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Are UK newspapers killing themselves by going on-line?
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The British newspaper industry has apparently suffered greatly in this recession. But it strikes me they're shooting themselves in the foot as it is by allowing their entire contents to be accessed on-line free of charge. While people over a certain age will have been brought up to buy a paper of a morning, and may still do as a result, most people under say 30 will have gotten used to accessing such things on-line. Hence in a number of years hardly anyone will presumably visit newsagents to buy papers. After all, what's the point in traveling to a shop to spend money on something you can get for free in the comfort of your own home? Surely national newspaper bosses should stop free access to their publications in order to secure their future...don't you think?
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I havn't bought a newspaper in two years. At 11.30 I go onto the sky news website and look at the front pages of the following days papers. Any interesting ones ie Express/Mirror I then go onto their websites. Look at the headline story which is printed as per what will be in the newspaper. That's it. Don't cost me a penny.
Hey jno: I'll list your points as you did (I don't know how to italicise with the new site... so can't quote like I normally like to).
1. Editing/selection: I think for this point you've assumed that newspapers or their online equivalents will die out completely, which is the only real scenario in which your concern might happen, and even to begin with that assumption is flawed, but let's go with it for the sake of argument. Granted, there's no real way I can guarantee this, but I'm willing to bet that at the very least some kind of online replacement/replacements will spring up. There'd be a huge 'gap in the market', wouldn't there? And take the success of some journalistic sites that are far more exclusive/sectional in their coverage - like The Escapist, for instance, which covers gaming news, or Salon.com. I can't believe someone wouldn't be able to do something similar for something with a far greater target audience like current affairs/news.
2. Authenticity. I think it depends what you're comparing on the web and with what you're comparing it to on this point. If you compare the authenticity of facts presented in the Times or The Economist against Wikipedia, it's obvious who comes out better. But I'd easily trust Wiki over, say, the Sun, or even some of the heavily contrived "facts" Littlejohn comes out with. British journalists can be just as unreliable as the internet. But with the internet, you don't just get access to exclusively web-based content. If something looks fishy you can easily click onto the site of a research institution you trust and see what they have to say about something. Or check the references, or choose to disbelieve it if it has none.
3. Professionalism. The issue you raise here is essentially about trusting the author of what you read. But you can check the the trustworthiness of a political blog in exactly the same way you can check the trustworthiness of a newspaper article:
1. Editing/selection: I think for this point you've assumed that newspapers or their online equivalents will die out completely, which is the only real scenario in which your concern might happen, and even to begin with that assumption is flawed, but let's go with it for the sake of argument. Granted, there's no real way I can guarantee this, but I'm willing to bet that at the very least some kind of online replacement/replacements will spring up. There'd be a huge 'gap in the market', wouldn't there? And take the success of some journalistic sites that are far more exclusive/sectional in their coverage - like The Escapist, for instance, which covers gaming news, or Salon.com. I can't believe someone wouldn't be able to do something similar for something with a far greater target audience like current affairs/news.
2. Authenticity. I think it depends what you're comparing on the web and with what you're comparing it to on this point. If you compare the authenticity of facts presented in the Times or The Economist against Wikipedia, it's obvious who comes out better. But I'd easily trust Wiki over, say, the Sun, or even some of the heavily contrived "facts" Littlejohn comes out with. British journalists can be just as unreliable as the internet. But with the internet, you don't just get access to exclusively web-based content. If something looks fishy you can easily click onto the site of a research institution you trust and see what they have to say about something. Or check the references, or choose to disbelieve it if it has none.
3. Professionalism. The issue you raise here is essentially about trusting the author of what you read. But you can check the the trustworthiness of a political blog in exactly the same way you can check the trustworthiness of a newspaper article:
Gee, AB, don't let me know I'm over the word limit or anything.
3. Professionalism. The issue you raise here is essentially about trusting the author of what you read. But you can check the the trustworthiness of a political blog in exactly the same way you can check the trustworthiness of a newspaper article: you can read it. If a politicial blogger makes an assertion about, say, immigration, without providing any backup evidence, then you can identify that and move on. If it does, you can check them with a few clicks. Seeing as there'd likely be so many of them, viewers looking for professional analysis will soon gravitate toward the few that provide it, while the Melanie Phillips' and the Littlejohns out there will likely have smaller, more atomised readership. Plus as you seem to concede, the level of professionalism among existing British journalists is hardly sky-high. I don't see we've much to lose.
