Australian newspapers ‘will stop printing by 2022’
Newspapers have 12 years or less left to live in print, the Newspaper Publishers Association will be told later this week.
Ahead of Thursday night’s Newspaper of the Year Awards, the NPA is holding a “Future Forum” during the day fronted with a keynote speech from digital consultant Ross Dawson.
In a release from the NPA, Dawson says: “By 2022 newspapers as we know them will be irrelevant in Australia. However the leading newspaper publishers of today may have transformed themselves to thrive in what will be a flourishing media industry.”
Dawson claims to have predicted tyhe rsie of social networking and microblogging in his book Living Networks which he wrote in 2002.
Thanks.
Correction: I did not say that newspapers “will stop printing”. As reported, I said that “newspapers as we know them will be irrelevant”, which is not quite the same thing. 🙂
Hi Ross,
The headline on your press release was: “Death of newspapers by 2022, says leading media futurist”.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Ross, what if the crowd are not reliable journalists? How does one distinguish accurate information?
Matt Balogh
Crap, I’ve got 12 years to find a new job!
More importantly – what will Puss do his business on?
Hi – love your thoughts on Magazines and their expiry date?
Bloggs development of a suitable arrangement for these sort of issues where amateurs are being supervised by professionals is already being done, for example, sites like the German Wikipedia are experimenting with having experts review amateurs.
Having said that, considering the current *reliable* journalists, I am not sure that the public might be better.
Great article, but I really wish someone would put spell check on before publishing. Regardless or not whether it is printed on paper or online, there are no excuses for poor grammar.
Matt, Theo:
Crowdsourced journalism is about many people sensing/ seeing/ reporting the news as it happens, filtering and selecting what is newsworthy, checking facts, providing content and analysis, and other functions. Many of these tasks can and will be done by amateurs. What makes the final output valid, credible and useful is the (sometimes) structured process in which all this happens, and the role of the professional in overseeing it.
So journalistic skills will still have a very important role – and a value which commands decent pay – while many contribute to creating richer, better news for all.
@Keith has a rather excellent point there. Newspapers serve any number of useful secondary purposes. What would we do without them?
Ross, sounds like you are describing exactly what has always happened – journalists distill information accessed from interview subjects and other sources. All that changes is the method of delivery from subject to journalist. The same thing happened when the first telegraph replaced messengers on horseback. The speed changed but the process didn’t.
Bret, yes the overall news reporting process will be quite similar in many ways to what it has been, but I think it’s a stretch to say it is exactly what has happened before. When many of the ‘journalists’ involved in the process are both amateur, and able to disseminate all of their ‘news’ and thoughts about to everyone along the way, it does become a different world. I often look to Twitter as a great, though unfiltered, source of news and insight.
Keith, Kapinny, you’re absolutely right. It sounds like there may be a market opportunity for someone!
12 Years? That long? Really?
So when Ross says that “Crowdsourced journalism is about many people sensing/ seeing/ reporting the news as it happens, filtering and selecting what is newsworthy, checking facts, providing content and analysis” … is that like all the television stations treating the Clare (chk chk boom) Werbeloff concoction as real news. I can hardly wait.
But a bit of advice for Theo – forget journalism – go back to uni and start a degree in law majoring in libel and defamation (throw in a bit of copyright to cover all the bases) – you’ll be set for life.
Peter, personally I believe that crowdsourced fact-checking and verification is going to be a lot better than what we have now. We will see.
John, if it’s earlier then I’m still right 🙂 It’s better to tell people less extreme things that they can believe rather than realities that they feel they can discard out of hand.
Yeah 12 years huh…..im sure its inevitable that we all will one day read news online, ipads, phones etc BUT LETS NOT BE NOSTRADAMUS please mate and tell us 12 years.
12 Years, not 13…….not 11 BUT 12……..OK i will go and adjust my business plan fellas.
F…Me…Dead… folks lets just concentrate on this fin year and see what develops and let it all run its natural course.
Wow – that 10 year “newspapers will be not as we know them in 10 years time” cycle came around quickly.
I was working at Fairfax in advertising back on the early noughties – and the doomsayers were saying by 2010 wait for…. wait for it…. “newspapers will be not as we know them” ta dah.
I am a digital guy through and through – but i keep hearing there has been repeated growth in newspaper circulation and readership year on year.
What’s your definition of journalist compared with reporter, Ross?
What worries me is the integrity of the reporting. You can argue that newspapers have agendas but I believe the facts when a professional journalist is writing for a reputable paper (or its website). These UGC-powered media coups like the Iran election coverage on Twitter were a load of rubbish. I was excited until I realised I was wading through repetition and little of it was founded. Exciting? Yes. Reliable? No. Citizen journalism is always going to be the same. How does the supervising journalist/editor check the validity of a story? How do we know the explosion at ground level isn’t a skilled example of photoshop manipulation?
Would never have guessed … a digital consultant says newspapers will be dead in 12 years.
Astonishing. I assume Hartigan immediately starting planning the closure of Nationwide News and put Ross on a fat retainer to save News Ltd.
Garth, I didn’t use to be that specific as the future is unknowable. But I have found that people respond better to specific predictions in shaping their thinking.
Hadley, I don’t think the distinction is too important, but in general reporters are lower level and journalists – who hold the important skills – have the experience to bring full context to a story.
Glenn, these are important issues, but I do believe we are moving towards a better system. I’ll be talking about these specific issues on ABC Sydney tonight around 9:20pm.
Imagine reading your iPad on the loo in the morning, now that’s just wrong on so many levels.
@Jacinta, I think you’re onto something there…ipoo?
In all seriousness, I dont agree with this prediction. We’ve recently increased our print run of mX in Melbourne Sydney and Brisbane to cope with the demand for our product. For us the paper medium is as popular as ever.
