As long as I can remember, newspapers have been part
of my life. Sundays are empty without coffee and The Observer. I like the feel
of a paper, I like spreading it over a table. You can’t do that with a webpage
or app – or at least not yet, but I’m sure the guys at Apple are working on it.
But all this week, I’ve been reading figures that suggest print is dead. The Guardian lost £44.2 million last year, circulation figures are down and local newspapers are disappearing. Roy Greenslade has been chronicling the deaths of local newspapers. It makes for grim reading; in the UK, 32 regional weekly titles closed last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/dec/24/newspaper-closures-downturn).
But it’s not all bad news. While apps that allow
readers to download digital newspapers are being hailed as the future, not
everyone owns a tablet or smartphone, and not everyone has internet access. A
recent report by the World Association of
Newspapers World Press Trends showed
that 2.5 billion people read newspapers in print, while 600 million read them
online. Print circulations are rising in Asia and the Middle East and more
people worldwide read newspapers than use the web (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/more-people-read-newspapers-worldwide-use-web).
The current crisis in print journalism has also
prompted developments in self-publishing. Newspaper Club has been helping
people become self-published journalists since 2009. This online company offers
people the opportunity to print their own papers in much smaller runs than the
traditional newspaper. Print runs range from 1 to 5,000, and Newspaper
Club printed 500 different newspapers in 2010 (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/06/custom-printing-can-onlin_n_888080.html).
They’re unlikely to single-handedly save print, but it’s something good to come
out of this crisis.
So while journalism is in a state of flux, I’m not
sure we’re done with print. EBooks, rather than killing the physical book,
co-exist with and feed into it, with books that start as eBooks being produced
in print (such as Fifty Shades of Grey). So why should the app or website mean
the end for print, rather than just another exciting way to get your news?
You mention self-publishing: how can we be sure of the quality of self-published journalism? The realm of self-published books still carries a large stigma as the stomping ground of cranks and lunatics, and there would probably be the same associations with the Newspaper Club. From the Huffington info, they seem to be more vanity than anything else.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to talk more about self-publishing, especially in relation with books, but my blog ended up 700 words long, so I had to cut it out! I am aware that as the Huffington post story shows, most of the newspapers the Newspaper Club is publishing are not really news per say - more novelty newsletters people give away at their weddings or such. But self-published journalism has to start somewhere, and hopefully self-published journalism may someday reach the dizzying heights that self-published authors have recently been achieving. Although self-publishing has traditionally been the preserve of the faintly mad, for the last 3 months of last year Amazon's top seller was a self-published author http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/08/self-published-author-amazon-ebook. Other success stories include Louise Voss and Amanda Hocking http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing. I'm aware that popularity doesn't necessarily equate to worth, but Hocking has sold over 1.5 million books and made over $2.5 million - she has to be doing something right!
ReplyDelete"Print is dead" is a phrase that has been bandied around a lot recently and with the introduction of apps, iPads and smart phones, combined with the information that "32 local regional weekly titles closed last year", it does seem to be inevitable that print is on it's last legs.
ReplyDeleteHowever, like you, I believe that while online journalism is here to stay and has revolutionised the way that news is read, I do agree that for a huge percentage or news readers, that reading online news is not always an option. While print is available to nearly everyone – with circulations increasing throughout the world - for reasonably small amounts of money, smart phones and iPads are not. It would be incredibly naive to assume that because online journalism is so convenient and popular these days that it will completely override print. As you mention self publishing is also a growing past-time and while it is perhaps not such high quality as national newspapers and the like - as suggested by Olivia - it does seem to suggest that there is always going to be a need for print in some form or another.
Online journalism costs seem to be a matter of concern to publications too, with many beginning to opt for premium content and subscription based pages – what do you think of these and where do you see this leading? Will this guarantee loyal readers for online journalism or will it simply push readers back towards paper copies?
I just think that apps have been around for such a relatively short amount of time that it's impossible to say whether they're a short-lived gimmick or a form that, like print, will endure. As you point out, at this point, print is just more accessible, and as long as it is we can't say it's dead. And with print changing in size and shape (like the i) and the possibility of self-publishing and small-scale printing taking off, print is a changing and evolving form.
ReplyDeleteAs to online journalism, no-one really seems to have found a way to make it pay as well as print paid up til very recently. I think all we can really do is see how it pans out. We all seem to agree that paying for premium content works better, as at least you get a taste of what you're paying for, rather than just running up against a paywall. I think that as long as people encounter the blank, forbidding face of a complete paywall, they'll go elsewhere. Whether they go to other online sources or back to print depends on a number of factors - are they a digital native, perfectly at home with reading large amounts of text off screens, or from an earlier, less digitalised generation? Is convenience their priority, or is it the leisurely experience of reading a paper they're looking for? I think only time will tell how successfully newspapers will make the transition to digital and whether it will be a complete transition, or whether the two forms will run alongside each other.