I am very conscious that I am in the middle of a battle ground. You see, before joining FreshMinds, I spent most of my undergraduate life in the low budget offices of my student newspaper, and the subsequent two years pursuing a career in journalism. But for the last 18 months, I have been equally submerged in the world of blogging (both here, for our sister blog at FreshMinds Talent, and on my personal blog View from the Terraces) - the 21st century’s egalitarian answer to newspapers, magazines and old media.
Like the infamous grey squirrel, the rapid growth of new media is threatening to make traditional journalism an endangered species. And the red squirrels in this strained metaphor know all about it. I was lucky enough to be invited by the trustees of the Phillip Geddes Memorial Prize to a lunch at the headquarters of the Financial Times last Friday. The message from some of the grandees of old media there on the day was that good journalism has to be a product, and a product that customers pay for. Lionel Barber, the editor of the FT, joked that he was “fully behind Gordon Brown in tackling inflation” after doubling the price of the FT to £2 in little over three years. But he also made the point that all his publication’s content was paid for - including all the online content on their website, in stark contrast to the likes of Guardian Unlimited and Times Online.
The crisis has reached a head in the States, where the emergence of a host of now world famous political and celebrity spotting blogs and bloggers (The Huffington Post, Perezhilton, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, to name but a few) has undermined the country’s network of powerful local newspaper titles. In May this year Paul Harris at The Observer wrote a poignant article about the plight of Philadelphia, which was in danger of becoming the USA’s first major city to be without a local newspaper. The Daily News and once great Inquirer were both bankrupt - and faced with annihilation, have since decided to circulate the Daily News as a supplement within the more illustrious Inquirer.
In the article, Harris describes the “race no one wants to win: which major US city will be the first to lose all its daily papers? Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Newark are just a few of the other reluctant participants.” But there are bigger fish on the brink of extinction. The New York Times (which also owns 17 other titles including the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune) lost £51 million in the first quarter of this year alone. Even the Wall Street Journal has been subject to uncertainty since slipping behind USA Today as America’s most read newspaper. Here in the UK, my local paper back in Bath has gone from a daily to a weekly - a process that is being repeated across the country in countless cities and towns.
Protecting good journalism needn’t be at odds with new media. Blogs like this one should ignite interest and hopefully encourage you to go back and read the salaried Harris’ original article (do it, it’s just here). Then there are blogs, like The Huffington Post, that are actively reinvesting advertising revenue into investigative journalism. But ultimately, this is more than just a battle over how to put money into journalists’ back pockets. It’s about whether, in the age of web 2.0 and 24 hour news, old media and new media titles alike can convince consumers to pay for their content. A penny for your thoughts…
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About the author
Charlie Boss is a former sports writer and freelance journalist turned marketeer for FreshMinds. Since joining FreshMinds in 2007, he has helped getting this blog off the ground as well as contributing to the recruitment consultancy’s PR, direct mail and speaking campaigns.



















