Title: How technology affect the development of print journalism in
America and the rest of the world
1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
2.1 Communication Technology and
Print Journalism
2.2 Print Journalism Industry In
America
3. Historical Perspective
3.1 America In The Past
3.2 Print Journalism Before 1990s
3.3 History Of American Print
Journalism
4. Present Situation
4.1 News Media Business Trend
4.2 Transition To The Web
4.3 Current State of American Print
Journalism Industry
4.4 Case Study: New York Times
5. Conclusion
6. Future Considerations
7. Bibliography
Executive Summary
With the rise of digital technology, dissemination
of news and news media changed tremendously in the last few years. This change
brought about trepidations regarding the role of journalists and the quality of
information presented. In turn, there have been alterations made to the
motivations of professional news organizations. Despite the increased platforms
for the dissemination of information, the content provided has been hallowed
out. As people of all age are living much of their media life online,
advertising revenue is making a shift towards online news while classified
advertising are migrating from print newspapers to the web. Large reductions
are made to the number of staff and amount of salary provided by newspaper
corporations. With dwindling percentage of readers, many of the newspapers
corporations are struggling to break even or maintain a single digit profit.
There have been a growing number of talented and experienced journalists
of a certain age, facing difficulty in finding an avenue to report news.
This report examines the impact
of massive technological developments and emerging popularity of new media, on
the progress of print journalism on the global scale; with focus placed on
newspaper organizations from United States of America (USA). In this case,
print journalism refers to the practice of reporting, photographing, or editing news stories for newspapers
or magazines. The advancement in technology allows an instantaneous and
convenient access to a wide spectrum of information. Never in the history of
mankind has so much of news been so easily accessible and retrievable in so
many ways. As society becomes increasingly reliant on the use of new media,
there have been irrevocable changes made to the broadcast of news, while the
presence of professional news organization becomes increasingly insignificant. In
America, the newspaper industry becomes one of the fastest-shrinking industries
while online publishing industries experience a relative increment in market
share.
This report will provide a
broad landscape on the current state of the print industry on the global scale
and in America. With a chronological structure, the report will deliver a
historical perspective on the print industry before 1990s, where new media was
relatively undeveloped and the use of traditional media was widespread. The
report will then cover the present situation faced by modern publication
bodies. Lastly, conclusion will be made before an analysis on the future of
print industry, where possible challenges and solutions will be brought up.
Introduction
2.1 Communication
Technology and Print Journalism
Communication
refers to the sharing of information and ideas. The advancements in
communication technology facilitate the distribution of knowledge and news. With
the ever-changing attribute of technology, communication technology of today
experience rapid evolution since the invention of first practical telephone by
Alexander Graham Bell on 1897. The use of digital communication is prevalent as
the line separating reality and virtual world starts to blur. The use of
emails, one of the initial modes of digital communication is beginning to be
displaced. The use of digital communication allows instantaneous and convenient
exchange, hence redefining methods of communication. The speed and quantity of
communication created a qualitatively different communication medium- instead
of sending information less often, less information is sent more often. The
amalgamation of internet and communication allow almost immediate reachability,
especially with the invention of smartphones and tablets. The rapid spread of
these gadgets on a global scale significantly influences the dissemination of
information and news, which undeniably impact the progress of print journalism.
The presence of newspapers and magazines are dwindling, as society
becomes increasingly technological driven. Many say that the ultimate demise of
the daily paper will occur in a matter of time. The circulation of newspaper is
dropping while display and classified advertising revenue dries up. The
industry experienced unprecedented wave of layoffs as various publication firms
are forced into bankruptcy. It is important for the various professional news
organizations to adapt to the technological developments in order to maintain
sustainable business. As more people consume news online, news
organizations face the dilemma of reallocating resources to attract new readers
and viewers while maintaining the existing, and usually aging, print or
broadcast audiences. However, online revenues for most news media still make up a small
fraction of the total income from traditional print or broadcast. Generally, newspaper firms typically generate
10 percent or less of total revenues from online operations (although the Los
Angeles Times reported in late 2008 that online income was enough to pay for the
paper's entire print and online news staffs). Similarly, magazines spawn less than 10
percent of their revenue from their digital operations according to an Advertising Age
survey of 2008 revenues. As such, financial viability for newspapers and
most magazines, at least for now, requires retaining as many existing print
readers as possible. At the same time, it is important to note the existing
trend: consumers, especially
the younger generation, access the Internet in order to receive news updates.
