Marc Reeves: Speaking truth to power: my speech to the CBI
Monday, 7 June 2010, 10:29
"I spent the last 15 years of my newspaper career regularly attending industry conferences in which the threats and opportunities of the internet were endlessly discussed and analysed. Pretty much everything that has come to pass was predicted, but what did the big newspaper groups do? Very little that was right, it turns out. … Newspapers are still trying aspiring to the revenue levels of the old days … but it’s only a problem if you’re trying to make an online revenue stream pay for a newsprint cost base."
Roy Greenslade: Murdoch is wrong to charge for online content
Saturday, 8 August 2009, 13:24
Roy Greenslade: "I concede that there are many supporters of Murdoch's move too. The split is both philosophical and practical. There are those (with whom I agree) who believe that the digital media revolution is in the process of transforming journalism and those (such as Murdoch and most traditional newspaper publishers) who believe the net is merely another platform rather than an instrument of transformation. It follows that if you wish to continue to fund traditional journalism that you require similar revenues, hence the Murdoch charging strategy."
NewsFuturist: Ask the right questions about paid content plans
Thursday, 6 August 2009, 19:40
Jeff Sonderman: "The huge fallacy I hear all the time behind arguments for requiring readers to pay for news goes like this: Our work is IMPORTANT and EXPENSIVE to produce. Society needs it, and we incur huge expenses to provide it, so consumers should pay us. …
Price is determined by the UNIQUE value your product provides TO THE CONSUMER. Both parts of the equation matter: how useful/valuable is it to the consumer, and could the same value be obtained elsewhere for less? Regarding news online, the second question is key."
Wordblog: Looking back 50 years: newsagent and newspaper
Monday, 24 November 2008, 22:49
A reality check on the good old days of local papers from Andrew Grant-Adamson: "What struck me as the [50-year-]old microfilm image came up on the records office screen was that the [East Anglian Daily Times] is now providing more local news than it was. First there was the size: eight pages broadsheet then and 48 tabloid now (Mondays). That is a tripling of the area of newsprint to be filled. Granted pictures and much much bigger headlines fill much of that extra space. Yet the paper clearly provides a larger volume of local news now than it did in 1958."
Evening Standard: Forget boozy Fleet St image – newspapers turned lean long ago
Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 20:09
Roy Greenslade compares today's newspaper staff sizes to the so-called good old days: "[T]here are now two contradictory types of nostalgic Fleet Street narrative. One is wholly positive and concentrates on the relaxed regimes, the bonhomie, the expense account lifestyles and celebrates the culture of drinking. The other, wholly negative, concentrates on over-manning, laziness, profligacy and decries the culture of drinking."
