La democratización de los contenidos en Time Magazine

Subo de Axios Media Trends esta nota de Sara Fischer sobre la decisión de la revista Time de liberar todos sus contenidos de cualquier muro de pago.

Exclusive: Time to remove digital paywall

Time is fully removing its digital paywall beginning June 1, its CEO Jessica Sibley told Axios. 

 

Why it matters: The company, which turned 100 in March, has had some form of a digital paywall since 2011. 

Driving the news: Sibley said the shift is both a business and editorial decision. 

• "The opportunity to reach more audiences globally, that are younger, and that are diverse, is really important to Sam and myself," she noted, referencing Time's newly-appointed editor in chief Sam Jacobs. Jacobs is the youngest editor in chief in Time's history. 

• Time plans to produce more ad-supported, digital content that will live on its website, its mobile app and across social media. 

• The company will continue to cover the same types of topics editorially and to lean heavily into a few key focus areas, such as climate and sustainability, health care and politics, she said. 

Details: Time currently has 1.3 million print subscribers and 250,000 digital subscribers. 

• The digital content from Time's magazine will now be free, alongside all other content on the website, including 100 years' worth of Time's archived content. 

• The company will still charge for the print product and still offer a paid digital version of the print magazine through retailers (like Amazon Kindle and Apple News) and through Apple’s App Store. 

• Paid subscribers to the website will be notified of the changes immediately, and their subscription payments will expire when the paywall is removed June 1. 

Be smart: Being able to reach more people and expand Time's brand exposure is a key focus for Sibley as she seeks to grow Time's business globally, especially across events. 

• For example, last year, Time expanded its TIME100 Impact Awards to Dubai. 

• Removing any friction that would prevent Time from expanding its audience "is going to allow us to do what we need to do for the next 100 years," she said. 

• "We believe in the democratization of content." 

Between the lines: With more of Time's business shifting to different revenue streams, like events and licensing, the company has flexibility to experiment with a new subscription strategy. 

• "We know that in media, we're always looking for new models and are continuing on our digital transformation and innovation journey," Sibley said. 

• Part of that process includes "understanding consumer behavior and making sure that we are moving in the right direction with how consumers are engaging in content," she added. 

• Today, Time Studios, the company's TV and film division, brings in around 25% of its revenues. Last year, the company earned around $200 million in revenue. 

Catch up quick: Time first launched a hard paywall on its website in 2011 against all of its magazine content. Later that year, it added the hard paywall on all of its archives. It experimented with different types of meters and payment structures across its multiple brands in the years since. 

 

• In 2015 and 2016, when Time still was a part of Time Inc.,and owned a slew of niche print magazine brands, it began to experiment with metered paywalls that get triggered after a reader visits a website a certain amount of times. It ultimately returned to a hard paywall model in 2016. 

• In 2021, three years after Time had been acquired by billionaire Marc Benioff, the company returned to a metered paywall across its whole site, including its archives. 

The big picture: Legacy publishers are still trying to figure out how to make money online. Many media companies leaned more heavily into subscriptions during the Trump presidency and COVID-19 era, but with inflation running high, subscription fatigue is setting in for some. 

• Gannett, the U.S.'s largest local newspaper company, is reducing the number of articles behind its paywall in order to boost the company's ad revenue, Axios has reported.  

• Quartz dropped its paywall last year. Spotify is dropping paywalls on some of its podcasts. Netflix, Disney+ and other streamers have debuted cheaper, ad-supported subscription plans. 

The bottom line: "I don't think that we're going to be alone or not followed by others that are going to look at new business models that are right for their businesses, for their audiences and how potential consumers new and existing and everything in between are able to access that content," Sibley said.

