Remember how far the web has allowed us to come

A great article from Tech Flash which is entitled a world without newspapers.(H-t Sarah Hartley

It looks at print's increasingly fractious relationship with technology and some of its consequences,including thatWeb journalism is fast becoming the dominant form of news media and that nothing is ever final online.

However this for me is its most important contribution

The Internet has democratized media by shifting power from institutions to individuals.

It's worth a read just to remember how far technology has allowed us to come

The media world has evolved from a top down, command and control model into a complex ecosystem of mainstream media, blogs and user-generated content. It was once relatively clear where news came from (your local paper), when it would arrive (each morning) and who was the messenger (the longtime beat reporter).

and adds

Today, the news can come from anywhere, anybody, anytime. News, gossip, and rumor move instantly through the Web—often without the benefit of an editor attempting to separate fact from fiction. One important scoop can turn an obscure blogger into an influencer virtually overnight.

"We just carried on snuffling up the profits like pigs around a trough.”

Press Gazette's Grey Cardigan,the parody of the old fashioned newsroom has been thinking about the future

“You know, Grey,” my ex-boss says, “I remember meetings back in the early nineties when we didn’t know what to do with all the money we were making. We had to find cunning ways of hiding it from the shareholders. We were hitting margins of over 30 per cent and were turning advertising away despite constant rate increases.
“The daft thing is, we all knew that it was going to end. We knew that the internet would eventually take away our ad revenue; that classified would go first, followed by property and sits vac. And yet we did nothing about it. We didn’t plan for the future or invest in innovative content and means of delivery. We just carried on snuffling up the profits like pigs around a trough.”

Times2 to close

There is speculation that the Times is considering axing its daily Times2 supplement.

As the nationals continue to go through a cost cutting exercise,Media Guardian reports that

A major shakeup at the Times will be announced soon, with the axing of the Times2 features supplement coming as staff await news of job cuts.
The jobs cull is uncertain, with no decision taken yet, according to sources – but staff are convinced cuts are coming. The Times did not comment.
But was is certain is that sometime in March Times2 will vanish. Possibly 5 March will be its final fling, more than a decade after a features supplement first appeared in the paper.

When newspapers are so popular you can rent them

Just before we write off print here is a tale from Kenya

Each newspaper in Kenya is typically read by fourteen people, and those who can’t afford to buy a paper sometimes “rent” one. My neighborhood news vendor charges the equivalent of thirteen cents for thirty minutes with one of the major dailies, all of which are in English. That compares with fifty cents to buy one, a significant sum even to office workers earning $20 a day, and out of reach for the far more numerous casual workers who generally earn no more than $2.

Via Columbia Journalism review

E&P's newspaper trends

It is that time of the year when we look back at some of the developments in the industry and editor and publisher have done a good review of the newspaper industry in the last 12 months

Besides,especially in the states,the closures of many papers the big question for them has been

As newspapers' advertising-based business model started to let them down, one of the biggest questions of the year has been whether or not newspapers should start charging for their online content. So far, there has been a lot of talk but not much action.

But that wasn't the only trend

1.the idea of a journalist not using Twitter is verging on inconceivable.

2.Is Hyper local just hype or will it be the future?

3.Does a nonprofit business model have a significant place in the media landscape? and

4.Is there money in mobile or for that matter the E-reasder?

are all amongst the topics as well as the continued arguments about Google,

90,000 jobs and 142 papers lost in the US

142 papers came to an end in the United States this year reports Alan Mutter,three times the level of 2008.

However

the toll seemed smaller than some observers expected.
There are three reasons for that, the residual monopoly power of the industry, the magic of the bankruptcy system and the irrepressible optimism of publishers.

Little comfort though to the more than 90,000 people who lost their jobs in the various print publishing industries in the last 12 months.

Flogging the family silver

The Independent's Stephen Glover no doubt gets his own back on the specualtion about his own paper by taking a look at the rumours concerning the Guardian from last week.

The Guardian may now be housed in fancy offices near Kings Cross, complete with their own theatre, but its spiritual home is Manchester.

he says

For him the significance is

all the greater if The Daily Telegraph, which broke the story, is correct in suggesting that the Manchester title might fetch less than £40m, though it was supposedly worth £200m several years ago

and adds that

GMG’s apparent willingness to flog off what was once thought of as the family silver suggests its management has woken up to the weakness of its position. Here is a company which by its own (possibly unwise) recent admission is losing £100,000 a day on The Guardian and The Observer, which we might round up to £40m a year. In such circumstances it has to consider selling anything

Miami Herald launches donation scheme

Is this the latest model for newspaper sustainability?