2.2 Print
Journalism Industry in America
According to the Newspaper Association of America’s research, almost 50
million Americans purchase a newspaper and nearly 117million read one daily.
Despite millions of readers, it is a widely known fact that the newspaper
industry in America is declining at an alarming rate. Today, the revenue of
American newspaper industry, as a whole, is smaller when compared to the
revenue generated by Google. The
future of newspapers has been widely debated as the industry faced soaring newsprint prices,
slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising and precipitous
drops in circulation. In recent years the number of newspapers slated for closure, bankruptcy or severe cutbacks has
risen, where the industry has shed a fifth of its journalists since 2001. Revenue has plunged while competition
from internet media has squeezed older print publishers. Meanwhile, there are nearly 10,000
different magazines available in
the U.S. today.
The revenue streams that newspapers counted
on to subsidize their product have changed irrevocably: in 2008, according to a
study by the Pew Research Center,
more people in the United States got their news for free on the internet than
paid for it by buying a newspaper or magazine. "With newspapers entering
bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies
that own them, but also the news itself," observed writer David Carr of The New York Times in a January 2009 column. As shown by
the figure above, the newspaper industry have shed a larger percentage of jobs
than any other industry in America over the past five years, losing more than
28 percent of its jobs during that time.
Historical Perspective
3.1
America In The
Past
Leaving newspapers free to perform this function
was considered significant enough by the first Congress that they specifically
protected it in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
ratified in 1791, which, among its other guarantors of free expression,
prohibits Congress from passing any law "abridging the freedom...of the
press." In 1787 Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence,
wrote, "...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
3.2 Print Journalism
Before 1990s
The 1990s is often considered the true dawn of the Information Age. Though info-age technologies predate the 1980s, it was
not until the late 1980s and the 1990s that they became widely used by the
general public.
The
invention of the movable
type printing
press by Johannes
Gutenberg in 1456, led to the wide dissemination of printed. The
earliest newspaper to date is published
in the 17th century Europe when printed periodicals began rapidly to replace the practice of hand-writing newssheets.
During the 17th century, the early newspaper featured
items from all over Europe and occasionally America or Asia. But with very few
exceptions (mostly in Holland), they never reported any news about the country
in which they were printed. Print shops were tightly regulated; in most countries
they required government licenses to print; and they could be quickly shut down
if they printed anything that offended the authorities. Europe's rulers allowed
them to print newspapers as long as these papers did not presume to discuss any
local or national issues or events.
The first major change in this arrangement came in the years
before the outbreak of the English Civil War. As Parliament, under the
leadership of Oliver Cromwell, struggled with King Charles I, national news
suddenly assumed a new importance, and newspapers, liberated by the breakdown
in the king's authority, began to feel free enough to discuss it. The first
English newspaper to attempt to report on national news was a sedate little
weekly entitled, The Heads of Severall Proceedings In This Present Parliament,
which appeared in November 1641. This paper soon had a number of competitors.
The idea of freedom of the press was articulated with great
eloquence in England 1644 by John Milton in his Areopagitica, which, however,
was concerned primarily with books and took little notice of these scruffy,
little weekly newspapers. Nevertheless, these newspapers, among the first in
the world to escape government control, were conducting an important experiment
in what a free press might do.
By the early 19th century, many cities in Europe,
as well as North and South America, published newspaper-type publications
though not all of them developed in the same way; content was vastly shaped by
regional and cultural preferences. Advances in printing technology related to
the Industrial Revolution enabled newspapers to become an even
more widely circulated means of communication. In 1814, The
Times (London) acquired a
printing press capable of making 1,100 impressions per minute. It was soon
adapted to print on both sides of a page at once. This innovation made
newspapers cheaper and thus available to a larger part of the population.
3.3 History Of American Print Journalism
The history of American newspapers begins in the early 18th century with the publication of the first colonial newspapers. Interestingly enough, the history of journalism in America is inextricably intertwined with the history of the country itself. The first newspaper in the American colonies - Benjamin Harris's Public Occurrences both Foreign and Domestic - was published in 1690 but immediately shut down for not having a required license. Harris' newspaper employed an early form of reader participation. The paper was printed on three sheets of stationery-size paper and the fourth page was left blank so that readers could add their own news, and then pass it on to someone else.
 |
| Growth Of Newspaper Over The Years |
Many newspapers of the time were not objective or neutral in
tone like the modern papers published. Rather, they were fiercely partisan
publications that editorialized against the tyranny of the British government,
which in turn did its best to crack down on the press.
