Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

I'm beginning to wonder whether the end result is not going to be that Google and other Internet companies wind up buying the newspapers. After all, they're the only ones making money from them.

xpost true - that reminds me of a newsquest paper in london that ran the edition after september 11 with an advert for "twin towers language college".

how is google making money from newspapers, ZZ?

Huff Post hires Washington Post editor to head new investigations unit

Nothing has changed! The written word—the love of it and the power of the written word—it hasn’t changed. It’s a matter of fostering it, fertilizing it, not giving up on it, and having faith. Don’t get down. I actually have established an e-mail address, degg✧✧✧@826natio✧✧✧.o✧✧—if you want to take it down—if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying (the next issue of McSweeney’s will be a newspaper—we’re going to prove that it can make it. It comes out in September). If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong.

Dave Eggers will prove you wrong

What a bag of dicks.

There is that.

The fate of The Observer hangs in the balance...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6736037.ece

And given the size of losses reported in that article, the future of The Guardian must seem a bit shaky too...

some real dick comments on that article.

this would be such a disaster - no omm, review or food monthly. hope something saves it.

Separate thread here now (although there's probably not a great deal else to say just yet, is there?)

The Observer RIP (possibly)

no omm, review or food monthly

Shamefully, I thought this was sarcasm when I first read it. I guess I expect everyone to be as cynical about newspapers as me.

the future of The Guardian must seem a bit shaky too

Er, yes, what with it being a newspaper and everything :)

no, i love all those sections! (though i know they get a bad rap on here)

a bit of good news for uk journalism. if i won the lottery i would do something like this. as it is, i might just beg them for a job instead:

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=43986

Fuck yes, tremendously good news. All the best to them with that.

My only problem is here:

Its aim is to dig out - and then sell - the stories

Who do they plan to sell to, who will buy, and -- most important of all -- what will they do with the stories once they've bought them? If they put together (say) broadcast packages to be aired uncut, great; however, at what point do they relinquish editorial control?

Still. You're right: fundamentally excellent news. For once.

yeah, i dunno. the american models (centre of public integrity, propublica) are all for free distribution but this has much less start-up funding. although i hope they will get more eventually. weirdly you can't donate even if you want to at the moment!

i suspect the idea is that they will sell to the "quality" press/panorama etc, but they're offering news orgs the chance to avoid the risk and expense of a failed investigation - papers will still shell out for a guaranteed tale as the expenses story showed. as for editorial control - i dunno, they could sort out a standard contract to have copy approval?

i dunno, they could sort out a standard contract to have copy approval?

Depends on how forward-thinking the buyer is. There's no precedent, and that sort of thing is anathema to most editors ...

... but desperate times call for desperate measures, and if you're dealing with top-flight hacks who are doing all your investigative legwork for you, then why the bloody hell not, eh?

One to watch with tremendous interest, I think.

do papers not want in-depth investigative reporting? i presumed the only real barrier to it was a lack of budget, rather than editors not wishing to publish it?

Er, I meant "copy approval" is anathema to most editors.

well, if you think of the bureau as more like a star freelance contributor rather than, say, a pr company touting a story it wouldn't be that weird. it's normal for subs to call columnists etc to run any changes by them. maybe it's not really "copy approval" in the sense that the editor might still have the last word, but that sort of consultation is probably all they need.

it's normal for subs to call columnists etc to run any changes by them

Hahahah HAHAHAHAHAH ... yeh, right.

maybe it's not really "copy approval" in the sense that the editor might still have the last word

See, there are some editors who -- if I was the agency in question -- I really, really wouldn't want having anything like the last word. But then I guess that's down to them: they have to decide if there are some editors/papers they just won't deal with.

well, all i can say is i'm glad you don't handle giles coren's copy.

Oh, me too! And I'm sure he is as well:

Sub-editors: how can I avoid killing them?

