The Impact of Internet on Newspapers

Distribution & Consumption

Definitions

• Distribution: the marketing and selling of media products by media companies

• Consumption: the use of goods and services by media audiences

Key Questions

• Are online versions of newspapers having an impact on print sales?

• How well are newspaper companies exploiting their online potential?

• What is the impact of competition from online?• How have readers habits changed in the face of

2.0?• What impact is hardwear having on

newspapers?

Relationship between print and online

• The big challenge remains in maximising the UK audience• Newspaper companies have much more to gain by developing and

promoting their online activities and they should be working harder at both their online competitive response to the digital world without fearing a loss of circulation, and also building a more integrated relationship between the company’s print and digital activities.

• Why is it possible to email the star writers at The New York Times but it is not possible to email the majority of writers in the UK titles?

• The challenge is not about attracting readers on-line, but building a multi- purpose, two-way interaction.

• It should also be noted that at one time The New York Times claimed that around 40% of their new print subscriptions came directly from orders from their website.

• Source: Chisholm Report 2010 (Jim Chisholm, business analyst)

• There is no statistical evidence that newspapers’ own digital activities are affecting circulation.

• It may be that competitive services, such as the BBC, are having an impact

• The conclusion must be that newspapers must pursue their digital strategies, as a beneficial extension of their print activities and one that could actually sustain their print sales rather than hinder them.

• Source: Chisholm Report 2010

Some statistics to back Jim up!

• Go back to ABC circulations before newspaper websites really began – say September 1995 – to make the point.

• One, the Daily Star, is doing better than 15 years ago with no net presence to speak of: 757,080 copies in 1995 against 864,315 last month.

• The Daily Mail, at 2,144,229 this September against 1,866,197, is well up, with a website growing by more than 60% a year.

• Some – say the Mirror, down from 2,559, 636 to 1,213,323 – have suffered direly.

(MediaGuardian online)

Other reasons for falling sales?

• Price matters. But investment and innovation matter as well. And you can't help by being struck how little of that goes on in print these days. A pull-out section vanishes, and comes back. Single-theme front pages come and go at the Indy. The Telegraph still looks for somewhere else to put its features. Nothing much changes.

• Another researcher (at Enders Analysis) calculates that papers have lopped 20% of the pages they put in a decade ago in order to bulwark sharply rising cover prices.

Do newspapers give away too much online?

• Derek Tucker, editor of the Press and Journal in Aberdeen, argues that the regional press had made a mess of online because ‘no other industry would sell what it made one way, but give it away in another’

• He argued that the relatively strong sales performance of his titles in Aberdeen was down in part to the fact that they restrict the amount of content which goes online, along with the time that it goes online. He said circulation decline was greater on titles where the amount of content online was greater.

Citizen Journalists?

• No one covers the news in his part of the country as well as his publications because, in his words, citizen journalists and bloggers aren’t on courts bench or in the football press conferences.

Other Challenges

• Thwaites (Teeside Gazette) points to the closure of newsagents as being one reason why people aren’t buying so many newspapers. This is the biggest challenge the industry faces as it can suddenly create holes in circulation areas.

Paywalls• Does Murdoch’s paywall work?• A common assumption for any business offering free versus paid

versions is that only about 10% of the customer basis will migrate from the free to the paid

• Comprehensive pay walls might work if every single credible news organisation erected one at the same time, but that isn’t going to happen. In the UK The Guardian declared it will not follow Murdoch down the subscription route (partly because they recall the American audience they created while TimesSelect was in place), the BBC will always have news free for global users (albeit paid for by the indirect subscription of the license fee in Britain), and National Public Radio will continue to offer its 26 million listeners quality programming without direct payment

David Campbell

• “print dollars are replaced by mere online dimes” Jarvis, What Would Google Do

• Advertising in print versions has been in decline for a long time

• In the early days of the on-line revolution, it was hoped the vast amount of web traffic (“unique users”) going to sites would provide the basis for a new advertising model for the Internet. In part this has occurred, and on-line advertising remains a growth area in percentage terms even during the current recession. The trouble is that the values of this advertising is small, perhaps one-tenth of the print sector it is replacing

Changes in Consumption

• “people are relying more heavily…on platforms that can deliver news when audiences want it rather than at appointed times, a sign of a growing ‘on demand’ news culture. People increasingly want the news they want when they want it.” And satisfying that desire can only be achieved digitally.

Source: David Campbell

Consumption

• People are searching for articles via search engines rather than using a homepage.

• Marissa Mayer of Google says that 80% of people engage with news in this way

• A move from newspaper to article

A finished story?

• Journalism becomes a process rather than a product, and the developing topic rather than the finished story is the new fundament of reporting.

• I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed. It’s a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s also a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides annotated links to experts, coverage, opinion, perspective, source material. It’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but that tries to accomplish something… It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organized – Jeff Jarvis

Is Citizen Journalism a good thing?

• One of the fears flowing from the ‘death of newspapers’ and shift to on-line news platforms is that our capacity to sift important information from unsourced trivia will be lost.

• In typical fashion, commentators see the end of one thing (stories by authoritative reporters) leading inexorably to its polar opposite (rumours by amateur gossips).

• The new structures of distribution affect the structures of information, but they do so by changing rather than eliminating the role of the journalist and editor. This is because the number of people who can write and publish without being filtered out by the mainstream media (Twitter/blogging) is increasing all the time.

More Democratic?

• The role of transparency in this new structure of information is vital. Showing how you get the story, and linking to others who have different but relevant aspects of the topic, is the best way to establish credibility and legitimacy for this mode of reporting. David Weinberger has gone as far to claim “transparency is the new objectivity.”

How do audiences receive news?

• Twitter• Google• Yahoo (trending now)• i-Phone• i-Pad

Apps

• Biggest names in new have already established themselves on the iPad including BBC News and New York Times

• Subscription required for content• Can read BBC News in many languages• Customise content based on interest• App will search for stories of interest

while you’re offline• But will the iPad drive people away

from print copy?

The Daily

• Murdoch’s i-Pad news site• ‘Much is riding on it: the future of how people

produce and consume journalism.’ Guardian Media• "Simply put, the iPad demands that we completely

reimagine our craft.“• It will be fully digital, but published every night in time

for the subscriber to read over morning coffee. "Wonderful! Slower news – and at a higher price," wrote Scott Rosenberg of Salon before the launch.

• Revolutionary?!?!

Practice Exam Question

• Work in pairs to plan response• Gather information (quotes, stats)• Discuss the extent to which the distribution

and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet