Les Tricoteuses part three

[Terribletriplets]

maj

Just a quick q out of interest - for those that have decided to boycott NI/NC products, what do you hope to be the end result? A kick up the arse and warning for the Murdochs/NC exec, or to encourage the demise of the company as a whole?
If the latter, what would you rather see, the closure of the papers, or for them to be sold on?
Just interested as personally despite it not being a paper I would ever have bought, and the whole phone hacking saga is completely disgusting, I still think the closing of NOTW is a tragedy and another nail in the coffin for print journalism.

PS sorry if this has been raised before, I haven't read the 2000 messages in the previous threads!

LPH - for me it's exercising my power as a consumer, to warn multi-nats, national firms that there is a choice to be exercised outside of the economics of the market.

NOTW? - good ridance.

NOTW good riddance why exactly? I'm not sure.

If you take all the phone hacking aside which (if we are to believe what we are told) was no longer practiced at the paper under Colin Myler (I believe this but I know others won't).

It's a rag, we all know that, and many of us wouldn't wipe our arses with it as we are not interested in celeb scandals etc. However 8 million people in this country did read it (and who are we to say what others should read?)

What happens to those readers? They either migrate to other papers or stop reading papers at all. Those picking up the readers are most likely to either be The Sunday Star or MOS. Not sure they are any better TBH, imagine a larger proportion of the country influenced by the mail?! You are not going to get any uplift in the sale of quals unfortunately. But worse is if they stop buying papers at all.

We need quality print journalists but it is a dying industry. The less of a market there is, the less advertisers invest in it as a medium, the harder it is for all papers to survive. Very few actually draw a profit now anyway, least of all the quals. Without paid for print journalism many of us will be getting our news and analysis from blogging or the freebies (metro? pile of shite) and from TV.

I don't know. I'm just feeling very gloomy about the prospect of papers as a whole - the sad thing is it will be papers like the Graun and Indy that will be the first to go. The loss of 168 year old paper is a big thing - personally I doubt it will be replaced and the readers will be lost from the market.

i agree with Pan.

It's also somewhat of a protest vote for me. If someone asks why I don't have Sky for example, I'll happily explain why i don't support that company.

I have quite a long list of companies and products that I boycott on various grounds relating to poor ethics, poor enivronmental management, bad human rights practices etc. I hope I'm not holier than thou about it, but if asked I will always say why i won't go to mcdonalds, drink coke, own a sky box.

and losing the NOTW is not a nail in the coffin of print journalism. good print journalism could thrive; it just needs to work out what its customers want and how to deliver it best. I don't think the companies are there yet, but the regionals seem to be catching on to the idea of hyper-localism which is probably a good route for them.

That's easy to say Born but unfortunately what a lot of customers seem to want is free, instant news. Online ad revenue is unable to sustain a paper in purely online/tablet format at the moment, and you just have to look at circulation figures and company profits to see that something has to be done soon.

Hyper-localism is all very well in the regionals, but where is the quality, investigative journalism of huge national interest going to come from? There has already been massive redundancy in the sector and it's getting harder to sustain.

And NI is more than just a dynasty. Surely the ideal would be to oust the corrupt management from the company and restore decent ethical practice, as fundamentally the Times and ST are decent papers with quality journalism and no suggestion of wrongdoing within them.

I'm with you, Bornsicky. I think the only real power we have is as consumers. I've been boycotting the Murdoch press for a while now, before the 'phone hacking scandal really kicked off. Those boycotting the Times may well buy the Indy, Graun or Telegraph instead.

"And NI is more than just a dynasty. Surely the ideal would be to oust the corrupt management from the company and restore decent ethical practice, as fundamentally the Times and ST are decent papers with quality journalism and no suggestion of wrongdoing within them."

I'd buy the Times again, Picklehead, if the corruption of management was cleared out and ethics restored to the company.

Cate - yes I would buy again, at a much later date. The Tmes/S.Times do such good reviews and good articles on travel and one-offs like historical artefacts, as well as sports writing. But it will take some re-assurances about NI overall, and that isn't looking likely too soon, is it?

I don't think print journalism has much of a future anyway - even Murdoch thinks that....

Just the way things evolve and tastes change. I suspect we'll lose The Guardian and the Indie in the next 2-5 years and the rest will follow over the next couple of decades

I agree Nancy sadly, but
"The Tmes/S.Times do such good reviews and good articles on travel and one-offs like historical artefacts, as well as sports writing"
is why I am gutted about that. Where will the (sufficitently paid) outlet for this kind of writing?
Although everyone thinks they are a writer now with twitter and blogging, it's just not good enough. Who will be paying the wages of people like Robert Fisk, Caitlen Moran etc etc?
I am slightly more hopeful re: The Indy though - the 'i' seems to have the right idea and if things continue will overtake the Indy in circulation (although not a big ask really). Still doesn't seem to be viable commercially on it's own as yet, but if they can make it work perhaps there is some hope...

I know this seems off-topic, but I'm just trying to consider the wider implications that hack-gate has, and the damage that those involved have possibly done to an already struggling industry

Glad to see people discussing the future of news reporting. It's print journalism that sets the news agenda, and has done since the year dot. Broadcasters generally follow the newspapers rather than the other way round - it's the Guardian that led on this story, not the Beeb/ITV/Ch 4 (and of course not Sky).

Someone has to fund journalism. You can't have a social model where the only news available is from press releases and amateur bloggers, or a business model where the costs of employing trained staff to go and find stuff out aren't covered, leaving some profit for the owners.

'Someone has to fund journalism'

Who will the someone be? Will it end up being the state? How independent will news then be? How long can some of the broadsheets like the Guardian and the Times keep losing money?

Which of our papers are actually profitable at the moment?

The Mail and Mail on Sunday are profitable as is: The Sun and The Star

The Indie, Guardian and Times make a loss - not sure about Observer.

S.Times just about breaks even I think

Daily Mirror makes a loss

not sure about Sunday mIrror

Express and The People are produced on shoe string budgets - rarely pay for stories, skeleton staff and agency copy etc...

Wow, I didn't realise that the Daily Mirror makes a loss. Doesn't that sell in the millions?

Does the Mail make money from advertisers off of its internet success? Is that a possible profitable route or is there not enough money in it?

Are the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph profitable?

LittlePickleHead, Robert Fisk hasn't written for NI since he had a piece spiked after the Americans shot down an Iranian airliner in about 1982. Apparently an anti-American article would not have gone down well with Murdoch when he was trying to buy Newspapers there. He writes for the Independent. His stuff is always worth reading.

Hedley I do know this! I am talking about the future of newspapers as a whole and the fact that across the board we are at risk of losing lots of journalistic talent. I used to work at The Indy so well aware that Robert Fisk writes for them. The Independent is a loss making publication that has less readers than many regional publications so the decline of the industry as a whole puts its columnists at risk.

Nancy has come up with the figures - depressing stuff and the cheapness of Express and People is very evident when you read them (ANOTHER Diana headline anyone??)

Internet advertising is not at all profitable. My DH works in ths industry and there needs to be some kind of revolution and way to disginguish between quality and non-quality media, but it's not forthcoming and is in fact getting worse. There is absoultley no way a newspaper could continue to produce quality stories purely using online revenue.

Times online is an interesting case study for paying for online content and is doing OK...can't really imagine it working for the readership of the red tops

Yes, Telegraph and Sunday T both do ok

Mirror' sales have been steadily declining for years - easily outsold by the Mail now.

.

is the Times making money from its paywall? I didn't think it was.

they're being very cagey about releasing figures - but it's widely believed that, no, it's not hit the numbers they were aiming for

Nancy, did you see \link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/22/chancer-sure-sean-hoare-much-more\Marina Hyde's tribute to Sean Hoare} last weekend?

I hadn't seen that Ponders - thanks for the link. Really nice.

It was, wasn't it? Made me sorry I never knew him...