March 29th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
Is a hotly contested debate, and whether you come down on the negative or positive side, here are two arguments you’ll want to consider.
First off, in the red corner, Arianna Huffington in The Huffington post. Arianna comes down on the positive side, believing hybrids combining the best aspects of traditional print newspapers with the best of the web will prolong newspaper lifecycles:”Until those of us who came of age before the internet all die off, there will be a market for print versions of newspapers”.
As you would expect, this spawned a few comments and separate posts, my favourite of which offers the opposition. In the blue corner, Roy Greenslade cuts straight to the chase with a great quote in response:
“No, Arianna, there will be a romantic attachment to papers by our generation, but we will not provide a market sufficiently profitable to ensure their continued publication. There is going to be a lengthy period of dual use, though “lengthy” is a relative term and no-one can be sure when papers will die, but die they will. And the funeral will occur well before us romantics enter the newsroom in the sky.”
Arianna’s post raises some good points, and is certainly worth a read, as are the comments, however, it is interesting to note that the argument has moved from ‘if’ newspapers will die, to ‘when’.
The latest IAB online ad figures don’t make positive reading for the newspaper industry either.
Online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during the 2006. In contrast, spending on national newspaper ads grew just 0.2% to £1.9bn, taking a 10.7% share of the market. Still growing though!
