Death of Print: The decline of print and traditional medias? is a a research project by Matthew Carlin a BA Multimedia Student at Nottingham Trent University, UK. The research is looking into the apparent decline of traditional media as reported by some media organisations, and will evaluate whether traditional media is still a viable format in the 21st century.
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Looking at reports in the press with titles such as “Google almost doubles profit as advertisers rush online” (Guardian 2006) “UK online ad spend worth almost £1bn” (Guardian 2006), “ITV braced for £80m slump in ad revenue” (Guardian 2006), “Channel 4 plans to raise ad rates”, (Guardian 2006) describing how online advertising spend is up whilst in the traditional medias they are struggling for advertising revenue, one could potentially think that digital media is now signalling a decline in traditional medias.
However whilst this may be the case there are certainly other issues we should consider. Firstly, a similar thing happened around the last so called “dot.com bubble”. Businesses flocked online, spending millions advertising etc... Then the “dot.com bubble” burst leaving many people in serious debt. It could be considered that this current increase in online advertising is just another “dot.com bubble”, only time will tell whether this is the case or not. Secondly, this increase could be a temporary “blip” so to speak. Many of the traditional media companies have been slow to act on digital media, meaning that some of the newer so called “new media” companies have been able to take up a large market share quickly in the absence of any real competition. It could be argued that once the traditional media companies embrace digital media that we may see this shift in advertising revenue rebalance itself as the traditional media companies will be able to integrate digital media into their traditional medias easier than a digital media company can integrate itself into the tightly controlled and extremely competative traditional media market. We have already seen some of the traditional media companies trying to buy their way into the successful new media companies for example, News International buying the company that owns the hugely successful MySpace.com website. Again it may be a number of years before we can see whether this theory is correct.
Also the Guardian reports that “TV not losing out to Google, say analysts” this reports describes how Dominic Proctor, chief executive of the media agency Mindshare Worldwide feels that it is not because of digital media companies like Google that ITV and Channel 4 are facing problems with their advertising revenue. He describes how “Although it is fair to say that Google is growing at a huge rate, the issue is not comparing apples with apples - Google is involved in search and ITV is brand building.” He also describes how “"It is the wrong conclusion to say that ITV is losing out to Google. Google has tapped an immense 'long tail' of small advertisers that would never be traditional TV advertisers anyway.”
Proctor certainly raises some good points although it could be argued that Google is now concentrating on brand building especially with the acquisition of Youtube.com “Google nets YouTube in $1.65bn takeover”, it seems that Google is now trying to take on these traditional media companies. Admittedly it is theorised that one of the reasons that that Google bought Youtube is because of the huge success of Youtube and the somewhat moderate success of Google own video project, “Google Video”. Even with this though and the only moderate success of Google’s own video project, it is clear to see that Google has ambitions beyond just searching. Whilst the video’s on youtube.com can only be a maximum of 10 minutes long, which somewhat restricts it’s ability to truly take the place of traditional media, how long before they lift this restriction enabling full length shows to be broadcast via youtube. Youtube has already signed deals with some of the major media companies in America for their content, signalling that Google are wanting to make Youtube.com more than just a place where amateurs upload videos. Even the media firm Aegis has started to move it’s advertising spend to sites like youtube.com (Guardian 2006)
The same report also describes how the TV advertising market has actually grown from “£3.2bn in 2003 to £3.5bn this year.” So it appears that the recent advertising slump occurring at ITV may be down to more factors than just the rise of digital media such as Google. This evidence is backed up by another Guardian report “Poor outlook for TV advertising growth” (Guardian 2006). This report describes how Carat, a media buyer owned by the company Aegis has “raised its 2006 spending forecasts for the global advertising market” (Guardian 2006) but it has “slashed estimates for the troubled UK sector because of the dire performance of TV” this indicates that the major problems faced by Channel 4 and ITV may be mainly a UK based problem, and not strictly down to the rise of digital media and online advertising spending.
