The Auricle

In my posting Dying newspapers head for the online ‘panic room’ (Auricle, 1 September 2009) I argued that newspapers are caught between a “rock and a hard place”. Their current business model is failing because of the internet but yet a compensatory move online is confounded, so the press barons would argue, due to a related change in reader behaviour and expectations, e.g. mainstream online content is expected to be offered “free”.

The most recent example is the announcement by the UK Guardian that its technology pullout that has existed for 26 years will now ascend into online heaven (or is that purgatory) and so the paper version will be no more (Guardian, 18 November 2009). As I hinted at in my earlier posting while I can understand the economic pressures I’m not sure moving sections (even a technology one) and ultimately all content online is the right solution; at the moment. What seems to have been missed is that the purpose of specialist sections in daily newspapers is to bring in a readership that might not otherwise purchase the product on that day. Remove the specialist sections and you effectively remove the reason for purchase by that audience. It is also very risk to assume that the same audience will automatically move online to feed themselves. Many things could confound such a move including if they eventually find themselves being confronted by inconvenient payment/subscription systems that assume a single brand loyalty that may not exist, e.g. as being proposed by the Murdoch media empire.

While it would be pretty neat to own some sort of standards-based, highly usable, very light, robust, easily stored device with massive battery reserves and a high resolution display that would automatically download my daily newspaper, a book, or a journal article during the night; all at a reasonable cost and with an easy and flexible payement system of course. But despite the hype that would have us think otherwise no such devices such currently exist and , yet, when media such as newapapers move online they must surely be praying that such devices exist pretty soon. The current digital editions, e.g. the Guardian’s GBP 10 per month offering seem trapped in a strange analogue/digital half world and just won’t cut the mustard as high quality digital alternatives to be read on devices that just will not have the visual real estate of their paper antecedents.

But of course if such devices did exist then that would generate further unpredictable consequences for traditional media empires. For example, the BBC is an excellent source of analysis and news which I and millions of other UK citizens underwrite via our annual licence fee; and so why would I want to pay for other sources of online news and analysis? One of the things that prevents me from being forced to make such choices at the moment is that I can only occasionaly get online when I travel and so I would much prefer such online content to be automatically configured for offline consumption and automatically downloaded to a suitable device for me. I don’t consider even light weight laptops/netbooks to be such suitable devices. They are still too inconvenient and take too long to start to be good ad-hoc reading devices, although that could change. And while iPhones and their ilk are ok for headlines and story bytes they don’t provide a reading device suited to more in-depth analysis. But if such a device was to be available and if lots of good quality content could be automatically downloaded with minimum hassle, perhaps similar to the mobile phone technology download solution that populates the Amazon Kindle (without necessarily actually being the Amazon Kindle) then perhaps some of the online offerings would be considerably more attractive. The iTunes/podcast download model has something to offer here and so it’s possible that a similar distribution system for future online newspapers when allied with a suitable reading/viewing device will win the day. But not yet . There is more work to do on the design of online media, the delivery devices, and ad-hoc/micro payment systems that don’t require subscriptions; after all we can purchase reading material with a single transaction from any retail outlet we like at the moment without being required to take out a subscription. Such ad hoc behaviour in the analogue media domain means that we can currently purchase news content from different publishers during any one week depending on what they have to offer (back to those specialist sections). Consequently, requiring a subscription assumes a brand loyalty that doesn’t necessarily exist and if we are eventually forced to use digital content should users not gravitate towards those content suppliers that continue to support their freedom of choice rather than those that attempt to lock then in? Of course incentives to take out subscriptions are a different matter; those already exist in the analogue media world, e.g. special offers, or much reduced per edition prices.

As long the press media remained in the print domain and the broadcast media remained on the airwaves things were pretty quiet but now that everyone is attempting to inhabit and exploit virtual space then such ‘tensions’ are likely to lead to casualties and changes with unpredictable consequences. Such ‘tensions’ are behind the attacks on the BBC’s online presence and increasingly strident challenges to Google’s assertion that far from being parasitic it is actually a very effective “virtual newsagent” driving eyeballs to the primary sources. The arrival of a ‘killer’ online reading device could really start to heat up this increasingly contested arena. But, as things stand, some of the links in Auricle designed to guide readers to, currently free, primary content may eventually take take them to a demand for payment to read any story which forms a constituent part of a press publication. As I indicated above that is likely to have totally unexpected and unplanned consequences; the jury is out as to whether such consequences will ultimately prove to be for good or ill.