The 1800s
There
were already several hundred newspapers in the U.S. by 1800, and that number
would grow dramatically as the century wore on. Early on, papers were still
very political and partisan in tone, but gradually they started to become more
than simply mouthpieces for their publishers. Newspapers were also growing as an industry. In 1833 Benjamin Day opened the New York Sun and created the "Penny Press." Day's cheap papers, filled with sensational content and aimed at a working class audience, were a huge hit. With huge increases in circulation and larger printing presses to meet the demand, newspapers became a mass medium. This period also saw the establishment of more prestigious newspapers that had begun to incorporate the kinds of journalistic standards that we know today. One such paper, started in 1851 by George Jones and Henry Raymond, made a point of featuring quality reporting and writing. The named paper refers to The New York Daily Times, which later became The New York Times. By 1990, the United States had 1,611 general-circulation daily newspapers - 14 percent fewer than it had in 1940, before the arrival of television.
Present Situation
4.1
News Media
Business Trend
With the news industry struggling to find new revenue streams that can reshape their broken business model, efforts are made to monetize news media. This will also include content that is guided more than ever by the audience and revenue generated by adverts
Social Media Monetization
With the advancement in digital technology, emerging business models now includes social media monetization. As advertisers become increasingly comfortable and receptive with advertising in social media, newspaper publication firms are now making a transition to the web. Some news organizations have already experimented with social ads. Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, claimed to have sparked mixed reactions from followers, after venturing to twitter ads. The Huffington Post is also providing sale of tweets to advertisers.
Revenue beyond Advertising
Instead of diving into social capital, it is also important for news organizations to diversify their source of revenue. Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism program at Birmingham City University, said in 2010, news organizations need to at least adapt to the "measurability, customizability and personalization of advertising."
Some news organizations are already beginning to reshape their structures in a way that erases the line between advertising and editorial division. In fact, online advertising is not predicted to overtake the market share of newspapers until 2015. Perhaps rethinking advertising altogether and looking for additional services, value, or products to sell may be a new approach to remain sustainable in the future.
Fold of Publication Corporations
The closing down of the very publication that covers the print industry, Editor & Publisher, display clear indication of the state of news media organisation today. Though advertising is facing stabilization, budgets cuts are made towards print publications. As such, more print publications are forced into bankruptcy or make direct transition to the web- running their business online-only. However, at the same time, it is important to note that the closing down of some publications allow other new publication to tap on the market share. In 2009, there were 428 magazines that stopped publishing, while 275 new ones launched. Those that make it through this downturn will be poised to rebuild leaner and meaner –- investing in the future of digital news rather than simply hoping it fades away like a bad trend.
Growth in Local and Community Models
The fall in market share forces many traditional and regional news organization’s to face cutbacks in staff, and in some cases closures. As such, local and community-based models and start-ups will look to fill the gap in content. In fact, some local publication models have done relatively well in comparison to professional news organizations. This is made evident by the launch of many various local online news start-ups from the big Texas Tribune to the smaller Oakland Local, often relying on grants or funding from wealthy donors. Oakland Local, which is a blend of building community with a focus on using technology to gather and report news experience great success. The highly entrepreneurial and community-driven with tech expertise attribute of this website allow steady increase in readers and consumers.
Furthermore, there is a growth in local advertising. Borrell Associates predicts growth in local online ad. This growth will continue in the near future. Even large news organizations like CNN taps on this potential market by investing money into local aggregator content sites.
Fall in price wall
With the availability of the Internet, various information of every kind is now available with a mere click on the search engine. As such, news organizations that implemented the idea of putting up pay walls experience a decrement in traffic. This is made evident when Newsday implement a price tag to their information: Unique visitors declined just 21% from October (the pay wall went up October 28) to November. But page views declined more, dropping 34%. The readers that do end up paying for content online will be loyal and few.
According to Gina Chen, a Ph. D. communications student at Syracuse and blogger on the news industry, news organizations that put up pay walls may flounder and die and those that don’t will be forced to innovate new ways to make money. The future for news organizations will have less to do with relevant and up-to-date news. Instead, information is filtered and selectively published to feed consumer demand. This in turn, creates a sense of community among the readers.
