, such as the economy, the environment, healthcare, education and war.
Newspapers will not vanish overnight but there is going to be less print in the future, and the old pecking order of online being the poor man's print will be reversed with an accelerating seepage of readership from print to the online editions. Physical objects—newspapers, books, magazines, discs—will no longer be the primary or most profitable means of delivering and interacting with media: news, fact, entertainment, or education.
It’s not that print is bad. It’s that digital is better. It has too many advantages not to succeed (and there will only be more): ubiquity, speed, permanence, searchability, the ability to update, the ability to remix, targeting, interaction, marketing via links and data feedback.
Hopefully, it won't be too long before I can receive my daily news hit through a subscription to a cheap, strong, light flexible “e-paper” screen which I can stuff in my bag and will combine the best of citizen journalism with professional journalism. This device will offer a true multimedia experience and update constantly by wifi. By doing so it will overcome one of the major drawbacks of toady's newspapers which is that they are static, whereas news by its nature is dynamic.
For this I would be happy to forgo my inky fingers.
PS:
For those with a morbid interest in the newspaper industry’s death rattle in the US (and what happens there often is the next step for everyone else), there is author Paul Gillin’s “Newspaper Death Watch” site, which tracks the agonizing process of their economic decline like a running autopsy.
PPS: There is a rumour posted on the influential Silcon Valley Watcher blog on the 22nd December 2008 that The Independent, one of the large national UK newspapers, is considering moving to an Internet only edition.
In the US The Kansan City Kansan - the only paper covering Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas - is turning off its presses and going online.