"If you value The Miami Herald's local news reporting and investigations, but prefer the convenience of the Internet, please consider a voluntary payment for the web news that matters to you,"

The Huffington Post reports that the Miami Herald is asking readers for donations and thus copying Wikipedia

Follow this LINK and you can donate to the paper

Plenty of life in newspapers yet

Northern Echo editor Peter Barron believes that there is plenty of life still left in newspapers.

Hold the front page reports that Barron,taking part in a debate about the future of the regional press staged at London’s City University said that,

We are obviously facing a digital future, but I still think newspapers have a future for at least 10-15 years."

Writing on his blog he continued

A paper like The Northern Echo still has a healthy, loyal readership and it is attracting more and more readers to its website.
Advertising is well down on a year ago, thanks to the recession, but showing signs of improvement - fingers crossed that the economy goes the right way.

Job cuts on the way at the Washington Times

Overnight news from the Washington Times which has announced in an email to staff that up to 40 per cent of jobs could be under threat at the paper.

This according to Politico

Jonathan Slevin, acting publisher and president of the Washington Times, outlined a new plan for the beleaguered newspaper and spoke of "significant staff reductions" at a meeting this afternoon.

Amongst the plans

1.The news operation will focus on what it considers core strengths — “exclusive reporting and in-depth national political coverage, enterprise and investigative reporting, geo-strategic and national security news and cultural coverage based on traditional values.”

2.There will be “controlled-market local circulation,” with the local print edition free in certain areas of Washington with a premium price for home delivery. “No-cost distribution will focus on targeted audiences in branches of the federal government as well as at other key institutions,”

Now here is a way to keep up newspaper circulations-enforced subscriptions

One area of the world where newspapers are not under attack is apparently Japan

The single biggest reason is Japan’s direct distribution system. Subscribers who attempt to cancel meet with repeated and agonised house visits from a familiar local employee of the newspaper company.reports the FT

But maybe the most important is the system of yomawari, or “evening round” where reporters wait until the small hours and then try to put questions to the grandee, who with luck will be slightly drunk, as they arrive home.

One thing this does is that many stories in Japan’s morning newspapers are fresh, and were not on the internet the previous day.

“Japan is still a very closed society. There are close relationships between information sources and news reporters and they are emotional not rational relationships,” says Yutaka Oishi, director of the Institute for Media and Communications Research at Keio University.

Salve-Thursday's Guardian Tech

One of the casualties of the Guardian media groups cost cutting will be the stand alone Technology section on a Thursday.

It ceases publication on the 17th December as Charles Arthur explains in today's edition it won't signal the end of the paper's championing of the subject.

The final issue will mark just over 26 continuous years since Futures Micro Guardian had its first edition, on 20 October 1983. From then, you will continue to find our writing online, or through our Twitter feed, and also throughout the paper incarnations of the Guardian in the news, business, features and other sections, where we will have a renewed focus on bringing you our take on the technology issues that truly matter and which you should know about.

and as Arthur continues to say

In part it has been the internet that has hastened the end of the physical version of this section, as more classified job adverts have migrated to online job sites such as Guardian Jobs (jobs.guardian.co.uk, in case you're looking); there have also been the arctic winds of the recession, which seems to be hitting the UK harder than many other countries around the world.

Newspapers should stop thinking as fixed products and start acting valuable, branded interfaces to on

CJR carries an interesting interview with Rob Durst, a Boston-based business and technology consultant who believes that newspapers can remain viable.

How? Well according to Durst,if they move quickly and use innovations such as “mobile codes.then have a cahnce of surviving.

Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services. They can do this using mobile codes, which are essentially printed barcodes that readers “click on” using a camera phone—kind of like clicking on a Web link with a mouse. QR (quick response) codes are a good example. They are in widespread use throughout Asia. QR codes contain a Web address, and your phone’s browser automatically connects to that Web site when you take a picture of the code with your camera phone.

The Observer wil be slimmed down

So the Observer is slimming.

Its much heralded announcement came as expected today.The Sunday will consist of four sections and three of the magazines are being axed with only the food monthly surviving.

The four supplements are news, sport, an expanded Review section and the Observer magazine with business and finance moving into the news section and travel moving to the magazine.