4.2 Transition To The Web
Newspaper circulation has been in decline for
many years, but the drop accelerated in 2007 and even more rapidly through the
recession. While the Internet is widely cited for the drop-off, the lower
circulation figures have resulted in part from a conscious decision by
publishers to focus on the most loyal and profitable readers, often raising prices
and limiting discounts. The Web is now the sole distribution channel for newspapers that can no
longer afford to publish hard copy and those that don’t follow the best
practices of social media may see their brands marginalized in cyberspace as
well.
Newspaper
Site
While print journalism continues to experience marginal
reduction in market share, newspaper readership continues to thrive. In order
to reach out to the wider audience base, various newspaper publication firms
set up an online website which provides online users with news and latest
information at zero charges. The rest of the quality sector has grown immensely
thanks to the internet. More people now read The Guardian online than buy the
newspaper, with the online audience adding 119 per cent to the monthly
readership. The Daily Telegraph's audience has grown by 97.5 per cent with the
addition of its website readers and The Independent's by 70.2 per cent. Websites increased the total UK audience of the quality press
by 49 per cent by bringing in readers that do not read the print products.
Unlike the traditional media, online websites allow professional news
organisations to provide credible and original information instantaneously with
convenience and easy access on the reader’s part.
Social Media Frenzy
Social media has changed journalism. Social journalism, an extension of those practices, is now an essential component of any news organization’s strategy.
Citizen journalists post photos of fast-breaking events, and cover stories from a different angle than legacy news organizations, but it’s the premeditated watchdog or advocacy role that defines a social journalist. Another
factor is the network effect:
people using social media to communicate and collaboratively produce content.
Editors are still important, but the pieces are shaped by crowd dynamics and
the velocity of information. For journalists and news organizations, social
networks provide an opportunity for connecting with people, distributing news
stories and complementing news coverage with feeds from social media.
Professional news organizations can now create pages on social networks, such
as a fan page on Facebook. This page act as a platform for these organisations
to alert readers to important news stories the news organization has published
or post other items of interest to its followers. In fact, news firms can set
up their own social networks, to facilitate a sense of community which
encourages consumer loyalty and brand devotion among readers. Social networks
are great for generating conversations among people about stories. Many news
media have found that the volume of reader comments on a story posted on
Facebook can exceed comments posted on the news organization's website. In
addition, reporters can join the networks formed on social media, providing a
platform for interaction. As such, reporters can converse with readers and showcase
their stories thus developing personal brands their written work.
There is marginal increase in the number of
consumers feeding the current information and news through the use of social
networks. Only 27 percent of American adults regularly or sometimes get news or
news headlines through social networking sites, according to a report by the Pew Research
Center released in September 2011. The number increased
to 38 percent for people fewer than 30. Social networks are driving an increasing
percentage of the traffic to news sites, beginning
to rival search engines like Google as sources of referrals to news stories. Facebook reported that the average media
site saw referral traffic from Facebook more than double in 2010. News websites
got 9 percent of their traffic from social media such as Facebook and Twitter
in 2011, about a 57 percent increase over 2009, according to the State of the News
Media 2012 report on digital news by the Pew Research
Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Some have even speculated that social networks
will supplant news websites as the place where people
get news. One online news site, Rockville Central in Maryland, decided in early
2011 to stop publication of its website and instead publish entirely
on a Facebook page.
Furthermore, the widespread use of social media
change the way news has been published. News organizations also need to do more
than just post links to stories on Facebook or services like Twitter. Instead
the postings need to be more informal and conversational, while providing
commentary on the news. Also, reader participation is encouraged as journalists
question readers and seeks suggestions for stories or story angles to pursue.
Adding to that, a quality photo to a posting also significantly increases
reader responses, such as likes or comments.
4.3
Current State of American Print
Journalism Industry
It is widely known that America's
newspapers are suffering from declining readership and circulation. In many cases, this is
occurring due to the availability of alternative forms of news and the changing
habits of Americans. Despite the growing population and affluence of the United
States, many newspapers continue to suffer from declining or stagnant
circulation. In 2000, daily newspaper circulation reached a low of 0.20
newspapers per capita, down from 0.30 in 1970. Fierce competition from cable
channels, network television, radio, and the Internet continues to cut into
newspapers' market share and circulation. Although advertising revenues continue
to grow, their growth has generally been slow. The boom years of the 1990s
reversed this trend to some extent, but the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the United States accelerated an already-existing economic slowdown
and led to major declines in ad lineage and advertising revenues across the
country. One positive result of the attacks, and the subsequent military
response to the attacks by the United States, has been an increase in
circulation, in both long-term subscriptions and daily single-copy sales.
