Newspapers: The effect of online technology

Do you agree with James Murdoch that the BBC should not be allowed to provide free news online? Why?

I understand were James Murdoch is coming from when he says that it is "a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision" when the BBC provides free news online and that it is difficult "for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news". I also agree that "it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it". However, the BBC should be allowed to do what they want. Murdoch should concentrate on creating ideas of how to make NewsCorp better so that they can maintain their audiences and not focus on the BBC because if their newspapers was unique enough, they should be able to keep their faithful readers and not loose popularity.

Was Rupert Murdoch right to put his news content (The Times, The Sun) behind a paywall?

this blog on the Times paywall three years on

Three years on exactly from launching its trailblazing digital subscription strategy, The Times and The Sunday Times have now amassed a total of 140,000 paying digital subscribers, "mainly on the tablet". This means that faithful readers are willing to pay to read the news content of The Times. The papers, published by News UK, now have more paying customers than they did on 2 July 2010, which is regarded by News UK executives as the true marker of success. However, we cannot forget the fact that there are other on-line newspapers that you can read for free such as the Daily Mail. In fact, Times Newspapers Ltd lost £28.7 million for the year to July 1, on turnover of £361 million. That 20 jobs are to go from the Times shows the costbase still isn't quite right.The digital subscription model is not a solution to those existential problems. To convince people to "pay for news" does not remove a £28 million loss overnight or even in five years. Personally, I think that Rupert Murdoch was right to some degree to put his news content behind a paywall however it was clear that it wasn't going to increase profit by a large amount due to some people not liking the fact of paying for news when there are other news that they can read for free on-line. 

Choose two comments from below the Times paywall article - one that argues in favour of the paywall and one that argues against. Copy a quote from each and explain which YOU agree with and why.

Against 

"It is so ridiculous if these mainstream newspapers believe that they can "force readership of fee-based news. One can get the same "news" for free almost anywhere on the internet...The fee model will never work."

For

"Just a thought on that: Times gets £14.99 pm from 140,000 subscribers, making it considerably more than it made in online advertising."

I agree with the quote against the paywall as it makes a decent point that people can get the same sort of news for free on the internet and therefore the fee model would be hard to put in practise in today's society.

Why do you think the Evening Standard has bucked the trend and increased circulation and profit in the last two years?

this article from the Media Briefing on the continuing decline of the newspaper industry

Because of how many newspapers they have made as they say 700,000 a day its more likely to be 900,000 as they are pushing for increase of circulation. They made a 27% increase of circulation to the ABC demographic. However they lost 5% of their audiences which suggest that they will eventually lose profit.

Is there any hope for the newspaper industry or will it eventually die out? Provide a detailed response to this question explaining and justifying your opinion.

In my opinion I think that there is no hope for print newspaper because of the way society is going. There are more places in which people can get news such as social media which provides live news 24/7. At the moment, print newspapers are decreasing which is forcing newspapers such as The Guardian and The Sun to go on-line. It is also forcing newspapers like The Sun to put a paywall to read the newspaper on-line as the industry is losing profit. Despite the amount of subscribers that they have, it does not give them enough money to re-gain the amount of money they lost over the past few years. Since the next generation is surely to be basing their everyday lives on-line, print will not be a popular option for them. Also, due to the other free news on-line, not everyone is going to be interested to pay a fee to read news much longer. Sadly, I think newspapers are going to eventually die out.