In a continuing series on the future of the media, Marie Kemplay looks at the effect the digital age is having on the humble newspaper

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I never thought I would live to see the day that The Independent would move into the offices of the Daily Mail, but it’s happened. I can not think of two more unlikely bedfellows.

When The Independent was launched in 1986 it was intended to have a right-of-centre ethos, but soon became known as a champion of liberal values; a title it might find difficult to defend with ‘middle England’s’ favourite rag just down the corridor. Certainly it would be hard to get away with its famous ‘It is [independent] are you?’ slogan now.

But maybe The Independent’s fate is indicative of newspapers as a whole. Times is‘ard! Circulation figures for all the national daily newspapers are consistently dropping month by month. Only the Guardian and the Financial Times’ circulations increased in November by 0.45% and 0.82% respectively but even then their circulation figures for the year are down on 2007.

And the trouble’s not limited to London, the Glasgow based Herald and Times Group, publishers of the Scottish national daily papers The Herald and The Evening Times, last week announced it was making 250 staff redundant and asking them to reapply for their jobs, indicating all is not well to the north of the border either.

A number of factors are at play here, in cities across the country there are now numerous free sheets to contend with, The Metro, London Lite and thelondonpaper in the capital, MEN lite in Manchester etc. and although the proprietors of these papers claim they are targeting an audience who would not buy a newspaper anyway, it seems like common sense to me that they will encourage the staple market of daily commuters to stop paying as well.

The main issue for newspapers is how to successfully embrace an audience so familiar with the Internet. The Internet, of course, trumps newspapers in two respects; it’s free and news is updated with regularity rather than once or twice daily. Only the Financial Times charges readers to read it online and even they allow you to read 20 articles free each month. Perhaps in the future British newspapers may have to take a nod from across the pond, in America it is common practice for online editions to only give readers a ‘taster’ before demanding they pay for the rest of the article. But then of course we would just be driven into the open arms of the broadcast news websites such as Sky and BBC.

The Internet also embraces a totally different style of writing, quick snippets of information designed for instant digestion, not necessarily the traditional style of newspapers. It’s important for a newspaper’s ‘googleability’ that stories are written in a certain way, with keywords featuring regularly throughout otherwise when people search for a story online they won’t find it. Journalists may be loath to write in this ‘painting by numbers’ way but they will have to if they want to remain well-read and, ultimately, that’s what they care about.

Multimedia has forced newspapers not to be mono-faceted; I recently visited the Daily Telegraph’s Head Office which rather than being a fortress of conservatism like you might expect has TV and radio studios. With the advent of youtube generation, newspapers have been forced to jump off the page and embrace all technology with videos, blogging, pod and vodcasting now the norm, even for the older generation of journalists. I was told at The Daily Telegraph that even journalists in their 60s and 70s have to learn how to use the new technology. Can you imagine it, being a business for 40 years and having to learn a whole new methodology? But in these difficult economic times newspapers like all other business are going to have to learn to give the punters exactly what they want at a decent price or like The Independent they’re going to find themselves in trouble. And with advertising revenues almost certain to drop during this recession they have a tough time ahead.

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Image Credit: Alex Barth

Tags: Digital TV //