Are newspapers like a whisky after lunch: irreplaceable? Is there any future for traditional, printed media? Something that was unthinkable few years ago is slowly becoming a fact. The number of copies of printed newspapers is dramatically decreasing while the number of readers is increasing. Where are we in 10 or 20 years?
“Maybe this industrial model of information has come to an end”, said the President of the Umbrian Regional Association of Journalists, Dante Ciliani, in his opening speech of the panel “Thinking the unthinkable”.
Rapid development of technological innovations had significant impact on the media market. Internet became the easiest and fastest way of getting information from all over the world. The New York Times, one of the most popular American newspapers, has one million readers for its printed copies and 20 millions online readers.
Reading news on electronic paper
Since technology is still developing, will we carry our newspapers in the pocket in the future, as we do with our iPhones today? “Yes”, said the director of the European Journalism Observatory, Stephan Russ-Mohl. “I don’t believe in paper journalism. I believe that in ten to 15 years none of you will be still reading newspapers, the same as today none of you is still using the same mobile phone you were using five years ago. The paper, the printing process and the distribution of newspapers are 70 to 80 percent of the production process. The newsrooms only cost 20 percent. So I think we have to move on. We will read online the same way we read printed paper now.”
The real problem is that everybody is expecting to find free information on the internet nowadays. There are no funds to pay even the 20 percent costs for the journalists. Without financing, the press cannot be a watchdog. Because this dog has to eat as well”, explained Russ-Mohl. Who will pay the journalists’ salaries in the future? The advertising? The director of the European Journalism Observatory thinks that the solution is to convince the online readers to pay for qualitative journalistic material on the internet. “If not, we won’t have qualitative journalism anymore”, he concluded.
Threat from the inside
The President of the Italian National Association of Journalists, Lorenzo Del Boca, doesn’t see the future of printed press in the same colors. First of all because the number of people without an internet connection is still significantly high. Secondly because the newspapers are, according to Lorenzo Del Boca, the source of complete, deep information, not only a shortcut, a few sentences appearing on a website.
He doesn’t think that the newspapers will disappear because of a lack of advertising. The current crisis to him seems just temporary. But he does agree on the fact that the future of newspapers is endangered. From his point of view, the threat is coming from the inside, not from the outside of the newsrooms. “We publish square meters of newspapers that don’t have any value. Writing about how Obama’s wife came down the stairs with a pearl necklace which looked the same like the one Jackie Kennedy had in order to stress the connection between the message of the democrat Kennedy and the democrat Obama is the way we report about the G20 meeting. If we would have qualitative reports, the printed media would be invincible, since it gives the reader time and space for reflection. It is the same as whisky after lunch: irreplaceable. The problem is that we have to stop cutting cubic meters of the Amazon forests to print stupidities. Sometimes we print hundreds of pages of newspapers only to hide news behind some other news. We get to know the whole planet in 30 pages: we know what happens in Tokyo, Hong Kong or Africa, but we don’t know what happens 30 kilometers away from our house. This is the dilemma. If journalists will keep following the interests of the editors, there’s nothing in the future. And not only for printed press, but for the whole press. But if we do choose another way, the newspapers will remain irreplaceable, the same as the whisky after eating”, said Lorenzo Del Boca followed by vivid applause of the audience taking part at the panel discussion on the future of printed press.
