The newspaper business was built for a world where one product served everyone and advertising paid for most of it. That model has gone. What replaces it is still being worked out title by title, from national groups to weeklies covering a single town.
Reader revenue is the clearest shift. Even Reach, which argued for free access for years, now puts some of its journalism behind a paywall, and the regional titles doing best changed their newsrooms before they asked anyone to pay. Ownership keeps changing too. National World rebuilt local editorships after years of centralisation, and the Observer is being reinvented as a premium print and digital title under new owners.
The strongest publishers understand the difference because they are not trying to be everything to everyone. They are trying to be essential to someone.
Chris Sherrard News media
Local news is where the pressure shows most. Millions of people now live without a dedicated local title, and new reader-funded and membership startups are moving into the gaps. Platforms are pulling back from news at the same time, which leaves trust and a direct relationship with readers as the assets that matter most.
Print hasn't disappeared either. Well-run weeklies still hold on to their readers, with circulation falling slowly while digital audiences grow.
Below you'll find some of our best feature articles on news media, from reader revenue and newsroom change to ownership, local news and trust, alongside our latest news and industry commentary.
Where is the growth opportunity for today’s publishers? Douglas McCabe tracks how the commercial model has evolved over the past fifty years and examines whether a better understanding of what online audiences want, will help drive future growth.
We asked Chris Sherrard, editor-in-chief of The Irish News, what does best practice publishing look like in news media? This is what he said…
After years of resisting paywalls, Reach is now launching them across its titles. But David Higgerson, Reach’s chief content officer, carefully avoided the word ‘U-turn’ when interviewed by Steve Dyson.
It’s one thing to think that readers should pay for your journalism, but the reality is that unless you improve your offering, then you will struggle to start charging for it, as DC Thomson Editor-in-Chief Frank O’Donnell tells Ciar Byrne.
How can you edit a regional newspaper when you never visit the area you’re writing about? By filling it with generic content, an approach that National World’s David Montgomery, the new owner of JPI Media, is rapidly doing away with.
Ray Snoddy talks to Co-CEO Rich Furness about the thinking behind Tortoise Media’s acquisition of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper and about their plans for its future.
What’s the outlook for national news media in 2024? Christian Broughton, CEO of The Independent, looks ahead.
There is a new generation of entrepreneurs launching local media businesses, bringing with them new ideas on business models and funding. Phil Clark looks at some of the stand-out examples.
With Meta backing away from ‘news’ and AI accelerating the growth of disinformation, we need to redouble our efforts to safeguard access to quality journalism, says News Media Association Chief Executive Owen Meredith.
East Lothian is not just the best place to live – it has the best newsbrand too. Alan Geere heads over the border to find out what’s happening in the world of Scottish weeklies.
A new independent regulator with teeth ought to also offer a "one-stop-shop" mediation service for libel and privacy cases as an alternative to the courts, Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, proposed in the annual Orwell Lecture last week.
The growth in smartphone penetration in the UK has been accompanied by a boom in mobile advertising, which, some predict, will become a £1 billion market by 2015. Want a piece of that? Well, writes Jack Wallington, you’d better hurry.
Informa’s Peter Rigby is one of publishing’s longest serving CEOs and has overseen a huge growth in the company’s size, as well as its successful digital transformation. Peter talks to Meg Carter about the reasons for Informa’s success to date and wh
Publishers are battling with multiple challenges: changing audience content consumption habits, the decline of traditional ad-funded models and the availability of free content online – plus the need to master an ever expanding range of channels from
Well, is it or isn’t it? Copywriter Andy Maslen clicks, scrolls, shares, bookmarks and generally surfs some best practice in online copywriting. Oh, and there’s a case study.
The Kent Messenger Group recently undertook a root and branch review of its free newspaper distribution model. Fiona Maddison explains how they went about reducing their print run without scaring off their advertisers.
If your team members all pull in the same direction for the sake of the team, then great things are possible. Obvious? Then why do so many teams contain individuals pulling in different directions, or not pulling at all? Howard Scott looks at what ma
Tuesday July 5th is a day James Harding, the editor of the Times, is unlikely to forget. It was the day the Milly Dowler story broke, and by chance, Harding was speaking at the annual lunch of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). R
Around 100 angry NFRN members turned up for a mass meeting in Leicester on Tuesday in protest at the move by the local paper to increase the cover price of its Saturday edition by 20p yet give nothing to the retailers.
Wifi hotspot numbers are set to grow from 1.3 to 5.8 million globally in the next four years according to a report by market research company Informa Telecoms and Media.
The Financial Times has announced the appointment of Stuart Kirk as its global editor of Lex, the FT’s renowned business and financial column.
According to the NFRN, London newsagents were yesterday expressing their anger over a loose insert in the Guardian Newspaper which is offering a direct delivery consumer subscription to readers within the M25 area, which directly attacks retailers wh
MusicRadar, Future Publishing’s website for musicians, is on board as the media partner for Live and Unsigned for the second year running.
David Roddick, Northcliffe's group commercial director, has announced that he will leave the business in March 2012.
The Press Complaints Commission has published the figures of its complainant satisfaction surveys for the period July to September 2011.
