Reports that the Nobserver might be closing

[policywonk]

here

Other papers are being less circumspect

I wouldn't miss it much (bought it yesterday after a long break and the only thing I really enjoyed in it was a tiny interview with Sally Phillips), but it would be a shame for one of the few left-of-centre stalwarts to disappear.

many of the regional newsgroups are struggling with their online content because the bbc is fast developing 'local' online content with resources that they cannot match.

i got out of print journalism five years ago and cannot see ever going back as most people i worked with are now redundant.

smallorange - any top tips about alternative careers for print journalists would be gratefully received!

There must be a way of firewalling paid-for content - Salon.com already has a paid-for area and I don't think those bits turn up in Google searches (could be wrong though).

Hey, I just used 'firewalling' as a verb!

It's been on its last legs for a while and has really gone downhill.Source of many a whinge from me on MN.

If they slashed the budget for those incredibly irritating photos in the food bit of chefs on hooks and peopel throwing blueberries at each other it would help.

Don't think Google would be terribly co-operative if all the major news organisations in developed countries tried to put their content behind firewalls. And Google News, and Yahoo, and everyone else, would still nick the content.

Really? That's interesting (re Google). Doesn't the GMG have a stake in Google?

Google can't just go around nicking copyrighted stuff if the copyright owners have explicitly forbidden it, can it? (Or is this extremely naive?)

It does, frequently, although helpfully I can't immediately cite examples.

I wouldn't like not to have paper scattered all over the place of a weekend though. (even though lots of it is discarded unread or scornfully skim read with an expression of disgust!) Online just isn't the same. Maybe one of those kindles would be nice though... Don't people in the US get their papers "delivered" direct to their kindles?

Totally agree with kathyis6inches - have gone right orf Observer since they started that unspeakable supplement for women.

Its like suddently discovering that your best friend and soulmate votes Tory, eats dutch veal and wears seal skin fur knickers.

Unforgivable .

Yes, absolutely Mintyy! But the food thing is good and I quite like the 'political' bits.

I will miss it if it goes. Have read it since a child and my GPs used to have it. There's something about a print newspaper as opposed to reading online. You can go back and pick bits up whilst lying on the settee having a busy weekend.

I've got the subscription to the Weekend Guardian/ Observer and I was saying to DH that I can't be bothered to do it anymore as the Observer is so rubbish. I think I'll keep it now, as I wouldn't want to see it go all together (lefty emoticon).

Agree about the Woman supplement, although I do like it in the sense that it feels like having a proper magazine such as cosmo or something, which I wouldn't nomally buy. Patronising doesn't begin to describe it though.

More panicking print journalists in our house, although I am in the middle of attempting to retrain into something more useful.
I should have thought the Knobserver would at least hold fire until the Sindy goes under and it can pick up those readers, who are unlikely to migrate to the more right of centre Sundays.
And surely to heaven they should have picked up the vibe that their typical female reader does not want a vacuous supplement that would be more at home falling out of the Times.

It's not just the journalists affected- Dh works for Trinity Mirror, he's been there 20 years as a printer-now he runs the department that orders the paper- they print several titles, mirror, indy, M.E.N, liverpool echo recently moved to his plant, as well as smaller regional titles.

it's all about advertising. Fewer businesses are using print media for advertising. They have had to make extensive redundancies across the board, and there are still more mooted. It is very scary.

DH has been warning he is in a declining industry for years- we are just hoping he keeps his job for now

It will be a shame if all printed media goes 'online'.

Wossa 'kindle'?

I wonder whether advertising will pick up (and so this crisis recede slightly) when the recession passes? As I understand it, advertising has fallen away from TV and from print media, and it hasn't gone anywhere else (not to online in any great way, anyway) - so if commercial organisations start increasing their ad spend again in a year or so, maybe things wouldn't look so dire?

Good point about the Sindy - perhaps they are desperately trying to outlast each other.

I've no idea why they persist with OW - it must be expensive to produce, and we all hate it. Maybe they have focus groups that are telling them otherwise.

well I suspect this is all paving the way for 7 day news operations (the companies running papers have been DYING to do this and basically cut loads of staff ).

But yes, Sindy in far more trouble and will probably fall first unless one of the others is pushed.

Someone will take that step to 7 day operation I imagine as everyone has been fighting it for so so long.

Thanks Len. I covet those things.

What do you mean by seven-day operation foxy - that (say) Telegraph would produce a daily edition seven days a week, with no differentiation on Sundays? More work for daily journalists (or split shifts or something? They can't ask people to work seven-day weeks.)

well, there are 2 loads of staff really

one lot who do the daily (so Sunday to Friday - people take turns alternately working Sunday/Friday) and another lot who only do the Sunday papers (and work Tuesday to Saturday).

What they have been trying to do is combine both operations - I guess people would work shifts.

Problem is that Sunday journalism is inherently different to daily journalism (which is more like breaking news than deep, long investigative stories and features though obviously there are definitely verlaps).

definitely overlaps lol not verlaps

I can see from an accountant's eyes why it makes sense but obviously from journo's eyes it is heavily resisted!

Ah right, I see. The thing is, there are very few pieces of investigative journalism in the Sundays these days (?) - the old 'Insight' stuff doesn't seem to happen any more.

This was one of the points made quite forcefully at the round-table discussion thingy I went to recently - that nobody has the resources for proper investigative journalism any more. In fact I think some journalism great-and-good types are setting up a fund or a think tank or something to promote it.

Certainly, if producing one edition of the Observer takes as many staff and as many work-hours as six editions of the Guardian, it's just not worth it.

Very hard on the people who are in line for redundancy though, obviously.

I'm a Luddite in that respect too - much prefer print copies of newspapers. Online reading just feels like a chore, plus I've heard that laptops and baths aren't a good mix.

I'd be very sad indeed to see the Observer go - it infuriates me on a regular basis (that Liz Jones thing was just so pointless) but I've been reading it for years now; it's become part of my life.