Twelve years ago I ran the following cover in a magazine of which I was the editor in chief. In the accompanying package of stories we asked various journalists in Manila for their opinions about the effect of the Internet on newspapers.
At that time, newspapers in the Philippines were only beginning to go online. The general attitude towards online news was disdain. One editor in chief said she couldn’t see a time when print journalism would be supplanted by digital media. A section editor in another paper said he just was unable to imagine that “people would prefer to stare at monitors rather than leaf through a well-made newspaper.”
Oh, it gets better (I assure you, that nasty sound you hear in the background isn’t me cackling. Honest!) Another newspaper editor in chief said “looking at a screen is more tiring” than reading words on paper. Condescendingly, both editors-in-chief said the internet would have the most impact on research, and how journalists did their work.
The stories we ran in that magazine a dozen years ago listed other arguments against online news: it couldn’t be “validated”; there was no income model (prophetic words); access was expensive and connections slow and what they hey, “you can’t take the computer with you to the bathroom.”
Anyway let’s gingerly fast forward to today. It’s a year where you can now get your content not just from your desktop and inexpensive netbook, but also through your UMPC, cellphone and smartphone (have I missed any devices?) In the US newspapers are folding up fast — as dead as the trees which gave them their pulp. Online news has already supplanted print in terms of audience and is very slowly inching up towards broadcast media. What’s playing out in the US is that “bring out your dead” scene from the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — only instead of poor peasants, its newspapers saying “I’m not dead yet!”
In the Philippines, every newspaper and broadcast studio has a website and competition is ferocious. Newspapers are still publishing but circulation (never very high to begin with) is falling off, partly because of scale: it’s actually more expensive to print more copies. In no way do the print media come close to the reach of online. Because of the Philippines peculiar economic structure — 10 per cent of its population is working abroad sustaining the country with billions of dollars every year (Wired magazine called it the first ever distributed economy) — the sites are probably most read abroad, in the US, in the Middle East, wherever Filipino overseas workers have access.
I’ve just heard that one Manila broadsheet has actually succeeded in selling itself for P4 billion pesos (US$80 million) to an investor who I believe has more money than common sense. The newspaper, which is only about 23 years old certainly hit the jackpot, it was selling in effect nothing for gold. What is the guy buying? Archives, a distribution system, a brand name. We can go over the actual value each of these things in detail much later.
Over in the states, a former editor of Time magazine wrote a leader where he said that there is one way newspapers can survive. Everyone must pay. Instead of giving away their content online, newspapers should start charging “micropayments” — a dollar for a month of use of their content, for instance. You heard that right: to save precious newspapers everyone must be forced to pay. Where does this guy live? What he’s asking for is an environment that must somehow be created (and the rules enforced) such that nobody can get the content for free, otherwise it will subvert the whole idea. This sounds like a cartel or a monopoly.
I think part of the problem is that newspapers are obsessing too much over the “paper” part of their names: I believe they should resign themselves to the fact that paper as we know it is on the way down. This might not be the case yet in many countries, but it will happen as surely as each person in those countries gets a telephone. Is this cause for despair? I don’t think so. It isn’t that newspapers are irrelevant, they still have something strong to offer. They just have to think hard of HOW they’re going to offer it
5 responses so far ↓
1 Newspapers dying, online media triumphs // Feb 24, 2009 at 2:13 am
[...] In the US, newspapers are vanishing from the shelves and newsstands. A Manila based blogger, Alan Robles, said “they are folding up fast – as dead as the trees which gave them their [...]
2 Newspapers dying, online media triumphs « Kent’s Diaries // Feb 24, 2009 at 2:39 am
[...] In the US, newspapers are vanishing from the shelves and newsstands. A Manila based blogger, Alan Robles, said “they are folding up fast – as dead as the trees which gave them their [...]
3 Anne Summers Innovative Ideas Forum 2009: National Library of Australia « Clyde Street // Mar 30, 2009 at 9:20 pm
[...] considered the role newspapers will play in the recoding of events given analyses of trends such as these. She discussed briefly the Huffington Post to on-line [...]
4 howie // Apr 17, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Alan, Gloomy prospects for newspapermen (and women), but not for those who think of themselves as journalists first, or content producers.
How about the prospects for non-paper old media such as television and radio? How do you think the web will affect these? Are the prospects as gloomy ? (not as many are angst-ing over this, so is there no danger or is it because it’s not as valued by the intelligentsia as much as newspapers?)
5 Alan // Apr 20, 2009 at 2:47 am
@Howie — TV and radio being affected is something that won’t be happening very soon, although it is happening even as we speak. The image I have in mind is not any sudden displacement but more like a gradual assimilation, the blob-like internet absorbing the other media. But in the end, as you say, it’s all about content.
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