Vastas zonas del planeta

Qué pasa si dejamos Afganistán es el título de la nota de portada de la revista Time de esta semana (29 de julio). Ayer subí esa tapa inquietante sin más comentarios que el título del post: Para qué sirve el periodismo. Agradezco los comentarios, pero debo confesar que agregaron preocupación a la que tengo hace tiempo sobre la capacidad de discusión (o diálogo) entre los seres humanos de este siglo XXI. Vencer al oponente -al que piensa distinto- parece consistir en decir otra cosa más brutal de la que el interlocutor se olvidó o no quiso recordar. Y así se puede seguir hasta el infinito en una discusión adolescentes, en lugar de intentar convencer con argumentos del mismo calibre o sobre el mismo tema. Y sospecho que es porque no se les ocurre que se puede cambiar de opinión.

-"¿Por qué Time no dijo lo mismo durante los 40 años de dictadura de Franco?"
¡Qué se yo! Es otro tema, para la historia del periodismo. Y estoy seguro de que sí dijo, y más de lo que piensa el comentarista. Hizo más que cientos que ahora cacarean que nadie hizo nada por ellos. Solo hay que buscar los archivos.

-"Hay 40 países en los que se hace ablación de órganos a las mujeres y no salen en Time..."
Si. Es una barbaridad la ablación de órganos genitales a las mujeres. Y no es cierto que no salgan en Time, tanto que posiblemente lo sabemos por Time y por otras publicaciones por el estilo y no por los diarios progresistas de España o la Argentina.

Fin de la cuestión.

Ahora pregunto: ¿les gustó esa tapa? ¿les parece que así se hace periodismo?

Mientras lo piensan, pueden ver en Salon una muy buena nota sobre esa tapa de Time. Si no la quieren leer completa les ahorro el enlace con la conclusión de Mary Elizabeth Williams:

Does the picture of a young girl, savagely mutilated by her own husband, tell us something real and important? I believe it does, more than a score of stories on the subject. But whether we can bear to look at a pelican flailing in oil or Beijing man standing in front of tank doesn't necessarily change what happens to them. And I wonder if the mere act of looking instills in some of us the comforting sense that we've done our part, simply by experiencing the cathartic moment. To look or look away isn't itself a moral choice. It's what happens next that matters. And we can applaud Time for getting out of its comfort zone and doing something bold and still feel uneasy at the amount of business calculation that might have gone into the decision to do so. Aisha is a survivor of atrocity. She's a tool of persuasion. And she's a hell of a photograph.

Y ahora contesto yo mismo: La portada me parece buena y me gusta que Time rompa el paradigma de la prueba del desayuno. Mientras pase esto en el mundo es mejor que nos revuelva las tripas una portada de Time a ignorar esas brutalidades de las que es capaz del ser humano, todavía en vastas zonas del planeta.

Pero no hubiera puesto semejante título ni hubiera orientado la nota en ese sentido. Creo que bastaba con la foto y la historia de esa nariz cortada. Y es mejor no decir que no nos vamos de Afganistán por esa razón (así, en primera persona). Es que les estamos dando argumentos para invadir vastas zonas del planeta.

Triple portada de Time con Obama, Romney y… Sandy

Mucho hype con la foto de portada/tapa de Time procedente de Instagram. El Papanatismo 3.0 parece que nunca se termina, usted perdone. Pero sí: es la primera vez que una fotografia tomada con un iPhone, editada con Hipstamatic y procedente de Instagram llega a una portada mainstream:

No es el fin del mundo ¿no? Hay decenas de fotos como esa y mucho mejores que esa sobre el Sandy. Si uno se esfuerza mucho le ve una cosa tipo Turner, pero se trata, simplemente, de la baja resolución del iPhone y de los filtros. La verdad, donde esté una cámara de alta resolución y todo lo demás, que se quite Instagram. Convengamos en una cosa: el tema no es Instagram –el dedo– sino la cabeza del fotoperiodista y la de su editor –la luna.

La historia es así. La Jefa de Fotografía de la revista, Kira Pollack, viendo que el cierre se le echaba encima y el huracán también, convocó a cinco fotógrafos de la zona afectada. La idea era que fotografiaran con sus teléfonos y cargaran imágenes en el canal Instagram de la revista casi en tiempo real. Los cinco son, además, grandes fans de esa red social –y estupendos reporteros.

