Stakeholder

In my office hangs a framed copy of The Irish News celebrating the successful referendum on the Good Friday Agreement. At home my Dad kept for years the paper which detailed Tyrone’s historic all Ireland win of 2003. Nowhere have I, or anyone I know, saved a web copy of any newspaper story. This long winded introduction is a way of saying that after centuries of hard copy newspapers being sold all over the world, and having a particular resonance in Northern Ireland where each town is served by at least two weekly papers, news outlets suddenly, inexplicably and incorrectly, started giving their content away free of charge.

 

In the early days of the Internet the theory was that advertisers would pay to have brand names embedded into the news sites, allowing the newspapers to entice readers to log in without the hassle of either paying for the privilege or of handing over a pound or a dollar on a daily basis for a good old fashioned actual paper.

 

But what other industry would ever decide, purely because a new distribution method had come along, to give stuff away? Booksellers didn’t do it – although Amazon grabbed massive online market share through much reduced prices. Music and movie makers have fallen prey to illegal downloading of their latest output but they never willfully posted that new CD or movie in full and without a price. It was newspapers who led the charge in giving away their product. It is a bizarre business practice which dictates that the owner still pays staff, bears the costs of printing a paper and all of the associated administration and then simply posts the product online, and free of charge.

 

It was a practice which was not universally embraced in the beginning but the only to ensure it did not become commonplace was to have the sector act as one. As soon as one or more major title went free to air others followed suit. There were titles which resisted the grand giveaway – this one included. The Irish Times for years held out and maintained an online subscription service until a year or so ago. One notable exception to this trend is The Wall Street Journal which has successfully retained a subscription model, and has 1million paying online subscribers. But the narrative, particularly in the US has been of newspaper closures as titles such as The Kentucky Post and Halifax Daily News have in the last year published their final copies.

 

Locally the Irish News has steadfastly held onto its subscription model. The Belfast Telegraph, like much of the rest of the sector is free online and in fact has made a significant investment in its online offer. Unfortunately for them they probably did so in the wrong business climate and it is hard to see if the move has boosted the overall income or readership for that organ.

 

In business it is a very difficult thing to try and wrangle payment out of your customers for something which was previously free. Moving in the opposite direction is much more palatable for

customers but if advertisers aren’t coughing up to make up the difference then something has to give. This week the global impact of the drop off in advertising revenue crystallized when Australian media giant reported a drop of 53% in profits due mainly to the fall in advertising revenue.

 

But as the newspaper sector stumbled into this ill advised situation through a lack of co – ordinated action, only the opposite approach will put things right, on their terms. If say The New York Times switches to a subscription service while the LA Times remains free to air, too many readers will simply click from one to the other.

 

Alan Mutter an international consultant on new media ventures said this week “the reality is that unless a lot of people who produce news act in unison. To start charging for content, then individually they will fail.” The signs are that the news publishing world is finally starting to act. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has been meeting recently with a view to putting in place a new process whereby readers would pay for their news online. It is a process which will be watched interest across the globe. 

 

There is no doubt that new media has changed the way in which news is both made and disseminated. Byte size stories are now made and read on Twitter and Facebook while breaking news pops into your email as it happens. Blogs and forums allow for an immediate dialogue between broadcaster and reader, news subject and journalist in a way which has led to the emergence of ‘Citizen Journalist’. The ability to read the New York Times each morning while having coffee in Belfast is liberating but then again they never did get $2 per copy off me in the first place.