A week of listening for students of newspapers.

Radio 4 has launched a series of programmes today looking at the newspaper industry,the first broadcast earlier this morning is entitled a farewell to print.

After 150 years of little change in the print industry, the last few years have witnessed a revolution as the internet increases its dominance on the media landscape. Readers’ attention and loyalties have become divided as papers compete with round the clock reporting and unmediated comment.

On the same topic meanwhile Peter Preston pontificates in the Observer.Commenting on
Carolyn McCall,chief executive of the Guardian group,who in a lecture said

'The erosion of print circulation is minuscule when you think of how much more media there is out in the market today... which means you still have to do the best newspaper... to promote it, market it, do everything we can to be really good in print... and we have to do the same thing in digital.

Good point Carolyn,and analysing the sales figures,Peter says

Thus we're not talking about long-term decline and similar dirges. We're discerning periods of growth, periods of stability and periods of fluctuating fortunes. We're charting shifts and times of technological upheaval. We are not writing obituaries.