What did people do before the Newspaper?
What did people do before the newspaper? Archaic they may be in their delivery of yesterday’s headlines, but in one form or another the newspaper has been a part on British society since the late 1700s. Before the newspaper how would you get news? Was it all hearsay and happenstance, or could one trust their town crier to be the font of all knowledge? I mean, it’s hard enough to imagine a time when the news went to bed just after Trevor McDonald stopped talking.
Now we exist in a world where news is a 24-hour rolling shit parade of horrifying events and meaningless politics. Old-school news media outlets now start competing against a new wave of news providers, such as the Huffingtonpost.com, and have to do so in fields outside that of ink and paper. So as the News of the World falls to political and public pressure and the Guardian readies a digital first strategy, Studentpunch.com investigates the question; is print news media dead?
Are Cheryl and Ashley back together? Has Victoria really named her baby Seven? It is world-changing issues such as these that keep the public engrossed in the ever-scandalous lives of the rich and famous. Gossip magazines and tabloid newspapers survive and thrive on this constant flow of speculation surrounding celebrities, and feast on the public’s hunger for gossip and scandal. The media promotes the theory that celebrities are fair game, safe to ridicule and exploit because they put themselves out there in the public eye, to be judged and scrutinised accordingly and on a daily basis.
There are some celebrities for whom any publicity is good publicity; they court the press only for self-promotion, and stroking their own egos in the process. Others strive to maintain a degree of privacy surrounding their personal lives, but the difficulty of doing so is clear to see. Case in point would be the arrival of what became known as the super-injunction. Such court orders, in England and Wales, gag the press by preventing them from reporting on the details. The injunction itself has been featured heavily in the news in recent weeks, bringing them to the fore of public interest.
The use of these super-injunctions first came to the public attention in October 2009, with a case involving the oil company Trafigura and their alleged dumping in the Ivory Coast. The case came to light when The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented from recording remarks made in Parliament by the said legal injunction.
Frequently, these court orders have the opposite of the desired effect, and draw more attention to the case, with the parties involved ultimately named and shamed regardless. The media clamours to gain and reveal as much information as possible, spurred on by attempts to thwart their efforts with court orders and laws. They have desperation to name and shame, exposing the sordid secrets of the rich and famous by any means necessary, despite legal prevention and for what? Well increasingly, as has been alluded to previously, the tabloid press is not driven by traditional news content, rather by celebrity gossip. Do not think that it is through a deep desire for justice that these redtop papers try and break injunctions: the media scandal involving super-injunctions sold newspapers, and thus the story served its purpose.
We’d be amiss, then, at this point to not mention that Welsh footballer who did or didn’t do something with that other Welsh someone, somewhere. Maybe.
In all seriousness, super-injunctions and the legal issues surrounding the footballer who plays midfield for Man Utd [I believes he wears 11 on his shirt, but you didn’t hear that from us] raised important questions about the freedom of the press and control of the media, as in cases such as this they find themselves gagged by the courts and are at risk of arrest for carrying out the exposes which they would normally churn out on a daily basis. So is the media’s tight grip on information beginning to loosen as they find themselves monitored and controlled? This threat of legal action has become a major spanner in the works of the scandal machine. However, is this a good thing? Should the media should be kept in check, forced to rein in the flow of gossip that they pedal out daily to the masses? Does their apparent disregard for the consequences or repercussions for those involved justify censorship?
Media intrusion, in whatever form that intrusion takes, has never been more so at the forefront of public discussion than it is now. Much has been said, and will be said over the coming weeks about the actions of News Corporation and its subsidiaries News International, and the newspaper at the heart of the storm, News of the World. The revelations of alleged phone hacking carried out over the years by the News of the World journalists are of such importance that they can simply not be ignored, both as a news item and in the greater context of the decline of the print media.