Interesting though with all the reports describing this decline of traditional media compared to digital media, there have been reports of digital media companies such as Myspace and Google using traditional media methods. “MySpace weighs up spin-off magazine” (Guardian 2006). This reports how Myspace is considering a “spin-off print magazine” for the users and fans of Myspace. Although this is less surprising since the takeover of Myspace by News International and the want to integrate it into some of News International print output. Google has also used traditional media recently “Google Ads share the love with newspapers” (Guardian 2006), “Google's radio ads” (Guardian 2006) both of these report on a trial being conducted by Google on it’s advertising output, both of the trials for the different mediums work along similar lines to Google’s “Adwords” technology used on it’s search engine. Long established internet and search engine company Yahoo is also conducting a similar trial with US local newspapers “Yahoo! to share classified ads with US local newspapers” Yahoo has signed a deal with 150 local US newspapers to provide them with classified advertising and content.
It can also be argued that another one of the reasons why these digital media companies are trialling or making deals with local newspapers (like Yahoo) relates back to one of characteristics of digital media described in the chapter “What is digital media?” One of digital media characteristics is that whilst it can be a mass media it can also be personalised unlike traditional forms of mass media. Whilst this is true, one of the most popular forms of digital media, the world wide web has struggled until recently to be personalised or “local”, yes it is possible and rather clever that you can speak to someone on the other side of the world. A lot of the time though, users of the World Wide Web want local content, hey want to be able to see when the bus is coming, or when the film they want to see at the cinema is on, or what is happening in their town. Digital media’s characteristics that it is in a “constant state of flux” (Lister 2006) rather than fixed lends itself perfectly to this. Where digital media has failed mainly is actually being able to deliver that local content, this is why they are making deals with the local newspapers etc to enable to finally make the idea a reality. Traditional media companies are also trying to use digital media for the very same thing “ITV broadband television in starting blocks” (Guardian 2006) reports ITV is “gearing up for the launch of its local broadband TV service, ITV Local” The same report also describes how ITV has also acquired Enable Media, which owns directory service Scoot, another part of ITV local strategy. As we can see there is a clear trend by both traditional and digital media companies towards providing this local content and this can be seen in advertising campaigns such as yell.com made by the company AKQA (AKQA 2005)
Another trend that indicates the decline in the use of traditional media is business paying media agencies to produce digital media. This can be seen in the work produced by the agency AKQA on behalf of client yell.com. (AKQA, 2005). Not only did AKQA produce the traditional media like,posters,and Television Sponsorship advertising, they also went beyond this and produced not only interactive digital 6 sheet posters, online advertising (in the form of video banners) but the agency also implemented a GPS system into advertising on the sides of London buses.
This means that users of these posters can find local content without having to resort to using the internet or other means. This has advantages over the use of traditional media; if the poster were a static traditional poster there would be no means to update. So if a company wanted to advertise local content it would require more hours to keep having to produce content, which would take up a massive amount of time, and thus be costly. The interactive 6 sheet posters also fit into the key point of digital media described in chapter 1. These are:
• Hypertextual and immersive navigation properties
• That digital media is in a “constant state of flux” rather than being fixed.
• Registrational interactivity
• That it is a mass production technology but one that is personalised.
The interactive 6 sheet posters fit perfectly into this idea. A user of the poster has registrational interactivity with it, they are able to put in basic information and it produces something back to the user, the screen is also in a constant state of flux as it can be updated whenever necessary to provide up to date content, this is easier and quicker than using traditional media. It could also be a mass produced technology available in every bus shelter yet remain still local to that area and user and depending on the input of the user ,making it personalised.
From this real world example, we can see that digital media has advantages over the use of traditional media, as it stands, digital media may be more costly to set up than traditional media in some cases, (such as installing interactive video screens in every bus shelter) but it has unique properties that make it a much more effective medium in a lot cases too As prices of digital media drop, we may see more video screens being put into bus shelters. This price drop may already be seen by the fact that Transport for London has recently a deal to install video screens in every tube station in Zone 1 of the London Underground network. (International Herald Tribune 2006). The same report also details another advertising company has signed a deal to install 1600 digital ad screens at Heathrow and various other sites.
