The End For Newspapers?
By Alastair Milburn
YOU may have seen a fleeting headline this week about the fact that the New York Times is to charge for full access to its website from 2011.
It is the latest newspaper to move in this direction, and it will be introducing a metered system, allowing readers free access to a limited number of articles, before charging for additional content.
A similar online payment model has been introduced by the Financial Times, while Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has also said it plans to start charging for access to its online newspapers, including the Sun and Times.
As a former newspaper editor-turned communications agency owner, the question I am asked most is: When are newspapers going to cease to exist?
It is a question which the industry itself has been trying to answer for decades. A popular misconception is that the issue has only arisen since the advent of the likes of Twitter and online news websites such as the excellent BBC News (which actually lies at the heart of the problem for newspapers).
I remember being involved in forums back in 1989 involving newspaper executives horrified at plunging circulations – back then, the reason was time famine, the arrival of Sky News etc etc – not too much has changed in 20 years.
For me the issue of whether newspapers will still exist in our lifetimes is, well, not the issue.
To paraphrase the Twilight Zone, imagine a world where there are no newspapers….do you honestly think we wouldn’t know, or want to know, about the disaster in Haiti over the past couple of weeks?
Of course not. People often mistake news and the media outlets who produce them as one and the same thing, especially newspapers.
That is simply not the case – consumers will always want news, they will want to know about events such as Haiti, the results in the Six Nations, or what Susan Boyle did next (believe me on the latter, people do!).
The issue is how people get their news, and how they will get it in the future. And crucially, how the journalists who source and produce that news are funded.
For decades, newspaper journalists were principally paid via advertising and the circulation revenue generated by selling the papers.
Obviously, both have fallen dramatically in recent years, and online platforms do not offer the same money-generating levels which newspapers have previously enjoyed.
In time though, we will see the mainstream newspapers migrate all of their efforts online, and like the New York Times this week, charge me and you for the right to access that information via our smart phones, laptops and PCs.
Is that really very different from spending 50 pence on your favourite daily read?! I don’t think so.
