The rubber newspaper

The latest in newspapers is the rubber version.Not joking this is the real thing according to innovations in newspapers.

Well, now we have the first fake prototypes but the time is coming and soon or later we will have the first “flexible tablet readers”

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Newspaper success story.

Newspapers are not dying the world over but it appears that you have to look to the Indian Sub continent for success.

The FT reports that

Dainik Jagran, a Hindi language daily, has a circulation of more than 17m and a readership of 54.5m in India, according to the latest Indian Readership Survey. This comes on the back of the growing dominance in the country of Hindi language newspapers – four of the five most widely read newspapers in the country are in Hindi, a language that is spoken by 41 per cent of the country’s 1.2bn people

According to Robin Jeffrey, an academic and author of India’s Newspaper Revolution its success can be put down to politics and consumer capitalism.

“Politicised people seek information. Politically mobilised classes have expanded – [such as] the Bahujan Samaj Party [which represents lower caste groups],Proprietors and advertisers at the same time have sought more eyes across their products so they have localised content and pushed newspapers into the countryside.”

Digital Britain on local and community

I was quite interested in what the Digital Britain report had to say about community and local media.

Digging into the report there are some exciting points to a hyperlocal future

61. Local websites of all shapes and sizes are providing community news and information to hundreds of thousands of people. Most of these sites are volunteer run, using free publishing platforms like www.wordpress.com with no hard costs. They show that grass roots media can provide an accurate, reliable,popular sources of news and information without regulation or subsidy. Their news values and thresholds are new, reflecting grass roots interests and priorities.

62. Community sites with no costs can serve very small, human news geographies of a single ward or a few streets. Community websites with no old media legacy are able to discriminate between types of media production to suit local needs. The written word and photos predominate, sound and video are in a minority. In some communities with established local sites the readership within the community appears comparable to that of traditional news media.

63. Digital Britain is at the beginning of a new and possibly disruptive wave of local news, generated by communities for communities using free online media. Over the medium term this has the potential to be good for local pluralism and expression as commercial funding for traditional media diminishes. 4IP and Screen West Midlands are making a major investment in Talk About Local to create hundreds of new community websites by giving community activists the simple skills. Digital Mentors are taking a similar approach on a smaller scale.

Ht-William Perrin

Next week is local newspaper week

Via John Slattery

Next week (11th-17th May) is Local Press Week

You can find all the details here at Newspaper Society website

The theme is

Building Stronger Communities, highlighting the important role of local papers at the heart of their cities, towns and villages, working with local people and businesses through the recession to emerge fitter and better than ever.

Rather apt in the current climate

Newsqust launches new hyperlocal sites

Nerwquest has announced plans to widen its hyperlocal community news sections across a range of its titles in the West Midlands.(ht-Jon Slattery)

The first local modules are 24 linked through the Kidderminster Shuttle and will be followed by six other titles in the Stourbridge News, Halesowen News, Dudley News, Bromsgrove Advertiser, Redditch Advertiser, and Droitwich Advertiser, in the coming months.

You can view the site here

Why print may still lead the way in community journalism

Some interesting thoughts on community journalism from Newspaper project.org

Speculation about the Internet replacing community newspapers is counter-intuitive. What are you going to do when you want to know what’s on sale this week at the Piggly Wiggly? Send out a Twitter message for Ricky McLeod? Google chicken quarters in Sumter? People who are engaged in a community read a local paper, and advertisers know this. You ignore the workings of your community at your own peril. Free speech and taxpayer representation are the most basic aspects of a democracy, and good community newspaper journalism is at the core of it all.

They make a good point.Often people wanting community information are of the generation that will prefer the older methods of communication.

However community is about everyone in that community,so methods of communicating to the younger generations must not be neglected .

Community is the future for journalism

A conundrum from Robert Niles who asks

Can democratic communities survive without a newspaper to provide them the civic information they need?

before turniong the question around and asking

Can newspapers survive without the communities they need to sustain them?

For Robert this is the problem with the media industry

where so many news organizations have failed over the past generation. In a drive to professionalize the journalism industry (and, then, to cut costs), we've cut our publications off from the communities they are supposed to represent.

So what is the solution-well it is the internet

Our websites are our livelihoods now-The most important thing that we've built is the two communities of individuals who read and communicate through the sites. That is our product. And that is what we must hold on to, to nurture and to cultivate, if media preferences change and Web publishing become the next newsprint.

Some encouraging news on community newspapers.

Thanks to Mark Comerford for this link from a piece by the suburban newspapers of America.(SNA)

They report that

community newspapers continue to experience only a slight downturn in advertising revenues, contrary to industry-wide reported trends, according to third quarter 2008 financial data collected by the trade associations — Suburban Newspapers of America (SNA) and the National Newspaper Association (NNA). The SNA/NNA financial reporting group reports total ad revenue at $394 million, a 1.7% decline from the same quarter in 2007. As a point of comparison, NAA has reported an overall decline of 18% for the industry in the third quarter

According to figures from the SNA there are more than 10 million in circulation with annual revenues of $2b.

A good ground for continued success and SNA President Nancy Lane says

Local advertisers continue to value the hyper-local news and desirable local audience provided by community newspapers,Community papers are affected by the current economic downturn but they are not in a crisis; in fact, there are some that are showing growth.