Comments on: What The Guardian really thinks about newsprint

By: SW16

SW16 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:24:49 +0000

Martyn Cornell Wednesday, October 17 2012: If “free doesn’t work”, why have free local newspapers devastated the paid-fors?

The problem is now that advertising is disappearing from the free papers too. My local paid-for paper has less than half the pages it had a few years ago, and its free rival, the Streatham Guardian, has announced that it will no longer be printed from next month as it is not economically viable

By: Nick Harman

Nick Harman — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:54:21 +0000

I don’t know about the Metro racks, they are rubbish bins because all the papers have been taken to be read and there are no bins on the underground.

Metro is a bit of brief read, gone in 60 seconds. The big problem is wading through the drifts of Metros on the carriage floor.

The Guardian certainly works hard at digital, all that ‘what do you think?’, and ‘join the conversation’ stuff ( which reminds me of a youth camp counsellor trying to reach a ‘difficult’ child) and the annoying over stuffing of links into articles.

I wouldn’t trust any official pronouncements, they may pull a fast one yet.

By: peter

peter — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:37:19 +0000

Doesn’t work for who? We’ve got quite a few news portals with decent quality, and very few of them ceased to exist…

By: Martyn Cornell

Martyn Cornell — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 03:47:45 +0000

If “free doesn’t work”, why have free local newspapers devastated the paid-fors? And unless you can somehow stop the BBC from giving its news away free on the net, any news organisation in the UK, unless it has demonstrably premium content, is always going to struggle to sell web-based news. The real problem is advertisers and advertising agencies who are still conditioned to believe that a newspaper sale/pick-up is intrinsically worth more than a web click, and happily continue paying for print newspaper advertising with little or no proof that their expensive ads are actually being noticed and acted upon.

By: freewallah

freewallah — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 23:33:37 +0000

What many people don’t realise about the Guardian – and it rarely seems to get brought up in these sorts of articles – is that it is an ideologically driven organisation backed by an independent trust that pushes a progressive, liberal slant in journalism (and more power to it!). The whole commercial architecture of Guardian News and Media, all its interests such as Auto Trader, are there to support the journalism of the Guardian, whether or not the Guardian itself makes a profit or loss. The idea is to get progressive journalism out into the world, to be ‘the world’s leading liberal voice’, and you can’t do that from behind a paywall. You can’t go on burning money forever either, but there are ‘value-add’ elements such as G2 and the Weekend magazines, Obs mags including Food Monthly that are fairly poorly presented online at present and could be put together in an appealing way on the web and I reckon people would pay for it.

By: Robert Andrews

Robert Andrews — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:17:18 +0000

James,
I understand. I’ve clarified.
Thanks.

By: oldnewspaperman

oldnewspaperman — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:03:18 +0000

Free digital as a business model is a fantasy. It got Emily Bell a nice comfortable gig at an American university and the Guardian standing on the precipice of suicide. Look no further than all the Metro racks at the tube station turned into impromptu rubbish bins to see the future of a free print model. The only hope, as difficult as it might be, is to try to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Better that than eating another big helping of the sugary dream that you can operate a news organization on digital advertising.

By: robinsonlloydjames

robinsonlloydjames — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:58:33 +0000

Can I correct a few things for the record? Firstly, I was joking when I told the Standard people would pay for content. I was quite clearly referring to my new book – which is a crime novella about a phone-hacker. It is emphatically not about phone-hacking per se, as is immediately apparent when you look it up on Amazon http://tinyurl.com/8q6pbmj. The book went on sale for a few quid, hence the lame joke at Rusbridger’s expense. Secondly, while I did use to argue for charging, i did so down the pub for the most part. I wasn’t an executive and no one important cared what I thought. I have lots of friends at the Guardian and was lucky to work there but I’m not sure I’m a ‘friend’ of the paper either. Very good and largely accurate analysis btw

By: oldnewspaperman

oldnewspaperman — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:56:58 +0000

Free doesn’t work. Just look at all those Metro racks at Tube stations that have become de facto trash bins. The free digital movement championed by Emily Bell was just a stupid, bad decision in retrospect. Better to try to shove the toothpaste back into the tube than let your teeth rot on the sugary fantasy that a free online digital publication can work.