As we have seen then in this chapter the theory that digital media has advantages over traditional media appears to be true, to test this though the report embarked on a case study to test this theory in practice.
This case study will compare and evaluate the print output of the Guardian Newspaper against the output of the Guardian Unlimited website over a set period of time. The case study will consider whether the Guardian Unlimited Website has any advantages over the print output, it will also consider if any, what can not be done by the Guardian Unlimited website compared to the Guardian’s traditional output.
The use of digital media such as the internet for news reporting has been around in some forms for many years. There have been websites reporting on wildly varied topics since the internet was first around. It is only recently however that the ‘major players’ from the traditional news media industries have had a presence online. For example, the Guardian Unlimited website first launched in 1999 (Guardian 2007), this was one of the first of the ‘major players’ to launch and recently we have seen numerous other traditional news media launch websites to, for example the Newspaper “The Sun” also recently launched. It is only in recent years however that the use of the internet to read new has increased dramatically; this could be down to broadband now being widely available. Broadband has enabled users on these sites to get a much richer experience than they previously could with dial up. Instead of just a predominantly text based site, we now how visually rich sites with images and even videos.
To begin the case study the report will firstly look at the guardian newspapers circulation figures versus the Guardian Unlimited websites users. According the guardian themselves the print version of the guardian has an average daily circulation of 378,738 (Guardian 2006) and an average issue readership of 1,222,000 (Guardian 2006). The guardian also has figures for its website; it reports that it has 133,598,518 page impressions per month and 13,841,182 unique users per month. If we break the websites monthly figure down to average number of page impressions per day (taking a month as 31 days) then we have a figure of 4,309,629 page impressions per day, and if we take the number of unique user per month and get a daily figure for that we get an average of 446,489 unique users per day. If we take the number of unique users per month and compare it to the average daily circulation of the newspaper then we see that the website in theory has over 60,000 more users that than the newspaper sells each day. From this evidence it shows that there is indeed a place for online news and that more people are using digital media for this than they are using traditional media.
The report will now look at compare and analyse on a daily basis the Guardian Unlimited website versus the Guardian Newspaper.
This was the Homepage of the Guardian Unlimited website, on the first day of the case study.
As we can see from the screenshot in figure 3.1. The Guardian Unlimited Website has a headline at the top of the page in this case “Saddam sentenced to hang” as well as links to other important news items for that point of time on the day. For example there is a link to a football story about the previous day’s football match (in black underneath the main navigation). If you compare this to the Guardian’s print output the same day (in figure 3,2)
We can see that the print version features the same headline as the website albeit phrased slightly differently “Endgame for a dictator: Saddam sentenced to hang” It may be phrased differently to help attract potential buyers of the printed Guardian, as a eye catching headline is needed on newspapers in order to make it stand out from the crowd of other newspapers around it. With a website, a slightly different technique is needed to attract readers (or users). Yes a website should stand out from the crowd but unlike a newspaper it doesn’t often have competing titles directly next to it. This means that the “Headline doesn’t necessarily have to be as big as the printed version, as other means such as banner advertising, linking of blogs, search engines and other websites are used to bring in readers and increase traffic to the website. This can be confirmed by the screenshot in fig 3.1. We can also see by comparing fig 3.1 and 3.2 that some of the same information is duplicated, the football story is also on the front page of the paper (top right hand corner). The printed version also contains a number of supplements “G2, mediaguardian,sport” If we look at fig 3.1 we can see that on the Guardian Unlimited web site we can see in the main navigation (Just below Guardian Unlimited in Black and grey lettering) that there are links to both a sport section and a media section
If we look at the screenshot in fig 3.3
This is from the Guardian Unlimited website on the evening on the first day of the case study. We can see that the top headline has now changed from “Saddam sentenced to hang” to “Briton ‘hoped to kill thousands” this is not only a change of headline but a totally different top story, whilst due to the fixed nature of the traditional media the headline in the printed version is still the same as in fig 4.2. “Endgame for a dictator: Saddam sentenced to hang” This already shows one of the advantages of digital media, the fact that it is in a constant state of flux, meaning that breaking news stories can be easily updated on the website
