The Press Under Pressure

30 11 2008

 

Newspapers are in the process of re-inventing themselves as news brands.  In the future they will have to provide news across a variety of platforms, as many already do using podcasts and video as well as on-line editions.  

In 2005, the editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger provided an insight into the future of national daily newspapers. Launching a new format for the paper the organisation had purchased new printers – Rusbridger said that he believed they would be the last printers that the paper bought.  This suggests a future for the Guardian and others that will not involve paper at all. 

Falling circulation figures for national newspapers in the UK will mean that some will close others perhaps will merge.  Either way in five years time or maybe sooner we will have fewer national daily newspapers than we do now. 

The news brands may continue but their existence will be a digital one. The 100 year old publication The Christian Science Monitor announced in October that they will move from a print edition to daily and weekly email editions as well as an enhanced weekly digital publication.   

The decline in print newspapers is bound to accelerate.





Changing Communications

29 11 2008

 

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We are experiencing a communications revolution that began in the 1960s with the birth of the pre-cursor to the internet, but entered a significant new phase in 2004 with the arrival of Web 2.0.  


This is an iteration of the web where ordinary users can add words, pictures, sounds and video.  A simple idea in theory which in practise signifies the transfer of control of the internet from the few to the many. It is the democratisation of the internet.    

The phrase web 2.0 was coined in 2004 but nothing fundamentally changed that year from a technological point of view.  The tools that were available to create Web 2.0 environments already existed.  What changed was the way that people started to view the internet.








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