Actually: I have a soft spot for Coren, and when I was the (award-winning) production editor of a (multiple-award-winning) newspaper magazine, I really went out of my way to build constructive dialogue with all the regular writers -- not to mention some of the one-offs; Louise Wener, I remember, was a joy to work with! -- because some of them had bled every single beautiful word. Sadly, in just five or six short years, the entire landscape has changed to the extent that I think such practices would now be frowned upon and end up with me getting my arse whipped about not getting shit done quickly enough.

(The above is Reason #243 why I'm extricating myself from journalism.)

http://www.markpack.org.uk/the-future-of-newspapers-as-it-looked-in-1994/

those folding instructions are wtf. assume that bit's a joke?

burkesworks says:
4 August 2009 at 3:08 pm

Good old Graun; even in a parallel universe, its headlines contain spelling mistakes. There is no "c" in "dietitian".

Apparently the newspaper of the future looked a bit like a student magazine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8186701.stm

Murdoch signals end of free news

News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

May 2010: Murdoch calls for the shut-down of BBC News website, claiming 'anti-competitive'...

From the copy of Press Gazette in front of me, it's estimated that the revenue for a Times Online behind a subscription wall would come in at £3.6m a year. That's fuck all.

More importantly, why would anyone pay for an online subscription when they could just buy the paper? PAYG use for the website might be the way forward here but I still don't see it.

Aye but think of the income from The Sun. I mean who wouldn't pay for quality coverage like this

http://i29.tinypic.com/29dwkgl.jpg

Where will we go for our shonky Arshavin photoshops now?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/business/media/17ft.html?_r=2&ref=media

sounds like a good idea to me.

Great idea for business papers, yeah. But financial firms are a) rich and b) used to paying through the nose for useful information. Don't think that works as well with people happy with the Metro.

Did the crash mean we missed out on pouring one out for thelondonpaper? Not that I didn't get a good enough dose of that from 80% of my Facebook list but wh'ever.

Dulce et decorum est pro [NEWS INTERNATIONAL] mori

NewsInt irony LOL: report the Obs is to close, then be the company to shut down a paper. I have a friend there and it sucks he'll have to redouble his work effort. It also sucks (although proportionally much less) that I won't ride shotgun to do restaurant reviews any more, best plus-one scenario there is outside of free air travel.

I'm reliably informed that the Murdoch machine pursued that fake scoop in revenge for the NOTW wiretap scandal exposé.

people on twitter seriously concerned for the future of "em". no word yet from creator maria smedstad. will no one think of the twee middle class professionals living in shared houses?

xp "fake scoop" is pushing it a bit considering it was... factually accurate in all respects and leaked by observer execs?

is the observer about to close or not? do we know for certain if it was totally made up by news int?

Private Eye seemed to think they were being cagy about discussing it but definitely considering it, as far as I remember.

^I think PE is usually right about these things as they only take sides against the stupid, but with the caveat that there was one of those meetings where all options were trial-ballooned. The immense brand value of being the world's oldest Sunday paper will probably save the Obs from GMG hassle, not an advantage of other loss-making titles.

independent deathwatch: closed by xmas says (somewhat shit-stirring) second largest shareholder. losing £70,000 a day, apparently.

"There's no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom," said Denis O'Brien.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSLI32052720090918?sp=true

I'm amazed it's lasted as long as it has.

The Independent and presumably the IoS folding would presumably ensure the future of the Observer, what with GMG having the whole centre-left market to itself.

This Denis O'Brien character seems like a bit of a dick, tbh.

Michael Moore on why it's happening here, and not in Europe (true?):

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/09/michael_moore_o.php

not really a comparable situation because we have a basically "national" print media. local press is – mostly – dead here already.

and we are likely going to lose a national paper here, one of the four "qualities", quite soon.

Is it so hard to say "Independent"?

Haha considering how they can't make the Independent mean anything to people *here* how does Morbs knowing the name of the paper make any difference?

exactly