Guardian

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 11:31am on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Guardian Editor Slams Murdoch's Pay Walls

The Guardian reported on January 25, 2010:

"The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has delivered a riposte to Rupert Murdoch's campaign to introduce paywalls to newspaper websites, claiming that it could lead the industry to a "sleepwalk into oblivion".

Delivering the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture at London College of Communication today, Rusbridger said that universal charging for newspaper content on the internet would remove the industry from a digital revolution which is allowing news organisations to engage with their readers more than ever before.

Rusbridger described universal paywalls as "a hunch" and said that the newspaper industry would learn valuable lessons from trying different business models, including staying generally free while charging for specialist content or asking readers to pay on different platforms, such as mobile.

Last year Murdoch revealed that he would introduce charges for access to all his news websites, including the Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World by this summer. Last week the New York Times confirmed that it too would introduce a paywall to its website by 2011.

Rusbridger pointed out that News Corp has frequently used the price of news to attack rivals. "Murdoch, who has in his time flirted with free models and who has ruthlessly cut the price of his papers to below cost in order to win audiences or drive out competition ('reach before revenue', as it wasn't called back when he slashed the price of the Times to as low as 10p), this same Rupert Murdoch is being very vocal in asserting that the reader must pay a proper sum for content – whether in print or digitally," he said."

The full story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/guardian-editor-paywalls

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 2:36pm on Thursday, December 31st, 2009

December 30, 2009 -- The Guardian's Mercedes Bunz says that "hyperlocal" information is a sure business trend for 2010:

"Today an increasing number of consumers use their PCs or mobile phones to find local products and services, and quite a few recent developments at the search engine giant took that into account. Apart from Twitter's integration into Google with the option to get to know what is happening around you at any one point, Google offers Goggles, a mobile video and image search aimed at local information. In addition, it is testing Favorite Places. It has identified 100,000 businesses in the U.S. who receive a window decal with a unique QR code to be scanned with a phone handing out customer reviews.

Now how does that go along with all the whining about a decline of local news, you may ask. Unfortunately, very well.

If you take a closer look, you quickly figure out that the actual hyperlocal investment is mainly business-related."

The full story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/dec/23/trends-2010-hyperlocal-media

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 9:38pm on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Half of British local and regional newspapers could shut by 2014, MPs were told on June 16, 2009. The story from Stephen Brook, writing in the Guardian:

"Up to half of the UK's local and regional newspapers could shut within the next five years as revenues continued to decline, an analyst warned MPs today.

Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told a Commons committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% – or £1.3bn – between 2007 and 2013.

"We are expecting up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years," Enders told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee hearing on the future of local and regional media.

"Many titles are already running at losses and are being sustained by the good graces of their owners, and that may not last," she said.

Christopher Thomson, the chief executive of DC Thomson, the Scottish publisher of titles including the Dundee Courier and the Sunday Post, said it has experienced a 50% drop in advertising revenue already.

The crisis was caused by the recession and several strucutural factors including the takeup of broadband and rise of online search advertising giant Google, the committee heard.

Other factors included local governments deciding in 2004 to cut recruitment advertising from local and regional papers and the Royal Mail ending the delivery of local papers."

The full story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/16/half-local-papers-could-shut-2014

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 9:38pm on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Newspapers that stop publishing in print to go online-only may lose more than they gain, the Guardian reported on April 16, 2009:

"Newspapers that ditch their print editions to go online-only may be jumping the gun unless they are in dire financial straits, according to a study published today.

Researchers from City University in London suggest that many newspaper publishers are likely to lose more than they gain if they cease distributing their printed products in favour of the web.

Their study focused on the fate of Finnish financial newspaper Taloussanomat, which axed its printed version and went online-only in December 2007. The decision was made after the title suffered severe losses – but even going online-only failed to lift it out of the doldrums.

After the move was made, the Finnish title's costs fell by 50% – but its online readership declined by 22% and revenues dropped by more than 75%.

The net result was that the publication's owners were no better off after dropping print than they had been previously.

According to calculations based on the Finnish case, a publication would need its costs to significantly outstrip its income to make online-only an attractive option.

"Only if your income is 31% or more lower than your costs, based on this case at least, would you be better off going online-only," said Neil Thurman, senior lecturer in electronic publishing at City and one of the study's authors."

Read the full story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/16/online-only-newspapers-revenue-fall-taloussanomat