3. Professionalism. The issue you raise here is essentially about trusting the author of what you read. But you can check the the trustworthiness of a political blog in exactly the same way you can check the trustworthiness of a newspaper article: you can read it. If a politicial blogger makes an assertion about, say, immigration, without providing any backup evidence, then you can identify that and move on. If it does, you can check them with a few clicks. Seeing as there'd likely be so many of them, viewers looking for professional analysis will soon gravitate toward the few that provide it, while the Melanie Phillips' and the Littlejohns out there will likely have smaller, more atomised readership. Plus as you seem to concede, the level of professionalism among existing British journalists is hardly sky-high. I don't see we've much to lose.
those are fair responses, Kromovaracun, but the main thing is, they require you to do the work yourself. You doubt the veracity or a writer, or a website? Then you have to check out their bona fides yourself. This is no bad thing; but in essence it's what you're currently paying newspapers to do. If it's in The Times it must be true (probably). If it's on Guido Fawkes... it might be, who knows.
I was trying to point to this sea change in how we receive and assess information rather than going into too many details. In particular I didn't want to get into debates about which columnists were balanced and which just made things up; or indeed the distinction between news and opinion (and news analysis, which is a bit of both). These are important, though, as you suggest.
About whether all media outlets as we know them will die out: that's what nobody knows. Murdoch certainly figures he's got enough individual papers/websites, with a wide enough range, for all of them to survive - but even he can no longer afford to watch the money gushing out while he waits to see if he's right, which is why he's planning to charge website readers. And the BBC site will presumably survive, though I notice even Labour are muttering about cutting the licence fee; so that may be a bold assumption. But will any of the other big organisations survive? Or will it just be Newscorp Intergalactic and a slew of specialist niche sites - much like if you stripped most of the papers out of WH Smith and just left the magazines? I think that would be a big step backward, but I've no idea if it will happen.
I was trying to point to this sea change in how we receive and assess information rather than going into too many details. In particular I didn't want to get into debates about which columnists were balanced and which just made things up; or indeed the distinction between news and opinion (and news analysis, which is a bit of both). These are important, though, as you suggest.
About whether all media outlets as we know them will die out: that's what nobody knows. Murdoch certainly figures he's got enough individual papers/websites, with a wide enough range, for all of them to survive - but even he can no longer afford to watch the money gushing out while he waits to see if he's right, which is why he's planning to charge website readers. And the BBC site will presumably survive, though I notice even Labour are muttering about cutting the licence fee; so that may be a bold assumption. But will any of the other big organisations survive? Or will it just be Newscorp Intergalactic and a slew of specialist niche sites - much like if you stripped most of the papers out of WH Smith and just left the magazines? I think that would be a big step backward, but I've no idea if it will happen.
AOG - Im interested in hearing how you think the BBc is biased. Towards a political party? A sexual orientation? A race?
The beauty of the BBC is that it's so diverse within itself that it and bias would be contradicted somewhere else. If you think the 10 o'clock news potrays the conservatives in a bad light, 'Have I Got News for You' comes back and slags of Labour. You feel black culture isn't catered to enough - switch on 1 extra, if you prefer your classical switch on Radio3. From my experience BBC news broadcasting could only be regarded as biased if you're picking out small snapshots. The news presnted on radio 4 will focus on different issues to that on radio 1.
But that's just my two cents.
The beauty of the BBC is that it's so diverse within itself that it and bias would be contradicted somewhere else. If you think the 10 o'clock news potrays the conservatives in a bad light, 'Have I Got News for You' comes back and slags of Labour. You feel black culture isn't catered to enough - switch on 1 extra, if you prefer your classical switch on Radio3. From my experience BBC news broadcasting could only be regarded as biased if you're picking out small snapshots. The news presnted on radio 4 will focus on different issues to that on radio 1.
But that's just my two cents.
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