About half of the UK's national newspapers are actual commercial businesses; about half are run at a loss by charities or as the playthings of influence-peddling millionaires. So eg the Mail, the Sun, the Mirror are actual businesses; the Times, the Independent, the Guardian are not. The Telegraph is an anomaly because it was for years a loss-making part of the Barclay Brothers portfolio but recently went into profit. The accounting legitmacy of that profit is not without its doubters.
The latter will be fine so long as charities and millionaires continue their largesse. The former will disappear or be sold to the latter, probably very suddenly indeed, one fine day when the the three or four ad agencies in London that control the placement of most ads finally decide the money is being wasted and either cut back their offered rate to a commercially unsustainable one or stop altogether.
The idea that "newspapers" as such can move online is pure fiction, the costs of journalism cannot be met out of online revenues. It is slightly conceivable that one or two English-language newspapers will survive in some form purely online out of subscription revenues, but experiments in that direction so far have been utter failures. There is no prospect whatsoever of funding journalism as currently understood out of online ad revenues.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-10-17 02:40 pm (UTC)The latter will be fine so long as charities and millionaires continue their largesse. The former will disappear or be sold to the latter, probably very suddenly indeed, one fine day when the the three or four ad agencies in London that control the placement of most ads finally decide the money is being wasted and either cut back their offered rate to a commercially unsustainable one or stop altogether.
The idea that "newspapers" as such can move online is pure fiction, the costs of journalism cannot be met out of online revenues. It is slightly conceivable that one or two English-language newspapers will survive in some form purely online out of subscription revenues, but experiments in that direction so far have been utter failures. There is no prospect whatsoever of funding journalism as currently understood out of online ad revenues.