Nothing like a newspaper

The future of print media is under threat from the all-encompassing influence of the internet, but we shouldn't give up on it just yet

By James Killin

The newspaper is faltering. Jostling, rather than cooperating, with its online counterpart, the role of print media is being called into question. Circulation figures for ‘quality’ newspapers are dropping at a worrying rate. This past December alone, the Times sold an average of 41,727 fewer copies every day. The Daily Mail laid off 334 staff in the last three months of 2009. Brilliant, one could say; modern times and the economic downturn are doing some good by chiselling away at conservatism in the media. But the picture is more complicated. As the Observer is revamped, more than 100 editorial staff are being culled from Guardian News & Media, whose losses amount to around £100,000 daily. The number of issues for the very newspaper you are holding has dropped from 20 in 08/09 to 16 for 09/10, due to issues surrounding funding. It would seem that print journalism is no longer profitable. It is not an efficient business venture. But nor should it be.

Articles for last Friday’s Leeds Student were published online while the print paper was absent for the week. Some LUU electoral candidates for the editorship are proposing a greater focus on the paper’s website. LS is free in its print form; so too online. Theoretically, no money is lost; but rather a significant amount retained; when articles make the transition to the website as opposed to being published in print. Some money is made from the print edition’s advertising revenue, yet realistically the University Union is paying out its share and seeing an inconsequential financial return. A move online would, then, seem the cheaper and easier option.
Neither the student newspaper nor the national quality should, however, be determined by its tenability as a successful ‘product’. News, comment and opinion are not commodities, and should not be considered so. Unfortunately, we live in a world that does, and will continue to, revolve around money, exchange, and driving a profit. If there’s no money to be had in print journalism, then its value to a society hampered by recession and globalising via internet technology becomes questionable. Why should the social, cultural and political force of the print newspaper be undermined by falling, yet still profitable, sales figures? The answer is by no means a simple one.  
A prominent case in defence of the newspaper is its significance as a social phenomenon. Yet it clearly swims against the tide in today’s electronic Age of the Short Attention Span. The people who will read the news via brand new iPads, sitting in Starbucks with nothing but a latte and their pretensions for company, will not be the same who congregate and discuss that news. They’ll be the kind of people whose first response, if any, is to cast a disparaging judgement on Twitter. Political perspectives will cede to short bursts of personal indignation, as the culture of print media contorts itself into the solitary act of internet browsing.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has already expressed the desire to introduce fees to its online content, coming to the somewhat late realisation that giving something away for free doesn’t equate to effective capitalism. You can almost guarantee that certain premium content won’t appear in their print newspapers; they’ll have to incentivise the initiative somehow. While the average consumer pays for newspapers today, or pays a licence fee that he or she may watch televised news, no available information is explicitly retained for the purposes of exclusion. Newspaper editions that report momentous events do not cost more than those in which nothing of any relative significance is reported. Murdoch is not the dystopian Big Brother just yet; but we must be wary of News Corp’s vision all the same. The further that news becomes not just the subject but the object of business, the greater its propensity to be adapted to fit the needs of those who buy and sell it.  
Print media is still a stalwart of our culture, yet its future in this coming decade is uncertain. The traditionalists (and I count myself among them) will argue that the palpable bond between writer and reader is something that is exclusive to the newspaper that you hold in your hands; it is in the ink that rubs off on your fingers. Others will say that the future of journalism, like so many other things, lies in the infinite bounds of the internet: immediate, global, and for the moment, free. Even if you’re only reading 16 issues of Leeds Student next year, count yourself lucky that it isn’t fewer, and keep the faith.