An Ofcom briefing last week chillingly spelled out the future for traditional newspapers with the fact that a growing percentage of advertising revenue is being lost to online.
This week the chill set in when the Tribute Newspaper Group in the US (which owns the renowned Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times) filed for protection from bankruptcy.
We know that newspapers are already struggling because of the twin effects of falling circulation and declining adspend. Clearly newspaper groups are going to be hit harder still by the global recession.
I like to think that famous newspaper titles, and the influence and importance of newspapers, both in reporting news and being the voice of the people, can survive. However the future could be the adoption of a digital strategy which migrates newspapers as we know them, with their heavy production costs, from paper to web based titles only.
But it is not only the recession which is driving change. Consumer behaviour, led by a revolution in digital technology has changed from the halcyon days of the Daily Mirror in the UK once selling more than 5 million copies a day. Now digital communications has resized daily life. The emergence of a single digital handheld device, effectively a pocket sized computer, means that people can have all the news – when they want it.
For communications professionals – wherever they operate geographically – the Tribune news is an important reminder of the need for multi-channel PR programmes, with digital likely to emerge as the new “substitute newspaper” in people’s lives.
Don’t believe it? Take a look at the BBC’s clever and powerful “do you remember where you were when….” TV campaign, evoking images of the Kennedy assassination, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, etc. It reminds people that all the news from the BBC news website (or newspaper websites for that matter), can be delivered right to the handheld device in their pocket.
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