This, often horrific, story has roots back to the start of the millennium when, the Sideshow Bob lookalike, Rebekah Brooks [then Wade] was editor of the News of the World. During her time as editor [which started in May 2000] it is alleged that journalists working for News of the World had hired private investigators to hack into a voicemail inbox belonging the family of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler. First reported on the 4th of July by the The Guardian newspaper, it is also alleged that some messages from the aforementioned voicemail inbox were deleted in order to continue that flow of information. Doing so is said to have given false hope to the Dowler family, while destroying vital evidence about Milly Dowler’s abduction and murder at the same time. Other alleged targets of ‘phone hacking’ include, but are not limited to, the relatives of British Soldiers killed in action in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the victims of the 7/7 London attack [often referred to a the London Bombing], along with several high profile celebrities and politicians.
The News of the World’s position became an untenable one. From the point at which The Guardian published the allegations against the News of the World advertisers [advertising is, of course, the main source of revenue for all newspapers] began distancing their brand from the News International paper. Companies such as Virgin Holidays, the Co-operative Group and Ford Motor all pulled their advertising with others clambering to do the same. The injustice of these severe invasions of privacy was widely felt, and the true revulsion of this breach of security and privacy was put into action. The public, other media sources, and advertisers showed that this was the line that, once crossed, could not be backtracked over. And so with the loss of 200 jobs and after 168 years in print, just like that best selling newspaper in the country closed.
But, as Rupert Murdoch revealed when addressing Parliament's culture, media and sport select committee, the News of the World is (sorry, was) just 1% of his business. It was as easy to let go as it will be to replace with another paper, presumably brandishing the word ‘Sun’ on its front cover.
So where does newspaper publishing stand in 2011? Starting across the Atlantic, let’s look at the facts and the figures. According to e-marketer [in March ‘11] the US newspaper ad revenue will total $24 billion, a number that is down 4.2% on the previous year [$25.7 billion], which itself was down 6.3% on 2009. This downward turn is predicted to continue to, at least, 2015 [when e-marketer’s predictions end] but all signs point toward this being a continuing trend well into the future. Nevertheless there is one development that inspires some hope and that is when you break down the total and show just online revenue. Year on year there has been, and is predicted to be, a large uptake in online ad revenue, with the figure jumping up 11.8% between ’09 and ’10 and a further 10.9% between ’10 and ’11. Don’t however jump for joy just yet though as, even with this growth, online ad revenue only [and I use only in the loosest sense] accounted for 3.3 billion dollars of a total, remember, of 24.7. The data here, however, suggests that eventually, but perhaps at later date than one would expect, the two forms of revenue, print vs. online, will converge with eventually the later taking precedence.
If we turn our attention back home we see that even across this side of the ‘Pond’ the downward trend extending to circulation figures also. The majority of Britain’s daily newspapers are suffering from declining sales and circulation; in fact, the only paper that has any stability in the market is [unfortunately] The Daily Mail. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations the paper gained 16,000 readers. By comparison, if we take figures from May 2011, The Times lost 13.33% of its sales compared to the same time in 2010 and The Guardian’s circulation fell 12.49%. These figures may not be helped by the fact that the previous May’s figures were bolstered by the General Election. However, if we look back at The Times and month-on-month change, the circulation fell 0.69%. The only paper to gain month-on-month was the Daily Star [a gain on 1.43%]. However, year-on-year the paper lost 14.69% so all hope in humanity is not lost just yet. June 2011 was no better for the old guard, with The Times down another 1.37% month-on-month and The Guardian down 2.53%. What really is interesting though is the changing circulation figures for The Independent and The I, the cut-price spin-off title of the aforementioned paper. The Independent’s circulation fell 1.5% on the previous month to 176, 681 while The I’s rose 3.65% to 173,165 in June, meaning that The Independent’s lead of more than 12,000 in May had narrowed to fewer than 4,000 copies a day in June. Is this a case of cutting off your nose to spite the face? Is it a cannibalisation of The Independent’s own sales? Or is a brave and smart choice by the paper?
