There seems to be an impression amongst fans of digital media that printed newspapers are on the slow decline on the way to oblivion, and they could well be right. Without some radical changes, printed newspapers could be going the way of the town crier – around only as a historical oddity.
But what about radical change ? There are certainly possibilities there. The key is to look at the weaknesses of digital news :-
- Authority. Whilst some digital media news sources have some credibility, much of the time when you bump across some random blogger (like me!), you will have no idea on how credible they are – do they know what they are talking about ? I certainly don’t!
- Location. There are zillions (well a large number anyway) of places you can find digital news and it can take time to look for the news you are interested in. That is fine for a number of specialised areas – for instance my job includes an unwritten requirement to keep up to speed with what is happening in the IT industry, so I’ll spend a few hours a week searching. But for something less important to me – such as general European news, I’ll pass.
- Photography. Funnily enough given the quality of photo printing in most newspapers, this actually a weakness of digital news – whilst they all do photographs, they don’t do them well. Some of the most dramatic moments in history have had their stories told in newspapers with just a photo printed large. This does not happen often, but when it does it is a very powerful way of telling a news story (or starting off the story).
- You can’t read digital media in the bath. In the past, Sundays would often include a period of an hour or two sitting quietly reading the newspaper; whilst we can do that on the computer screen, this is rarely as relaxing as reading in the bath, at a quiet spot in the garden (or the local park), etc.
But what are the weaknesses of the printed newspaper ? Here we also have many :-
- You pay for the whole paper. Out of an ordinary newspaper, I am probably interested in at most 50% of it, and it seems rather irritating paying for that sports journalist who puts in some long story about a hockey tournament that I have never heard of, do not care about, and will not take the time to read even if you pay me for it. On the other hand, I might be interested in some random articles on things I would otherwise not read – for instance I am completely uninterested in car reviews, but there has been a recent review of a car “made” by Top Gear that I wouldn’t mind reading (for humour if nothing else).
- If you are lucky the newspaper you buy was put together by an editor whose interests closely match your own. Far more likely however is that there are news stories that did not get in (because you have “oddball” interests) because they are not seen as popular. I want to see news stories on what is happening in Europe, and local interest stories for Portsmouth, Winchester, Bangkok, and Sangüesa – a rather eclectic set of locations it may seem, but what they really are is individual.
- The quality of news photograph prints needs to be improved on. If you can print fashion photographs in a supplement properly why cannot the news stories also be printed properly ? Maybe that would cost more but I for one would be willing to pay extra for it.
- Some people want a daily newspaper and some want a weekly one. Actually some of us probably want a newspaper on some Sundays.
What we are looking at here is a newspaper suited to the individual requirements. Conventional newspaper printing and distribution won’t cope with that, but that does not mean it is impossible to provide. After all we have printing on demand for books, so why not newspapers ?
What I envisage is a web site where you start off by choosing something very conventional … “I want a copy of the Sunday Times delivered every Sunday”. From this unpromising start (and a start that is probably more expensive than the current way of getting the Sunday Times), you can add customisations :-
- Print on quality paper for extra cost.
- Remove any articles relating to Sport.
- Add articles relating to this set of locations.
- Add articles relating to IT, astrophysics, and archaeology.
- Reset the formatting to use body text font as “Liberation Serif” at 12 points, headlines as “Verdana” at 14 points, and make the pages four columns wide.
From there, you could add additional customisations to the point where the newspaper has little or no relation to the real world “Sunday Times”. Whilst the default preference would be to pay for a printed copy, you could opt for downloading a PDF (or any other suitable eBook format) at a cheaper cost if you wished.
I am sure that if some newspaper magnate were to read this, they would think “hell no, that’s just too expensive” or some other reason for not doing it. That is probably more an indication that their imagination is too limited.