How to save the newspaper from extinction? This was, predictably, the topic on every journalist’s lips at a Soho soiree hosted by The Guardian last night. It’s a difficult question to answer at the best of times, let alone when Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is doing the asking.
Rusbridger: definitely not a dodo
“Let’s say, hypothetically, I’m the editor of The Scotsman,” says Rusbridger, “a daily with a readership of almost 200,000, and I say ‘We’re closing the newspaper! We’re going online! How would you convince our readers that this is a good idea?”
(At the risk of offending Mr Rusbridger I’d better make it clear I’m paraphrasing massively here. There are some situations when a notepad is just plain inappropriate.)
My friend Nathan gives a quick response, which I fail to hear over the rabble of conversation from the various media-types lapping up the free wine.
“Terrible idea,” cries Rusbridger. “You’re fired!” (I think he has been watching too many episodes of The Apprentice.)
“What do you think?” he says, examining me from behind the round-rimmed glasses which lend him an uncanny resemblance to how Harry Potter might look had he spent the last 30 years in journalism instead of going to wizard school.
“I think even with the onslaught of online journalism there will always be a place for print media,” I say. “There are too many homes without internet access for newsrooms to stage a full-scale online revolution, too many old people who want to locate their nearest jumble sale but think an Apple Mac is the latest offering from Mr Kipling.
“People may check the headlines on the internet at work but they still want something tactile to read on the tube on their way home.”
It’s not that I don’t think online media is fantastic – really, who can argue with it? But I started out in journalism on a fantastic regional newspaper in Plymouth, where one woman told me how she always read The Herald from cover to cover, starting from the back and working her way through to the front to save the “best bits” until last. You can’t do that on a website.
Rusbridger disagrees. And who can blame him? After all, he’s better placed than most to predict the impact that falling circulations, the internet and the coming recession will have on the newspaper industry as a whole. “Change is coming,” he says. “Nobody knows exactly when it’s going to happen – it could be in the next 50 years; it could be in the next ten. But one thing’s for certain – newspapers as you and I know them will not be around for much longer.”
With that he makes his excuses and leaves, presumably unimpressed by the suggestions of Nathan and I to save the world of print media, leaving me with a vague sensation of awe and the urge for another one of those delectable little wild mushroom canapés…
Soho soiree? Wild Mushroom canapes? Intimate chats with Alan Rusbridger? Anyone would think your views on the future of newspapers are a thinly veiled boast about your media schmoozing.
Seriously, I think you’re right that newspapers will be sold for a long time yet. They’ll just have to find a way of making money out of their online operations so they can pay for it because circulations are falling everywhere.
Yeah, you tell him Abby! Could you also go and tell that to Greenslade, please?
Interestingly Roy has noted that the Scotsman, the example used by Rusbridger, has a website that doesn’t exactly set the world alight…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2008/nov/19/scotland-pressandpublishing
Full marks for sticking up for print Abby! However, I get the feeling newspapers are going to change drastically.
If we’re honest, would we read something tactile that has one story for everyone ten adverts, just for the sake of having paper? Or will we move, however grudgingly, into the online realm and the myriad reading media it will come to offer, as we have done from 8 track to tape to cd to mp3?
I’d always wondered who Rusbridger reminded me of… fantastic Harry Potter description Abby! I’m inclined to agree with you in your defence of print, too. What I envisage is that quality newspapers like The Guardian will lose any designs on breaking news (the coverage of Mumbai has shown just how difficult it is for print media to keep up with the facts and figures), and instead will increasingly function as a digest of the best analysis, comment and opinion (though probably not on a daily basis). This is something which doesn’t really fit within the online model but which (I think) there is still an appetite for.
But then, Rusbridger is probably a little more qualified to comment than me. I guess only time will tell.