Are UK newspapers killing themselves by going on-line?

[chirpychirpy]

The British newspaper industry has apparently suffered greatly in this recession. But it strikes me they're shooting themselves in the foot as it is by allowing their entire contents to be accessed on-line free of charge. While people over a certain age will have been brought up to buy a paper of a morning, and may still do as a result, most people under say 30 will have gotten used to accessing such things on-line. Hence in a number of years hardly anyone will presumably visit newsagents to buy papers. After all, what's the point in traveling to a shop to spend money on something you can get for free in the comfort of your own home? Surely national newspaper bosses should stop free access to their publications in order to secure their future...don't you think?

[anotheoldgit]

One could say goodbye to the news topics on AB if they did start to charge, taking into account the number of people who demand a news link when one enters a topic.

If newspapers started to charge how long would it be before other web sites also started charging?

The newspapers should compete with modern day technology and offer the people who buy their newspapers something to encourage them to go out and pick a paper up.

[stewey]

I doubt very much that the publishers of newspapers have ever made a profit from the actual sales of the newspapers. The money comes from advertising, and the on-line versions certainly have lots of that.

[ummmm]

I buy 2 papers everyday.

[mccfluff]

don't forget the advisertising on the online newspapers, we are now starting to get a fair bit of rev from there

[jake-the-peg]

Newspapers are being creative, they run ads ontheir websites

In France Le monde runs a free site and a paid subscription site containing more material
Some papers like The Telegraph charge for parts like the crossword section.

When things change those who do best and prosper are the ones who are best able to adapt. It's quite Darwinian

[anotheoldgit]

ummmm

I buy 2 papers everyday

Care to tell us which ones?

[ummmm]

The express and the mail.

[jno]

I stopped buying papers when the newsagent stopped delivering them. Not their fault; they can't get the kids to go out at dawn any more. I buy the occasional one.

As to what is the best way for newspapers to meet the challenge of the internet - nobody has the faintest idea. Murdoch is planning to charge for stuff on his sites (Sun, Wall Street Journal, Times etc). Other people are saying it will never work - people will just refuse to pay, and go to free news sites (like the BBC) instead. The Journal, being a specialist site with weathy readers, may get away with it (and the Financial Times has similar plans.) But I can't really imagine a Sun reader paying over 5p to look at today's stunna.

Murdoch is not an idiot. But I have no idea if his plan is a runner. Nobody does.

Yes, the real problem is loss of advertising. It's all going online. But just how many people buy things they've seen ads for online, I wonder?

[nokiauser]

This is true, that's why the local papers are closing down or atleast producing less interesting stories that lead to closure however e newspapers do generate a lot of advertising that softens the blow!

[Verix]

I can't say i'm terribly upset to see the back of any newspaper. Why we as a nation accept such blatantly biased journalism never ceases to astound me, especially when we alll pay to keep the BBC going anyway, we may as well use what we're paying for!

Advertising revenue doesn't pull in half as much online as it does in the hard copies and most newspaper websites won't be able to pull off any kind of pay-to-view system.

If you still feel like you need your newspaper fix you'll find many weekly (particularly local) papers are weathering the downturn. What they provide is more of a round up on current events, a more indepth look into local issues and in many ways a public service. I work in a newsagents and if anything the sale of weeklys has gone up as people switch to the more econnomical approach of buying once a week instead of every day.

[jno]

actually, local papers are dropping like flies - replaced by council-funded magazines that take all the council's own advertising, tell you what a lovely job the council is doing and don't ask tricky questions about what councillors are up to. Bad luck, ratepayers.

[Kromovaracun]

Frankly, anything that kills off a large section of the British daily press is to be welcomed with open arms in my book...

[jno]

Don't lightly discard a diversity of news sources unless you're sure it will be replaced by something better, Kromovaracun. Oldgit has a point: people like links. When newsgathering organisations die out, where will people get their links from? How will people be able to say 'It should be true, I read it on the BBC website/the Telegraph/even the Mail'? If the future standard of authenticity for news is the council PR department or popbitch, will we be better off?

[Verix]

jno - whilst many local dailys are dying out there are many weeklys which still survive. In fact many dailys are becoming weeklys to try and survive the downturn. Although it has to be said that local city newspapers are worse hit than rural ones. Living in Cornwall there are three or four local weeklys i can get delivered to my door.

[jno]

I reckon that's the way it goes, Verix. They give up the afternoon editions. They shrink from daily to weekly (and remember, they're losing most of the journalists who've been producing the news). And gradually they just die away. The council meanwhile keeps its propaganda sheets going with your money.

Here's a story from today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/16/council-run-newspapers-local-newspapers

[Verix]

Well the LGA reported that council papers were only still being produced by about 40% of councils.

I also think it's pretty clear that local papers can only survive whilst the community around them survives. INternet forums and the like connect people who have similar views or hobbies, local papers connect people who live in the same area, once people become more interested in their niche on the internet than where they live the paper starts to die.

[Kromovaracun]

jno:

For one thing, newspapers are far from being the only authentic sources on these things. Taking my personal favourites menu, it features a vast number of research institutes, think-tanks, international organisations etc. I do accept however that it's unreasonable to accept people to filter through all these. But there's still plenty of places for people to get their evidence from.

I think your other argument about what will replace it assumes that the enitrety of the British daily press will be killed off categorically. I'm not convinced it will. What I am glad is happening however is that it'll give the quagmire of sub-standard journalism that most of the British daily press represents a nice shake-up. Most of the really passionate journalists out there won't just give up - they'll either join weeklies or even start their own online news sources or perhaps just resort to their own blogs. Take what happened with the recent Iranian election - what a huge number of people turned to when the less instant media were lagging behind was the personal blogs of various professional journalists who were keeping their ears to the ground. If you're worried about diversity, my guess is you'll get plenty more of it.

[anotheoldgit]

Verix

Why we as a nation accept such blatantly biased journalism never ceases to astound me, especially when we alll pay to keep the BBC going anyway, we may as well use what we're paying for!

And you don't think the BBC is not blatantly biased also?

[jno]

Kromovaracun, I'd say newspapers provide three things. One is selection and editing, in order to present readers with a wide range of news. You might for instance be able to find the latest abstract from your favourite think-tank online, and the latest Chelsea score; but the death of Keith Floyd might pass you by, even if you were interested in him, because regular use of a newspaper (or online equivalent) is the best way of keeping up with essentially random news events like that.

The second one is authenticity. If you have a copy of The Times in your hand, you can be 99.9% sure it is a genuine paper prodcued by the mighty Murdoch empire, and pretty much identical to what millions of other people are also reading. There isn't really an online equivalent of this yet. You can't trust anything online. Even 'facts' in Wikipedia may be rubbish. Part of what you pay Murdoch for is his stamp of authenticity.

The third one, which I guess is related, is professionalism. You can get the same news from a variety of angles through different sources, and you're quite likely right to think that these may actually increase as the media monoliths crumble. But will you be able to trust them? Quite apart from the questions of bias, will the citizen reporters who blog on the fire at the corner grocery actually have the sort of training that gets them to ask the right questions, amass relevant facts, and present it to you in a comprehensible form? Or will you have to read 16 different blogs on the same subject and try to piece together a coherent account of events for yourself?

None of this is meant as a defence of newspapers; I'm well aware how far short many of them fall. I just think the world of new media that will replace them will be significantly different, and probably not in a good way.