Let’s begin by being personal. I take the Daily Telegraph daily. I like a broadsheet newspaper. I like the space it offers to combine text, pictures and adverts. I like newspaper front pages for their creativity, and ability to shock. I like the serendipitous nature of discovery a broadsheet newspaper offers.
I don’t like supplements. I don’t like the smaller or tabloid formats. I’m not a magazine buyer or reader, although I used to read and enjoy the Economist, not enough time for that now. I’m an avid internet user and consumer of online news and comment. Hell, I’m a blogger, so am bound to like all things interwebby. That’s me.
Now, what of the future for newspapers. Firstly, at the base level they are merely a commodity. Differentiation is difficult. The volume of free information and comment increasingly crowds out the paid for media. Reader loyalty is an aging concept. The young don’t rely newspapers for information or comment.
Taking the Economist and The Times as examples, it’s difficult to see either of their charging models succeeding long-term. The economics of The Times charging model is surely a concern for its owners, whose readership has collapsed following the introduction of a pay wall to all of their online content. Clay Shirky doubts it’s a model that’ll be copied. I agree. It seems they consider the iPad as the solution.
While the Economist, who now charge for some online content, may possibly drive online readership to the occasional news stand purchase for those paid for marquee online articles, it’s surely not the answer either. Bradford Cross certainly thinks so.
Bradford Cross suggests ways for newspapers to survive, by offering on-line content through cleverly designed paid for applications, which combine the essentials of Google search relevance, Facebook social interaction, and Apple style design simplicity. It’s a neat concept, as it mirrors how we interact with news today. In that search drives much of the traffic to a news website, Facebook is how the young access news, and that Apple-like intuitive applications lower the barrier to acceptance. While Clay Shirky thinks we don’t yet know what the answer will be to ‘saving our newspapers’.
The answer, and in this I’m not alone, is through enhancing the quality of the journalism. The public, of all ages, will seek out the views and information that matters to them. A fine example would be news and opinion on sport. There’s surely a way for the daily press to monetise a sports application that runs alongside free access to commoditised world and national news.
Bradford Cross suggests the new news delivery model will look like Flipboard or Pulse News Reader.
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