Sunday Business Post | Irish Business News

Breaking News Business Ireland World Sport Weather

Navigation (Home)News News Features The Market Technology Media & Marketing Comment & Analysis Computers In Business Profile Property Motoring Agenda Inside Story Books Food & Drink Travel & Well-being The Guide Off Message Post Mortem Letters

People In Business Done Deal Commercial Reports Budget Forum Events / Conferences Company Reports Tools Crossword Search the archives Newsletter IMODE RSS

Text-Only

Off Message
Sunday, April 12, 2009 By Jennifer O’Connell
One of these days, I could be out of a job. This predicament, I appreciate, isn’t terribly novel. There are architects flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and solicitors offering babysitting services on the notice board in SuperValu. There are even -it is rumoured -bankers mowing their own lawns.

So the fates of a few hundred journalists who make their living writing for the future dodo bird of the mediasphere are hardly likely to have the country sleeplessly prowling the deep pile carpeted corridors of our double mortgaged suburban semi-Ds at night.

The thought of a future without newspapers, though -that’s something else. Sunday afternoons spent lounging on the sofa with a coffee and an iPhone spread around you: it doesn’t have quite the same appeal does it?

But however much we might protest that we like the smell of them and the weight of them, however we might feel like we owe them for all they’ve done for us over the years, newspapers are dying. Readers -younger readers especially -don’t want to pay for yesterday’s or last week’s news any more, and advertisers won’t follow where readers -younger readers especially - have stopped going.

So what are we going to do about the inexorable decline of the newspaper industry? I’ve got a novel idea. How about we do nothing?

Don’t get me wrong (please don’t get me wrong, Managing Director.) I love newspapers.

I love them for the role they have played in promoting democracy and prosperity, of course. But, more prosaically, I love carrying a big, awkward bundle of them home from the shops, I love reading them, I love hiding behind them when there’s washing-up to be done, and I love going home to my parents’ house to see the framed copy of my first front-page story, which I have long claimed to be mortally embarrassed by.

I love the way someone’s choice of newspaper, or the page they turn to first, tells you far more about them than their accentor their choice of shoe or what car they drive. I even love the bad ones, the ones which I swear will never cross the threshold into my house -not unless they have a close-up of Amy Huberman’s engagement ring, in which case I can make an exception.

But do I think they all deserve to survive? Probably not. Nor do I think, as has been mooted in the US, that the government should start writing us cheques that’s if it had any money left over after all the cheques it has written for the banks.

Nor do I love the idea of newspapers becoming the earnest mouthpieces of vast, international non-profit foundations -another idea being explored in Obama’s America. Yes, we are in a state of crisis. But it might also prove to be a state of opportunity.

So what are the threats to newspapers? Google is often blamed for hastening the inexorable decline of the newspaper industry. Only last week, Rupert Murdoch accused it of ‘‘stealing all our copyrights’’, and suggested that we should respond with a ‘‘thanks, but no thanks’’.

If that endorsement alone isn’t enough to persuade you, try looking at Google as a big, fancy, high-tech newsagent. Because that’s all it is, really. Sure, it creates content through applications like Street View and YouTube. But mostly it’s about disseminating content.

Murdoch might decide to pull his titles off the shelf of this metaphorical newsagent -he can easily block the browser from crawling the pages at the Wall Street Journal, the London Times and all his other titles -but the reality, as he must appreciate, is that the shelves of this big, flash newsagent will simply be filled up with more content to replace them.

Google is not the only threat to newspapers, if indeed a threat it is. There are Facebook, and Twitter, and whatever comes along in two weeks to replace them as the next big thing in social media.

Then there’s the growing blogosphere, some elements of which have become media powerhouses in their own right. The Huffington Post is a formidable four-year-old news organisation which started life as a modest blog run by Greek-American socialite Arianna Huffington.

Last week, the New York-based liberal website announced it was setting up a $1.75 million fund to help fill the gap left by the decimation of US investigative teams. Huffington said the purpose of the fund was an attempt to save good journalism in the face of the recent decimation of newsrooms across the country.

It’s tempting to blame newspapers for our own troubles. Sure, we shouldn’t have been so reliant on advertising in general for revenue, and property advertising in particular. Yes, we should probably have embraced the internet more enthusiastically and sooner, and dreamed up applications like Twitter ourselves. We should have had our journalists blogging and micro-blogging and podcasting years ago.

But we can still do some things better than the shiniest video iPod. Opinion and analysis, for one thing. Design, for another. Photography.

Crosswords. Special commemorative editions. Important world events. Local news. Niche news. Letters pages. Reliable, interesting, thought-provoking content. A respite from all that distracting technology.

These elements, if we concentrate our powers on doing them right, might just provide our readers and advertisers with a strong enough argument for our survival. But as part of the deal, we’ll also have to look at the things we haven’t been so good at doing: immediacy, innovation and interaction Oh, and that other ‘i’ the internet.

Most likely, the newspaper of the future will look quite like it does now, only without the paper. Or without quite so much of it. The streamlined print edition will cost more, look better, and put far more emphasis on strong design, photography, comment and analysis.

The online edition will take many different forms. There will be the main website, which will be supplemented by more comment and analysis in the form of multiple blogs and podcasts.

News will be streamed direct to your digital device of choice. Depending on your preferences, it will be a single, Twitter-style headline, or a 300-word story supplemented by images and video.

Readers will subscribe to some, or all, of what we offer. Instead of us guessing what they want us to do for them, they’ll tell us. In return for all this flexibility just think, you may never have to look at a sports page again - readers and advertisers will let go of their peculiar resistance to online advertising.

What’s happening now to newspapers will come to be seen not as a revolution, but as an evolution, just as the video recorder represented an evolution in the age of television, and television represented an evolution in the age of radio. Either that, or I will be out of a job.

Click here for Sunday Business Post stories before this date