Ben Lowy, el autor de esa foto de primera, explica en su tumblr cómo "desde hace años" usa el iPhone en detrimento de las cámaras clásicas:

"Apuntar y disparar" ha sido una experiencia liberadora. Me ha permitido redescubrir la emoción de ver las imperfecciones y felices accidentes presentados a través de la lente de mi dispositivo de mano. Soy capaz de crear imágenes, editarlas y transmitirlas directamente a este blog, crear un flujo de trabajo moderno y eficiente para la más ineficiente de las actividades: expresarme.

Bien visto. Pollack remata: “You have to pick the right photographers.” Claro. "And the right pictures", añadiría yo.

Resultado: la galería de fotos llevó el 13% del tráfico de todo el sitio web durante la semana pasada. La cuenta de Instagram de la revista ganó más de 12.000 seguidores en las primeras 48 horas de vida de la dichosa galería.

Lo dicho: sentido común de la jefa a la hora de organizar la cobertura y saber dónde trabaja hoy. Time es hoy un sitio web más que un semanario impreso. Del impreso queda la sustancia: la tradición y la exigencia de una calidad gráfica sobresaliente. Eso es el patrimonio de la marca Time/Life y no el hecho de imprimir un semanario.

Luce y Hadden estarían contentos.

Los editores de la revista lo tuvieron bien presente a la hora de elegir el enfoque de su tema de tapa: el después del huracán. El antes ya se lo habían contado en la web.

Es una lección elemental, sí. Pero aun hay quien no se entera.

Fuera de los estados de la costa Noroeste, la portada/tapa de Time es esta:

Ya se conoce que además de elegir a los buenos fotógrafos hay que elegir a los buenos portadistas, de los que Time está últimamente escasa. Ese simpático recurso de la portada del derecho y del revés no solo está más visto que el tebeo…

Año 2002

Año 2008

Año 2012

…sino que ellos mismos ya lo habían usado con poca gracia en 2006 para las elecciones de mitad de período:

El azul es el color de los demócratas y el rojo, de los republicanos. Cuánta perspicacia. Como las desgracias nunca vienen solas, han extendido la gracia azulgrana al marco de la portada/tapa que, como sabe, siempre es rojo desde la edición del 3 de enero de 1927, dedicada a un periodista: Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery:

Salvo tres excepciones. La primera en cambiar el color corporativo fue la dedicada al 11-S:

…otra el especial anual sobre el medio ambiente del año 2008:

…y la del décimo aniversario del 11-S:

Estas elecciones presidenciales no exigían poner a la revista un marco del Futbol Club Barcelona. Una de las últimas acciones publicitarias de la revista tiene que ver precisamente con ese marco rojo:

Reversible magazine covers? Been there, done that, de Chuck Apple en ACES.

Las noticias no son películas

Les paso la conversación por correo electrónico entre el GEN y Mark Little, de NevaLabs, tal como aparece en el blog del GEN (Global Editors Network).

Mark Little: No, we are not building a Netflix for News

The ‘Netflix for news’ analogy is often thrown around whenever there’s a new product that aims to shake up the way news is distributed. This has also been the case for Mark Little and Áine Kerr’s next venture, NevaLabs, so we wanted to find out what’s behind the gimmick. 

NevaLabs is a team of journalists, developers, and designers currently developing a personal assistant tool that aims to change the news reader experience from mindless scrolling into a daily routine. The final product will be controlled through an app, but delivered through multiple devices and platforms. User testing of the personal assistant prototype is currently underway. ‘We are ready for our assumptions to be challenged and our product to evolve’, said Little. 

In a conversation with the Global Editors Network, Mark Little, co-founder of NevaLabs, shrugs off the Netflix comparison and says he looks towards mindfulness apps for inspiration instead. He also gave us some insight about how his new media venture will handle user data, on what basis success will be measured, and why he won’t be trying to get people hooked on the service.

Mark Little and Áine Kerr

Food for thought from Little(compiled from an email exchange between Little and the Global Editors Network. Edited for clarity and brevity) 

Keeping it simple

We’re determined to build a radically improved user experience of news and information. A guiding operational principle for our developers and designers is therefore to make the right things easy. 