Both cinema and radio were given ten years to survive decades and decades ago. Still waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
This article “XXXX is going to die by XX year” reminds me of many of the consumer electronics technology stories I used to write 15 years ago – such as PDAs will take over and we won’t have dedicated phones any more. That didn’t happen – so many ‘homes of the future’ are yet to happen (like FTTH) – those stories were in about 2000 or so – and I doubt this will happen as quickly either.
There will always be room for quality journalism – whether or not that’s online or printed, demand for it will continue to exist. God help us if we lose our quality journalism and all the reasons why we studied media ethics at uni.
Bad newspapers containing bad journalism will die. Always have. Good newspapers will stop printing only when their display advertisers get a better sales response, dollar for dollar, from a web equivalent. Still a long way to go down that road..
Instead of paying Ross, perhaps News could have shown a few episodes of The Jetsons if they were looking for wacky futurist predictions.
http://www.techvert.com/6-curr.....predicted/
What will we read at the beach?
Good point, sand resistant passive screen PDA required urgently – but really, Jacinta, once you have tired a PDA or Ipad for Loo-reading, you won’t go back! 🙂
@ Bret Christian, the future will not be determined by newspaper advertising, that is a bi-product of readership.
But as the consumption of media changes from traditional channels (books, newspapers, magazines) to digital formats (Kindle, iPad, laptops, and whatever else is around the corner) and therefor traditional readership declines, the only way for the media to survive is to migrate. It’s happening now and the curve is only upwards.
Check out the iPad sales in only a few months – driving a whole new category. Or the evolution of music consumption in the last decade – when did you last buy a CD? Remember the old video library? The worlds changing and the traditional media channels are far to slow on the uptake, point in case being the SMH iPad app. The only “app” part of that was short for ‘appalling’.
The newspaper of my future is a home-delivered print-out, in broad-sheet format, personalised, containing quality journalism, articles & information that interest me and a limited set of ads that are relevant to me.
Hi Leon, yes that’s part of what newspapers will become. And when e-paper finally has all the tactile and other great properties of paper, there will be no need to print it out…
Bret, don’t forget about the pretty hefty fixed overhead of printing presses not to mention distribution costs – the value has to be significantly higher than alternatives to justify this.
Good point Matt. But the real question is whether you can wipe your arse with the iPad if the loo paper has run out!
Hi Ross,
We have a crowd sourced news site [Streetcorner.com.au] which focusses on local news. People know whats happening on the other side of the world, but have lost our conversations about whats going on in our local communities.
Our contributors are reporting on issues and events that are important to them and which are local. But importantly they are authentic and they are getting a voice and are feeling empowered by this.
Many issues that get raised on our site end up being covered by main stream media and people tell us they are sourcing these stories from our site.
Sorry I wont get the chance to hear your thoughts on Crowdsourced journalism at the conference.
So who’ll win ? Brian or Jack ?
Hi John and Ross,
John! You know I would never ever do that to a newspaper, I have too much respect for them 🙂
Matt Balogh
What publications need to realise is that for people these days, the news should be free.
Television – free
Radio – free
WWW – free, and we can access the sources the herald copy & pastes without much scrutiny and quality journalism. And hear our opinion on it, not some red neck columnist.
As soon as someone (with quality journalism) can come up with a substantially sized, free paper their circulation will increase. Their advertising revenue will increase. They can pay distributers more.
And their papers will stop looking paper thin because a certain free paper that’s only headlines masquerading as news has pipped them to the post.
Oh no Bella, news is NEVER free. Sure, you can watch Channel 9 and watch the ads, or you can get better news coverage, ad free, on the ABC. Same with web site, I personally am more than happy to pay for online news with no pop up ads, and good quality. sure, there will be free sites with ads. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a market for paid news.
Matt Balogh
so how are Mr Ross’ predictions any different from what was in Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing? And as far as predictions, for all those that haven’t give Being Digital a read – Nicholas Negroponte saw it all coming way back in 1995 – http://amzn.to/bedigi
@alwayssomatt: publications either printed or web that carry ads serve two parallel functions. They can’t be equated to downloading music, movies etc., although pay-per-view news sites can. Ross, display ads in credible printed publication are very powerful and in my experience their cost-effectiveness shows no sign of waning, despite the massive cost of killing trees, running printing presses etc.
Why this is so despite the obvious speed, cost and accessibility advantages of hand-held reading devices others can explain, but I suspect it has something to do with the fragmentation of electronic audiences.
I think 12 years is optimistic….
http://www.TwoCentsGroup.com.au
Hadley: Reporters own one suit apiece, journalists two.
He went on to say, “In 13 years media organisations will beam the news directly into subscribers’ brains before they wake up in the morning, eat their breakfasts-in-a-pill and fly to work in their aerial cars.”
When Amazon.com launched there was gnashing of teeth as the pundits predicted “the end of the bookstore” cause everyone will be buying books online.
Well, yes, there have been major changes in book retailing & publishing but we still have bookstores. We still have books, albeit more ebooks now.
I’m sure there will be (are) major changes in newspapers, in magazines, in books, in music, but to make predictions about what / how things will be in the future is fraught with danger.
Whatever did happen to the flying car?
But Joey,
If amazon.com.au was allowed to launch (which it wouldn’t be, I’m sure, because of protectionism) it wopuld kill the local book market.
The last Australian monopolies – supermarkets, free TV and book selling.
In defence of newspapers and why they will survive:
No battery, no screen, no operating system, no connectivity issues, no upgrades needed, authoritative due to its physical nature, readable anywhere, quick to navigate … the list goes on. Death within 12 years is very optimistic and sounds more like (successful) spin.