Figure 3.4 shows the screenshot from day 2 of the case study. The top headline on the website is”Republicans closing the gap” if we take a look at fig 3.5
We can see that the same top story and headline is mirrored in the print version of the Guardian. Strangely though, the top story on the website from the evening of the previous day does not feature anywhere on the printed versions front page, it appears on the first inside page. (See fig 3.6) Tuesday printed edition of the Guardian comes with the supplements “g2, education guardian and sport” It does not however come with the same supplements of the previous day but again if we take a look at the screenshot of the web site on the second day (fig 3.3) we can see again there is a link to the previous days supplement on the website. This shows another advantage of digital media, the fact that “digital media can be compressed into very small spaces” This means that unlike the unlike the print version, the website can store many more stories than the paper physically can, this means that whereas the guardian may only be able to include one of their supplements once a week because of space issues, the website can have all the stories (and more) available all the time.
If we take a look at fig 3.7, this is from the evening of the second day.
We can see from this that the Headline has changed from the morning “Lawyers poised as US votes” rather than “Republicans closing the gap” The website has also changed it’s other top stories into a banner to link to the elections happening in America. Even though only two days of the case study have been analysed we can see a trend emerging, which is the ability to update the website continuously throughout the day with breaking news stories. This fits in with the definition of digital media described in the first chapter of this report. The idea that digital media is in a “constant state of flux”.
Fig 3.8 above shows a screenshot of the Guardian Unlimited website on the morning of the third day of the case study, the top story being “Democrats take control of House” Whilst if we take a look at the print version of the Guardian on the third day of the case study in fig 3.9
We can see that the headline here is “Lawyers poised as US vote hit by technical glitches” This is interesting as this is the same headline that appeared on the Guardian website in the evening on the second day, yet by the third day on the Guardian Unlimited Website, the story has already moved on and changed yet printed version still has the ‘old’ headline. This again shows that the ideas and definitions of digital media in the chapter “what is digital media?” such as “digital media being in a constant state of flux” and “It can be manipulated far more easily than analogue forms.” are not only true theoretically but that they are also true when applied to a ‘real world’ example such as this.
Fig 3.10 above is the Guardian Unlimited website in the evening of the third day of the case study. As we can see, the top story and headline has changed yet again, this again confirms the theory of digital media being in a “constant state of flux”.
The print version of The Guardian on day 3 contains the following supplements, sport, and society guardian. As we can see from the previous days in the case study, the print version of The Guardian doesn’t contain all the sections that the Website carries everyday. Again this confirms the theory of digital media being able to be compressed into small spaces and shows one of the major advantages of digital media over the traditional medias.
Fig 3.11 below shows the print version of the guardian on the fourth day of the case study, as we can see this contains the same top story as the Guardian Unlimited website had the day before.
This shows that traditional media can in certain situations be far behind in terms of being up to date.
Comparing this to the Guardian Unlimited website (fig 3.12 below) we can see that it does indeed have the same top story as the printed version, albeit with a rephrased headline the print version has “The cost of war: Rumsfeld ousted in US poll fallout” whilst the website just has “Rumsfeld ousted in US poll fallout”. As we have discussed before though this is due to the nature of selling papers and the need of having an attention grabbing headline.
Whilst on day four, the print version of the Guardian and the Guardian Unlimited website are in sync in terms of the headline, we have seen from day 3 of the case study that the Guardian Unlimited website was way ahead in terms of reporting the story, being able to report it numerous hours before the traditional print version can.
Looking at fig 3.13. below, we can see from this screenshot of the Guardian website that it is again ahead by numerous hours in reporting a breaking story. Again this confirms one of digital media’s main advantages over traditional media, the ability for digital media to be updated almost instantaneously.