However, even this interest-driven increase was slowing as of the summer of
2002.The general trend of the United States press over most of the twentieth
century was toward consolidation, chain or corporate ownership, and newspaper
monopolies in most towns and cities. In 2001, only 49 U.S. cities had competing
daily newspapers. Of those 49 cities, 16 had two nominally competitive
newspapers owned by the same company. Another 12 cities had competing
newspapers published under joint operating agreements, an exemption to
antitrust laws allowing two struggling newspapers to combine all operations
outside their respective newsrooms. Only 21 U.S. cities, therefore, had true
competition among daily newspapers. Of those cities, five—Tucson, Los Angeles, Chicago,
New York and Seattle—had more than two competing daily newspapers, leaving 16
cities with only two competing newspapers. This number represents a massive
decline from newspapers' height in the late nineteenth century, when nearly
every rural town and county seat might have had two or three competing daily
and weekly papers, and larger cities might have had up to 20 or 30 papers.The
number of newspapers in the United States has continued to shrink, even as the
country has experienced substantial growth in population, affluence, and
literacy.
The
Internet and the prevalence of free news sites, including newspaper sites, are
often credited with playing a major role in the problems experienced by the
newspaper industry. Research clearly shows that America's newspapers are
generally embracing the Internet and are using new and improving Web tools to
their advantage.
The United States leads the world both in the number and in the
diversity of Internet news sites operated in any country. Many newspapers, excluding
television and radio stations, operate Internet sites that have the capability
of providing streaming video and audio to consumers, but many of those
consumers still have Internet access only through a modem, which has a
relatively slow connection speed. The growth of broadband connections to the
Internet, either through digital subscriber lines or through cable connections,
has been slowed by the recession and needs to pick up speed before technical
innovations can be used to their full advantage by media organizations.
In the
early days of the Internet, many newspapers experimented with a revenue model
that asked readers to subscribe to a site to get access privileges. For the
most part, newspapers quickly dropped that idea when they realized that the
same information many people were interested in was available for free on other
sites. Particularly with regard to national or breaking news, the existence of
even one site offering an Associated Press story for free was enough to draw
consumers away from a subscription site, and most newspapers simply cannot
offer enough unique local content to justify the price of a subscription.
However, there are few exceptions to this
trend. For example, The Wall Street
Journal 's Internet site, has
been able to continue charging a subscription fee because of its unique content
and the value that it holds for people interested in business and the stock
market. The site was also one of the first, and likely still one of the only,
online newspaper sites to turn a profit for the company that operates it. It is also worth noting that the site, unlike many
so-called "online newspapers," has its own editorial staff, including
reporters, columnists, and editors, who produce unique content for the Internet
that sometimes spills over into the printed Journal —unlike most newspaper sites, in which part of the
daily paper's content may get "shoveled" over to the Internet site,
but without any extra work or efforts to make the content more suited to the
Web.
The downfall of the subscription model left newspaper companies
somewhat at a loss for ways to create revenue online. Many publishers initially
balked at providing stories free online that people had to pay for in the print
edition. However, the growth of advertising on the Internet mitigated that
concern to an extent. Many publishers came to believe that the model for an
online site would end up looking more like a "shopper" newspaper,
which is thrown for free and makes its revenue solely from advertising, rather
than that of a standard subscription paper. The frustrating complication that
papers have confronted is a massive lack of success in coming up with a revenue
model for online advertising that takes into account both cost and the number
of "views" an advertisement gets. Ordinary papers, of course, charge
for ads on a relatively well organized basis, based on the number of
subscriptions they can legally claim. The theory is that each paper sold
translates into a certain number of people viewing an ad. Online advertisers,
by contrast, are unwilling to accept "page views" as evidence that an
ad has been viewed and have pushed for a "click-through" model for
pricing, for ads that direct a consumer to a company's Web site. The ultimate
end of this debate remains to be seen.
