Thursday, April 30, 2015

The Future of Newspapers - Shelley Thompson


Newspaper circulation is falling and newspapers are knocking into bankruptcy due to social and technological changes such as the availability of news on the Internet. Piet Bakker reminds us that newspapers are still important, as they are the only medium that primarily focuses on news and that newspapers are a key source of news for citizens.

What then happened is the newspaper’s transition onto digital platforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The online journalism connects the public to news organizations, democratize news reporting, and the news technologies have enabled citizens to contribute to news making.

Newspapers have been defined by the geography but on moving online they were not constrained by the same borders. The challenge was that journalists face more audiences with diverse needs and they have to meet up with these needs. Also, newspapers became aware that distant readers who would never see the print edition are seeing their online content.

Internet journalism offers new opportunities for interactivity. It makes people free to express their opinions beyond letter to the editor and vox pops. It offers readers to comment immediately on news and share them with friends and family. Publishing online allows breaking news, breaks space constraints, gives the opportunity to provide original source material. Linking to sources or citing is a matter of transparency and a matter of leaving the audience to decide which information to trust. Links to other sources are mobilizing information that enables citizens to participate in the democratic process.

Hyperlinking is another example on interactivity. Not long ago, The email conversations with journalists, was the height of interactivity. But now the definition of interactivity is changing, which posed a challenge for online newspapers to know how to keep updated with new technologies and how to use them. Enhanced forms of audiences participation provides the newspapers with deeper understanding of their audience and helps in the news decision-making process.

The journalistic profession is based on informing more than entertaining people. Journalists have to provide news of interest to the audience as well as news in the public interest and they have to resist the temptation to focus only on stories that attract huge number of hits on the website.

The “digital first” policy was announced by The Guardian and The Observer thereby they prioritize the online edition over the printed one which many newspapers are adopting these days to remain in a 24/7 news environment.

There are readers from outside the geographical area of the printed edition. Readers who were once living in a certain community are still loyal to that community’s newspapers. This enables newspapers to maintain relationship with loyal readers but still they have to serve their need the best.

In citizen journalism and user-generated content. Technology had enabled a proliferation of amateur-news making, which raised a question about who is more qualified to be counted as a journalist? There are few bloggers receive much more attention which invites a debate between the professional objectivity and personal subjectivity.

Newspapers have relied on advertising revenues. Circulation is a key element to determine how much newspapers will be charged for advertising space. But in online, there is no way to monetize the traffic to websites. Newspapers don’t charge users reading their content, so that a great number of people will be drawn to the site, which enable to levy a charge on advertisers. Newspapers thought that the online edition will open a new source of revenue, but it caused a decline in their print edition

Newspapers have to find sustainable way to make money or they will continue to cut staff and other expenses to reduce their costs, and in doing so, they sacrifice their content quality.


It is the time to rethink about what counts as newspapers journalism. The traditional emphasis on the print format misses an important point, which is whether readers read high-quality newspaper reporting. “Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word-paper. They’ve got be defined by the first word-news” - Arthur Jr.

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