As more and more newspapers are becoming free to commuters and newspaper articles are now readily available online…we no longer have to wait for the paper boy, or even travel to the nearest corner shop to buy our regional / national newspaper..
We live in a world of convenience; people no longer expect to have to pay for things. As the internet offers the most up to date news via sites like the BBC, lets face it as soon as a newspaper is printed it is out of date!
A shocking 98 regional newspapers have closed since January 2009 and this figure is rising with newspapers merging and going either FREE or from Daily to Weekly (Birmingham Post for instance) … Local Solihull and Tamworth titles have now merged their editions, will the West Midlands Express and Star editions be next? With the London Lite closing and the London Evening Standard becoming free will this impact on the quality of the newspapers?
This begs the question… Is press to become extinct? Over the last decade only two titles have shown any increase in circulation –The Financial Times (up 5% in the last 10 years) and the Daily Star (up a worrying 53%).
Many changes could have impacted on this decline in circulation: increase in printing costs, advertising revenues falling or could it just simply be down to competition with online newspaper sites offering free content? …. For instance a recent survey has shown that 2.5 million people are reading the Daily Mail online, but not buying the newspaper!
You could argue that some Media owners are combining press and online as a cross sell to advertisers… in the past an online banner has been offered as “added value” to a campaign…but will they soon make it compulsory to take an ad out in the newspaper in order to combat decline in readership?
With plans for newspaper sites to start charging for all of its online content from as early as next week… will this mean that most readers will revert back to traditional newspapers??? …lets watch this space…
November 11th, 2009