In addition, the growth of online classified ads has not been as
quick or lucrative as some newspapers could have hoped. Online classifieds were
immediately trumpeted as the most lucrative source of revenue newspapers could
hope to get, and publishers had visions of offering classified ad buyers access
to the world, instead of just a single city, with their buy. However, online
classifieds have begun to show some modest growth and have become especially
useful for people moving from one city to another. Some newspaper sites have
applied this model to their online archives, charging consumers a fee for
searching and downloading past content. These sites generally give users a
certain amount of content for free—basic stories, photo galleries, and breaking
news, for example. "Premuim" content, including streaming video and
audio, special columns or reports, and archives of columns, is then available
by subscription only.
The real problems that Internet newspapers have to overcome in the
future are partially technological, as with issues related to making Internet
publication an easy and quick process for even small newspapers, and partly
cultural.
4.4
Case Study
The New York Times (NYT)
is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously
published in New York City since 1851. The
New York Times has won 108 Pulitzer
Prizes, more
than any other news organization. Its
website is the most popular American newspaper website, receiving more than
30 million unique visitors per month.
Although the print version of the paper remains
the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States, it is the third
largest newspaper overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and its weekday circulation has fallen
since 1990 (as have other newspapers) to fewer than one million copies daily.
The New York Times has had a strong presence
on the Web since 1996, and has
been ranked one of the top Web sites. Accessing some articles requires
registration, though this could be bypassed in some cases through Times RSS feeds.
The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005. The domain nytimes.com attracted at least 146 million
visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. The
New York Times Web site
ranks 59th by number of unique visitors, with over 20 million unique
visitors in March 2009 making it the most visited newspaper site with more than
twice the number of unique visitors as the next most popular site. Also, as of May 2009, nytimes.com
produced 22 of the 50 most popular newspaper blogs.
In September
2005, the paper decided to begin subscription-based service for daily columns
in a program known as TimesSelect, which encompassed many
previously free columns. Until being discontinued two years later, TimesSelect cost $7.95 per month or $49.95 per
year, though it was free for
print copy subscribers and university students and faculty. In order to counter
the paid subscription of the paper, bloggers often repost TimesSelect material, and at least one site once compiled
links of reprinted material. On
September 17, 2007, The New York Times announced that it would stop charging
for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight the following day,
reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot
outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.
The New York Times was known for their flexibility to changing trends and
technological advancements. The Times Reader is a digital version of The
New York Times. This is the creation from the collaboration made between
the newspaper and Microsoft. Times
Reader takes the
principles of print journalism and applies them to the technique of online
reporting. Times Reader uses a series of technologies
developed by Microsoft and their Windows
Presentation Foundation team.
In 2008, The New York Times created an app for
the iPhone and iPod
touch which allowed users to
download articles to their mobile device enabling them to read the paper even
when they were unable to receive a signal. In April 2010, The
New York Times announced
it will begin publishing daily content through an iPad app. As
of October 2010, The New York Times iPad app is ad-supported and available
for free without a paid subscription, but translated into a subscription-based model in 2011. In 2010, the New York Times
also launched an App for Android smartphones.
The New York Times was also the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, Food
Import Folly by Persuasive Games. In addition The New York Times is in the process of
digitalising their old editions.
In order to reach out to wider consumer base in
the competitive and cut-throat industry, The New York Times introduced a Chinese-language news
site by June 2012. With content created by staff based in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong
Kong, cn.nytimes.com server was placed outside of China to avoid
censorship issues. The New York Times also reached out to Russian readers by
launching a special project in February 2008. Through this, some Times articles covering the broad spectrum
of political and social topics in Russia are being translated into Russian and
offered for the attention of Russia's bloggers in The
New York Times community
blog. After that, selected
responses of Russian bloggers are being translated into English and published
at The New York Times site
among comments from English readers.
Facing falling print advertising revenue and
projections of continued decline, a pay wall was instituted in 2011
which, as of March, 2012, was modestly successful, garnering several hundred
thousand subscriptions and about $100 million in revenue. The pay wall was announced on March
17, 2011, that starting on March 28, 2011 (March 17, 2011 for Canada), it would
charge frequent readers for access to its online content. Readers would be able
to access up to 20 articles each month without charge. (Although beginning in
April, 2012, the number of free-access articles was halved to just 10 articles
per month.) Any reader who wanted to access more would have to pay for a
digital subscription. This plan would allow free access for occasional readers,
but produce revenue from "heavy" readers. Depending on the package selected
digital subscriptions rates for four weeks range from $15 to $35. Subscribers
to the print edition of the newspaper would get full access without any
additional fee. Some content, such as the front page and the section fronts
will remain free, as well as the top News page on mobile app.
