Flexibility is trumpeted as another advantage of the digital newsagent over its corner shop rival. Regular readers of a particular publication can choose to buy a month’s subscription to their favoured title but for a generation that has grown up with the luxury of free content from a plethora of different providers, there is an opt-out from that rigidity.

Read more of what Amol Rajan has to say here in his column at The Independent.

“If you think that we’re totally eradicating the printing and distribution costs for these publications, as well as opening them up to a whole new market, I think in time we could argue that we ought to be able to offer a cheaper product than our rivals in normal newsagents. There are potentially enormous cost-savings to be made there.”

Ouch!  Here, Rajan is quoting Tony Pescott. Tony Prescott, director of new business development at Asda, the Wal-mart company which has launched a digital newsagent offering in the UK.

The issues here ought to be the main agenda item at newsagent meetings.  Many of the issues we face today tie back to challenges facing print and our bricks and mortar businesses.

Click on the image below to see a TV report, The uncertain future of the newspaper industry.  This ran an New England (US) TV NECN – New England Cable News – last night.

I am sure that other TV stations are running similar reports.  Public reports like this become a self fulfilling prophecy.

From a newsagents perspective, the concern has to be howw we configure our businesses in terms of attracting customers and the shop fit itself for the changes coming whatever they are.

“The old model of newspapers is dying. The newspaper industry is trying to innovate as much as possible and it just hasn’t struck gold yet and figured out what will work best. It’s a serious problem for them and they may not solve it at all because it may turn out that less and less people want to buy newspapers in the future.”

This is a quote from Ed Butler, a Senior Analyst with IBISWorld.  He is quoted in an article published by ad industry journal B&T speaking about the turmoil at Fairfax following the ‘resignation’ today of CEO David Kirk and the sacking yesterday of Alan Oakley as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald – are evidence of the challenges of newspapers.  These changes have been brought about on the back of a considerable drop in Fairfax share price, staff retrenchments earlier this year and other major changes.

Newsagents are experiencing changes in their dealings with Fairfax through trimmed margin on subscription offers, more complex and time consuming consumer offers and other changes.   Fairfax sees newsagents as a cost rather than an opportunity.  If they reversed this view and treated newsagents with economic respect they may have healthier sales than today.  By this I mean that Fairfax should reward newsagents for growing sales.  Instead, with some of their current offers, newsagents are effectively penalised for new subscription customers.