Think about it for a second, The Independent now sells two papers in a market that suggests it should be very difficult to sell just the one, and when the newspaper industry becomes survival of the fittest I would suggest that it is best to have a smaller, lighter product in the market rather than cutting and slashing and cheapening your existing product. On this same principle it has been reported that the Associated Newspapers, home to such titles as the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, are on the cusp of releasing a Sunday redtop paper. Norman Giller, from Sports Journalism, suggests that the new paper, known currently as the crazily innovative ‘Sunday,’ will be based around the Daily Mail’s insanely popular website. The website, which is pushing a reported 50 million unique users worldwide, is the second most popular British news site in the world and is largely celebrity led. The Sunday Mirror’s readership rose by around 700,00 in the wake of the New of the World’s demise and the Mail group is looking not only to capitalise in the newly formed gap in the market but the growing online readership.
It would appear then that the days of news outlets taking their lead, whether that be creatively or financially, solely from print are numbered. In fact, just last month The Guardian and sister paper Observer announced they were to adopt a ‘digital-first’ strategy. The move comes on the back of a reported loss of £33m for the Guardian Media, with the group hoping that a digital approach in the future will help to double their digital revenues by 2016. Chief executive of the GMG said that “doing nothing was not an option”, while The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, said; “Every newspaper is on a journey into some kind of digital future. That doesn't mean getting out of print, but it does require a greater focus of attention, imagination and resource on the various forms that digital future is likely to take.” He also went on to say that the print version of The Guardian would also be getting a redesign with the aim of the newspaper being to be “as relevant at 9am as 9pm.”
But, as we saw above, there is still a large disparity between the ad revenue for print and ad revenue online despite, one might suggest, the larger readership an online site might receive. So how do you make online pay? Well, you build a wall.
A ‘pay wall’ simply blocks access to a website with a screen requiring those who would cross to answer me these questions three…or, you know, pay. June 2011 was the one-year anniversary of both The Times and Sunday Times building a ‘pay wall’ around their sites with users paying £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a week. However, reports suggest that there may be as few as 15,000 paying subscribers for the website with a further 12,000 paying via the iPad app. A more successful implementation of this system can be found over in, ironically, the land of the free. Digital subscriptions for The New York Times’s website nytimes.com went from zero to 224,000 in just three months with a further 57,000 users coming via Kindles and iPads. According to cjr.org, the new online subscriptions increased the paper’s circulation revenues by 1.6%, having previously fallen [pre-‘pay wall’] 2.9% in the first quarter. It is estimated that digital subscriptions could account for as much as $55 million a year, although that would be just 3.5% of their $1.55 billion [2010] revenue.
While having newspapers on a device such as the Kindle brings the medium to a new audience, the form factor is awkward and inconvenient; so much so that it is likely that Amazon only have such an option as a test bed for the oft-rumoured larger-form Kindle tablet. However, you can’t mention tablets without talking about the iPad. When the device launched many saw it as the next great hope for the news-publishing world, and it may well yet be, but no company has yet cracked whither the format or the price point. Too many have tried to force old school models on new technology and that just doesn’t work. In fact, the app developers that have succeeded have done so by showing how social the news can be. Take the Flipboard app as an example; taking news sources directly from links shared on Facebook, Twitter or the RSS feeds you follow, you become the curator of your news channel which seems like a much more relevant way of addressing the news compared to say News Corps offering, The Daily. The Daily, a newspaper app, is very traditional in its approach; it is a magazine style product that features news, sport and lifestyle pieces. Yes, adverts might move and their may be video pieces in the app, but that is hardly a revolution in publishing. The app was expensive to produce as well, at almost $30 million with an additional $55 million a year upkeep. When Apple takes it’s 30% cut, The Daily would need 750,000 paying subscribers to break even, currently they have 75,000.
So where is the future of news? Most likely the answer to that question is either online or on television or in app, but is newsprint dead? No, and it doesn’t look it will be for a few years yet. However, it’s survival for any length of time is predicated on its ability to adapt and work alongside new media. ‘Pay walls’ will stem the tide, as will online ad revenue, but the newspaper shouldn’t become a museum piece: if anything it should become the place to find long form journalism, in-depth analysis and articles that do not require immediate consumption. We are in a period of transition where online is king but cannot support itself without print, where news is immediate and all consuming yet apps are antiquated and websites unwieldy. As one form of news, the paper, slowly dies, we have yet to see its true successor, which is going to make the next decade very interesting and hopefully very experimental.
Daniel W. Raper and Natalie Carlin
