Blog

For financial reasons, newspapers and magazines are increasingly ending their print editions and going online-only. Examples include Canada’s La Presse, Finland’s Taloussanomat and magzines like Company and Glamour. By doing so, some have returned to profitability, but with what consequences for their audiences? In this talk, given at the 2019 asi International Publishing & Data Conference, I explore how the case of the New Musical Express (NME) magazine can help answer this question.

How do British journalists see their role in society? Do they consider themselves aggressive opponents of those in power? Do they aim to influence politics? To find out, we compared British journalists’ professional attitudes to those of journalists in another country with a similar media landscape but a more muted press: Germany. Our analysis revealed several significant differences between journalists in Britain and Germany. We found that British journalists believe it more important than their German colleagues to confront those in power and hold them to account. But – contrary to expectations – we found no difference between British and German journalists’ eagerness to set the political agenda or influence public opinion.

The consequences of The Independent's decision to go online-only show that although ditching print may bring newspapers financial sustainability it can decimate audience attention. 

Newspaper and magazine audience measurement in Britain underwent a quiet revolution today with the release of the first full set of data from the Publishers Audience Measurement Company (PAMCo) which replaces the National Readership Survey (NRS). I've been crunching the data and here are my top three findings: 1) Day-to-day, print is newspapers’ most important single platform. 2) Tablets aren't "saving newspapers." 3) Newspapers' audiences remain in platform silos.

Readers aged 18–34 are spending nearly twice as much time with newspapers’ print editions than with their websites and apps. In 2016, the 18–34 year old British readers of eight UK national newspapers spent a total of 21.7 billion minutes reading the news brands’ print editions, but just 11.9 billion minutes using their websites and apps. This is one finding from my new study, co-authored with Richard Fletcher from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University.

Photo: Sjoerd Lammers.

Since Snapchat launched Snap Map in June, the feature has caused controversy, with parents, schools, and charities expressing concern about its use by children. However, Snap Map is just one of a range of apps that allows social network users to be monitored without their knowledge and with pin-point accuracy. Indeed some of these apps far exceed Snap Map in their surveillance capabilities, able to track individuals over time and across multiple social networks.