According to Guardian media

A core editorial staff will continue to work solely for the Observer. Other Observer journalists will be integrated into the editorial teams that work across the Sunday paper, GNM's other title, the Guardian, and its website network, guardian.co.uk, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk.
GNM has reopened its voluntary redundancy scheme and the precise number of departures from different editorial departments has not yet been finalised, although the company has said there will be fewer staff at the end of the process.

D Day for the Observer

According to this from the Sunday Times

Staff at The Observer will learn their fate on Tuesday, when executives are expected to brief them on the future of the newspaper. The Scott Trust, the charity that owns The Observer’s publisher, Guardian Media Group, has decided to keep the title but in a drastically slimmed down form. Staff are expected to find out which sections of the paper will be dropped and how many dedicated editorial staff will be retained. Some of its monthly magazines are facing the chop.

We await further news

The secret of a newspaper's success

One newspaper that is doing well is Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, and the Editorsweblog tries to find out the reasons for its success.

According to its editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo the paper innovates by

1. Opinion is the first section of the paper, based on the key word think. No other Portuguese paper starts out with opinion.

2. Radar is the second, accompanied by the key word know. Figueiredo said the assumption was that readers will already know a lot from other sources, but Radar aims to offer a quick overview of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours. The section is eight pages long, and the longest article is half a page.

3. Zoom is the third section, connected to the key word understand. The 22-26 page section looks at between eight and 13 topics in depth, with articles taking up one to ten pages. "We deal with these subjects with a lot of care, and we use the best teams," Figueiredo said.

4. The fourth section is called More, linked to the key concept feel. This is where anything about people's private, cultural, social lives goes. Figueiredo explained that the team did not want to give the section a more specific name, or the content would be limited. More encompasses the fifth need that the paper wanted to address: sports, about 80% of which is focused on football - "

France cracks on with its free papers for 18-24 year olds

France announced the details behind its initiative to give free newspapers to all 18-24 year old yesterday.

Originally proposed earlier in the year by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy,the project called “My Free Newspaper,”intends to give away papers to young readers in an effort to turn them into regular customers.

Around 60 publications will be taking part.As well as the established dailies such as Le Monde and Le Figaro, they include a variety of local publications, as well as the Paris-based International Herald Tribune,and the global edition of The New York Times.

The costs will be shared by the newspaper industry and the French government.

30,000 people had already signed up for free subscriptions and a special Web site will be available soon to speed the process.

HBO,Fast food and start up models to save newspapers

The Fast company has given its take on the business models designed to save the newspaper industry.(via Francois Nel)

It offers up what is calls

a)The HBO model where it should offer complex characters and provocative storylines worth paying for.

Newspapers,should also charge for premium, exclusive content -- instead of reprinting AP stories -- so that reporters can "stay on a beat long enough [to acquire better] information.

b)The fast food model-

News-papers need to identify their true jobs -- corruption watchdog? community calendar? -- and innovate around them.

c)The start up model-start ups try many things before refining what works and getting rid of what doesn't

newspapers designate several teams "to launch anythingthey agree is worth trying."

Newspapers will always have a future says Harris

Some uplifting remarks for the newspaper industry from the novelist Robert Harris in this morning's Independent.

Although he is glad not to be a journalist any longer, Harris remains a firm believer in the importance of newspapers. He reads several a day and it was an article about Pompeii that inspired him to write his book of that name. The role of the journalist remains vital, he says. "On the whole, I'm optimistic about the future because I think people will always want to read the filtered views of professional journalists. I don't think that's just comforting ourselves, it's just a fact. There is good stuff that's free on blogs and so on, but you have to wade through an awful lot of rubbish to get to it."

The author also appears to be a fan of bundling

should we pay to read content online? "Yes, I welcome that, but I think the future is probably in packages, whereby you choose which titles you want to read and pay a certain amount a year to get access to them.

Local newspapers "producing a torrent of worthless badly written drivel"-Discuss?

A damning indicement of local media?

Well the mabiblogion sets the cat amongst the pigeons with this piece in the Independent yesterday where he looks at the state of local newspapers in Wales

The failure of the Welsh government has been mirrored by the inability of the print media outlets to change and refine their output. They too have not responded to the problem. This inability to change and respond to the problems they face looks a lot like falling on one’s sword. If there is still a place for the local newspaper (and I am not sure there is) they need to make changes quickly. The ability to view local, regional, national and international news at the click of a button has made them largely obsolete. The remaining strength of the local newspaper lies in reporting things that don’t make it out of the area. The trouble is that in becoming ever more reliant on press releases and producing a torrent of worthless, badly written drivel, they have lost their market.