Picture the scene; it’s the last Saturday of the month and you’ve just been paid. You’re off to Tesco to do your weekly shop, list in hand and trolley in tow. What is the first thing on that list? Coincidentally, it’ll more than likely be the first thing you see as you pass through the automatic doors. Not the fruit and veg or the tobacco counter, but the paper stands; laden with the weekend editions of every major name in the press.
You might argue that Saturday may b
ecome the only day in the week you will be able to buy a newspaper, because sales are falling dramatically. The once rock solid, celebrated and reliable institution that is the British newspaper is fading into the mire, to be replaced as a result of the internet and new media smug such as smart phones and i-pads to name a couple.
The recession is part of the reason why newspapers are struggling. Larger newsrooms are becoming smaller, with many jobs that have been previously undertaken by a several skilled journalists being merged together to be undertaken by one or two employees. Many of the local papers are relying heavily on sponsored articles from local businesses to fill space, meaning more advertising revenue for the paper just to stay afloat. However, as long as there is a dedicated readership to local news, I see no reason why these papers cannot continue.
But why take the time to pay for a newspaper when you can simply download or stream news from the web without paying a penny?
A lot can be said for newspapers being a statement of ‘identity’, the two polar examples being the over righteous, free and liberty loving Guardian and the racist, homophobic, narrow minded and misinformed ‘asylum seekers are the same as illegal immigrants’ Daily Mail and it’s little bitch sister The Express. As soon as you hand the money over the counter and take your paper you are making a statement of identity, and being the vain individuals we all are we like to show this off. Can’t really do that in front of a monitor.
So why is the circulation of papers in such decline? You cannot solely attribute this to the recession, because newspaper sales have been dropping for a long time before the credit crunch. You may argue that since the demographic of the country is getting older, newspapers are now really only being bought by the older generation while younger people will be streaming news from online sources and their mobile phones.
Talking to the Independent, the BBC’s head of news, Helen Boaden said:
“...you have got a lot of people who are traditional newspaper readers who will continue the habit they have had over a lifetime. The challenge is how to keep those people happy whilst bringing in a new audience of people who have infinite amounts of choice in terms of where they get their information.”
She is saying that news gathering is habitual and applicable to one’s environment. If an adolescent spends most of their time during the day sat gaming and masturbating in front of a PC, then the chances are they will be satisfying their news appetites from online sources. Yet older people have always taken the time to buy a newspaper every day, so why would that need to change?
However, while she is suggesting we satisfy the needs for a new generation of consumers through more online and digital mediums of publishing news, we need to keep the older generations happy. But surely if we focus on bringing news to a new generation of people via digital means, then once the older generation have gone newspapers will become obsolete anyway since our younger generation have gotten into the habit of acquiring news through online sources?
Because of this, newspapers are considering shifting more of their content online to attract younger readers. Of course, the issue is ‘how do we make money from this?’
Darth Murdoch has already set the wheels in motion to start charging for all of his online content, such as The Times and News of the World. Readers would be expected to subscribe to these sites in order to read so called ‘quality journalism’(News of the World, really?!). He argues that: “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free.” While this will no doubt get up the noses of many readers, you have to wonder whether this may become the only way to keep a major news organisation afloat.
News Corp, owned by Murdoch, had suffered a massive £2 billion net loss in the financial year up until June two years ago, prior to charging for online news. A significant plummet in commercial revenue was partly to blame, again raising the question as to why fewer people are buying newspapers. Of course, there would need to be significant litigation in place to prevent the copying of news articles and photographs. Why bother paying for these when they have been published on another site, free of charge?
I should mention at this point, however, that there are two exceptions to the recent trend. In figures published a while back by ABC, The Daily Mail and The Star are examples where paper sales have slowly increased.
The Star has now become the cheapest national daily, with a cover price of only 20p. Sales rose year on year and the figures for last December (just after News Corps financial loss announcement) were up 8% to nearly 785,000 copies sold. An increase in advertising and an extraordinarily low price for the paper has proved successful. However The Star would probably be the only paper that could get away with a massive price drop since they are essentially informative comics that also act as low cost convergence of soft porn and toilet paper.
The Daily Mail is the other enigma. The fascist shits who run it managed an incredible circulation figure across the same time period of nearly 2,115,000 units. Regardless of how I personally feel about the newspaper, you have to admire them for how they keep such a high readership despite the financial crisis hitting the industry. You might agree that the newspaper is the most militant of all national dailies; the language and extraordinarily right wing bias this paper has could explain why it has such a loyal readership. Since most of the people reading the Mail have done so most of their lives and treat it as a modern day imperialist bible, why jump ship now?
The success of free newspapers may also have something to do with the decline of the major dailies. Steve Auckland, of the Press Association said: “If you look at the growth of free newspapers and put that on top of the decline of paid-fors I think we are still ahead of the game. There's a hell of a lot more people reading newspapers in London than there were going back even two months.” Commenting on the freebie London paper, The Metro, he says: “That's where Metro has been successful, it's a young, urban, travelling audience and it's fulfilling a need for that audience at that place and time. We don't want older readers and we don't want young kids.”
He also talks about the success of The Daily Mail and attributes its success to its right wing bias as I have mentioned before: “The ones that have got a clear definition as to what their market is are the ones that will survive. Love it or like it the Daily Mail has a very strong market, it has a right-wing bias and it really targets that quite heavily. It's getting that niche and really working it.”
So perhaps the success of newspapers lie in the audiences they are targeting. The magazine industry has not been hit as hard as newspapers, and perhaps this is because every magazine targets a niche in the market; a small and dedicated following that will do anything to get there fix on whatever interests them. Since newspapers have traditionally relied on political bias as their hook for audiences, and will inevitably continue to do so, maybe a subtle shift in how the news and the sort of news these papers deliver is the key to newspapers’ survival?
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