It doesn’t take a genius to work out why less people are buying newspapers. Why pay for a newspaper when you can get it on your phone or tablet for free? The idea that print newspapers would die out has been around for ages. I remember my Dad, who worked delivering newspapers for News International, predicting about 8 years ago that newspapers would die out in 5 years time. They didn’t, but he still regularly tells me that time is nearly up on print. Over the week I’ve spent at the YJA Summer School I’ve heard a lot about the end of print, but how far off is it and will it happen at all?
At the invention of the television was claimed to have put the radio in jeopardy. Both inventions are still widely used today, so the invention of the tablet/kindle/phone (delete where appropriate) to read the news won’t end print journalism.
One place where print newspapers will always be needed is where I’m writing this article, the tube. Right now both men sitting next to me on my Piccadilly line train home have copies of the Evening Standard out. The shift from in price from the Evening Standard that made it a free newspaper has done wonders for its readership. It may not make the most money, but I think that it is a good paper. As the idea of using your phone on the tube or bus has grown, the articles in the Evening Standard have good better, because they need to hold readers so they can make their money through advertising. Companies pay for an advert on the 14th page of the paper expecting the reader to get there. If many readers don’t, then the advert money is just a wasted investment.
In the world above ground, print journalism looks to be on the ropes. That’s why journalists have to try and add something else to those papers to make people continually buy it. The daily flood of supplements and vouchers are something that newspapers have tried, and in some cases they seem to be the reason that they are surviving. Newspapers, which were once the home of advertising, are now having to advertise themselves through television and online.
These are all things that newspapers have done to keep going, but will they? I think they will. For many, there is a special feeling about buying and reading a print newspaper, the same applies for books. These people are the lifeblood of newspapers and as there are less and less of these people the question of commercial
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