Jon Faine moderated an excellent discussion yesterday morning on local ABC radio in Melbourne on the future of newspapers. I found the discussion between Michael Gawenda (former editor of The Age), Eric Beecher (former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald) and Sally Warhaft (editor of The Monthly) to be most interesting. They covered disruption brought about by the Internet as well as challenged brought about by the current economic situation.
I hope they load the discussion to their website as I am sure many newsagents would find it interesting – our channel gets a fleeting mention from Eric Beecher.
A conversation for another day could be about the challenges faced by businesses and professions built around newspapers. Look at newsagencies. Our channel was createdby a publisher in the 1800s on the goldfields of Victoria. We have been servants ever since. We are struggling to contemplate life out of service.
Why dont Newspapers create a application that allows you to recieve the newspaper 7 days a week directly to your computer? the newspaper could be delivered in a email form but it will only open using the custom made application,you could also include some sort of digital rights mangement ( therefore making it non-shareable), of course the customer would have to pay a yearlty subscription fee for this service.