Fig 3.15 (below shows the front page from the print edition of the Guardian on the same day.
Again we can see from comparing these two that the website is again ahead of the edition in the reporting of news stories, whilst the headline of the print edition is “MI5 30 terror plots being planned in UK”, we can see in fig 3.15 , the website has already moved this story to be of lesser importance and instead shows us the headline “Blair backs terror warning” with the story of “30 terror plots being planned in the UK” only being a smaller link. As we have seen from the other days of this case study, the website being ahead of the print version in terms of a breaking news story is certainly a trend for the Guardian.
Looking as a whole at the print version of the Guardian and the Guardian Unlimited website, and not just at specific days, there are a number of advantages that the Guardian Unlimited website has over the print version. The website offers a number of digital services such under the title “News Direct” (see fig 3.16).
These services include “G24 PDF service”, this is a service which allows a user to download an Adobe PDF’s of the latest stories and if they would like print it out to compile their own newspaper.The news direct service also includes “Desktop Alerts” allowing a Microsoft Windows user to download a little programme which sits on their desktop that is continuously updated with the latest stories about various categories such as sport, media etc. They also offer a very similar service via e-mail where a user can have links to that day’s story e-mailed to them. This service is also on offer in the form of mobile text alerts. The other way in which the Guardian website offers digital services, is in the form of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. These are becoming increasingly popularly on the web, as they allow information to be continuously updated throughout the day, and if you have the right software for these you can see all the headlines throughout the day with out having to revisit a website numerous times throughout the day. As the Guardian Unlimited website is on the World Wide Web it potentially means that the Guardian can use videos to tell the story rather than just words, this is something that print version has never been able to do.
All of these extra services that the Guardian Unlimited website offers are only possible because of some of digital media’s properties as described in the chapter “What is digital media?” Properties such as how Lister describes digital media:
• Media texts are ‘dematerialised’ in the sense that they are separated from their physical form as photographic print book, roll of film etc;
• Data can be compressed into very small spaces;
• It can be accessed at very high speeds and in non linear ways;
• It can be manipulated far more easily than analogue forms.
Because digital media has properties such as these, it means that the Guardian Unlimited website can offer there digital services, without it costing too much or having to spend too much time on it. Lister describes how “digital media is in a constant state of flux” (Lister 2003) and this case study of the guardian proves this as we have seen their website changing throughout the day unlike the print version of the Guardian which is fixed throughout the day. This is because unlike digital media which Lister describes as “existing in a mathematical realm”(Lister 2003), print media exists as a fixed object that you can touch, to change this throughout the day as news stories broke would not only be prohibit ably expensive but would take large amount of time that the paper simply wouldn’t have, plus they would then have to re-distribute that printed media to the whole country again and again.
The Guardian Unlimited website also offers a form of registrational interactivity that the print version does not have. Registrational interactivity is, as we have seen in chapter “What is digital media?” is one of the characteristics of digital media, and it is the ability for the user of the medium to interact with a medium by “writing back”(Lister 2003). Yes one could argue that the print version of The Guardian, like many newspapers offers the reader to write letters into the newspaper, thus being a form of registrational interactivity. The report feels that this is a very basic form of registrational interactivity. As a reader is not directly interacting with that medium, they are merely writing back to the paper, unlike on say the Guardian Unlimited website, where users are able to type in comments on many of the stories, see fig 4.17 below. This means that this is a better from of registrational interactivity and because of digital media fluid nature, users of the website are instantaneously able to view other users comments on respond to them.
From the case study of the guardian we can see that by comparing the digital media version to the traditional media version, the digital media version has many advantages over that of the print version. Not only can the digital media version be updated far easier than the print version, it also offers more than the print version offers. It offers the user a better form of registrational interactivity, it also offers the user the ability to be updated constantly, and this as we have seen is due to the nature and characteristics of digital media. At least for the guardian it seems as though digital media means that it can offer far more to its users or readers than the traditional media version can.