5. Conclusion
The challenges facing the print journalism industry are not
limited to the United States, or even English-speaking markets. The threat to
print journalism is occurring on a global scale. "With
newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not
just to the companies that own them, but also the news itself," observed
writer David Carr of The New York Times in a January 2009 column
Most of the
credible and original news reporting is still produced by journalists working
out of newspaper news room. However, too many of these newspaper publication
firms have been hallowed out with their news staffs and content reduced. The
newspaper companies of today may be surviving the downward spiral of the
industry for now, but the news most communities need is disappearing. The
future of most influential professional news organisations is the future of qualified
news staffs- that can produce original and independent credible news reporting
regardless of where or how it is published.
Of course there
are now many millions of bloggers, freelance journalists and ordinary citizens
posting content on a myriad places over the web- every single day. These groups
of people do surface information or current news that might not come to life. The
blogosphere now disseminate news that is originally produced by the staffs of
newspapers or other professional news organisations. The scrutiny by bloggers
and other news organisations in their content and credibility has made them
more accountable and responsible for their news reporting than ever before. However,
bloggers and citizen journalists are only able to produce a relatively limited
amount of reliable and original reporting even at the local level. This is
because, the content published is often influenced and distorted by the opinion
and biasness discourse on the internet. At the end of the day, original and
dependent viable and credible news reporting are best done by journalists
working under professional collaboration with standards for accuracy and
fairness, despite the mistakes they sometimes make. Particularly important is
their ability to commit in-depth and investigative reporting that holds
powerful account that eliminates issues so citizens can address
them.
As such, it is
important for the surviving newspaper publication firms to adapt to the
ever-changing attribute of the technologically-driven society of today. Taking
The New York Times as a case study, it is essential for these organisations to
come up with solutions that will cater to the needs and changing demands of readers.
The sustainability of their business is only possible through adjusting to the
technological advancements achieved. Furthermore, adopting a flexible business
model that will fit the progresses of the modern world can act as a comparative
advantage for these firms.
6. Future Implications
The increasing use of the internet's search function, primarily
through large engines such as Google,
has also changed the habits of readers. Instead
of pursuing general interest publications, such as newspapers, readers are more
likely to seek particular writers, blogs or sources of information through targeted
searches, rendering the agglomeration of newspapers increasingly irrelevant.
The ability to disseminate
information was restricted to those with printing presses or broadcast
mechanisms. Internet has enabled thousands of individual commentators to
communicate directly with others through blogs or instant message services. Even open journalism projects like
Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the media landscape, as readers
are no longer restricted to established print organs for information.
But even as pixels replace print, and as newspapers undergo massive
changes, necessitating deep cutbacks, reallocation of remaining reporters, and
the slashing of decades-old overhead, some observers remain optimistic. With time, the broadcast of news may
be timelier, more topical and more flexible. Making those technological changes
work for them, instead of against them, will decide whether newspapers remain
vital – or road kill on the information
superhighway.
Incentives to Readers
In order prevent content from being consumed online;
publishers have to continue encouraging the purchase of newspapers. This can be
done by offering incentives to buy the print version. At Le Monde, the online
content is only a limited version of what they publish in their print version.
Therefore, readers will be forced to buy one from a local newsstand if they want
full access to the content published. Print firms can also lure audience with
discounted issues that comes with a subscription. As such, print will need to
find innovative and effective marketing techniques.
Ultimately, the future of print journalism may bear little
resemblance to the newsprint edition familiar to older readers. It
may become a hybrid, part-print and part-internet, or perhaps eventually, as
has happened with several newspapers, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Christian Science Monitor,
internet only. Critics argued
that modern newspapers may appear visually different from their predecessors,
in many ways, newspapers of today differs and failed to keep pace with changes
in society. The technology revolution has meant that readers accustomed to
waiting for daily newspaper published can now receive up-to-the-minute updates
from web portals, bloggers and new services such as Twitter. This allows frequent updates for
users, especially the more affluent, an audience cultivated by advertisers. In
the meantime, the transition from the printed page to whatever comes next will
likely be fraught with challenges, both for the newspaper industry and for its
consumers. As succeeding generations grow up with the Web and become
increasingly reliant on technology, print journalism loses its significance. Thus,
print journalism industry can thrive despite technological advancements when
appropriate strategies are implemented to allow these firms to earn relatively
higher revenue than ever before.