We’ve learned the value of bundling optimisation features together in user-friendly filters designed around time of day or state of mind. Artificial intelligence does a lot of the heavy lifting in simplifying the hierarchy of choices to be made by the user. 

Mindfulness apps and Instagram 

There are two analogies to keep in mind. First, the photography analogy, where mobile users now exercise creative control through amazing filters without ever getting bogged down in the technical complexity of the multiple enhancements that make them work.
Second, the rising popularity of health, fitness, and mindfulness apps that deliver a positive emotional charge around purpose-driven behaviour. That sense of agency over better outcomes is in the DNA of the products we’re developing. 

Humans and machines 

Unlike the last generation of tech platform, we are putting the machine firmly in the service of the user. It’s not enough that the machine learns from the content the user clicks on, we want the machine to also give the ability to drill down into topics that match the user’s identity. 

As well as understanding the topics users want to proactively pursue, the machine should align to the daily habits of the user. It should offer audio and not video if the user is driving to work. How much time do they have on that commute? How does their mood differ on the journey home? 

We think of this as ‘purpose-driven personalisation’, a uniquely virtuous feedback loop between the human and the machine that helps the users identify and correct any imbalances or unintended biases. 

We are also experimenting with measures of geographic and gender diversity in a user’s feed, and would eventually like to build a recommender system to correct imbalances. 

News is not music. Or movies. 

We’ve grown increasingly wary of the Netflix or Spotify for News analogy. The data does suggest that news seekers — particularly younger users — are now more likely to pay for news because they have been conditioned to pay for music and movies. I also see evidence of a growing demand for access to multiple sources in personalised ‘playlists’ and I am inspired by the collaborative filtering that powers Spotify. 

But news is not music or movies. It doesn’t have the same shelf life. It plays a very different role in the lives of individuals and their society. News should not be unbundled from the authority of its original source. People want limits on the time they spend on news, not endless bingeing. 

So, no, NevaLabs is not building a Netflix for News. 

Re-imagining the public square 

Our system is designed to spot outlier topics and entities, helping users drill down into aspects of a story that are not immediately evident. Also, one of the most exciting discoveries we’ve made is the potential network effect of our system. We have come to see that we are creating a community of personal curators who are building highly curated reading lists and purposeful news habits that will be shared with other users in the network. This re-imagining of the ‘public square’ offers tremendous scope for serendipity, both in accidental discovery of new ideas, but also in collaborative filtering, which exposes users to different perspectives from similar people. 

How NevaLabs will change the news reader experience

Detached from advertising and social distribution 

One of the most liberating things about detaching news from advertising and social distribution is that we only care about data that is absolutely aligned with the user’s intentions. We’re completely in their service. We have no incentive to harvest, identify or store data that is not absolutely useful to the user. To back up best intentions, we’re actively seeking technology partners who can help store user data in personal silos the user can control rather than vast corporate databases. 

Emotion and misinformation 

We want to be the first media startup to build the concept of ‘trust metrics’ into our DNA. To begin, we want to provide clarity around the provenance of sources and content in the user’s feed. We want to alert users to content which has been contested by fact-checking networks (and show the substance of the challenge), and to monitor social signals which indicate manipulation or misinformation, such as extreme emotion. 

The strength of this approach is that it allows user to make informed decisions about the ongoing reliability of sources and adjust their preferences to reflect that. It also echoes the reality that not all contested content is untrue; sometimes fact-checks confirm the content. Our goal is always to put the user in conscious control of any outcome. 

We will likely base this feature on an open API developed by a technology partner. We’ve been experimenting with the claim review process which Google developed (and until recently had been testing publicly) and we’re excited by the evolving work of the Credibility Coalition and other open-source groups like First Draft News and the Trust Project. 

Main metric of success: Time well spent 

Non-profit innovation is necessary but not sufficient if we’re to rebuild the foundation of journalism in a digital age. We need a constellation of startups delivering constant, sustainable innovation in excellent user experience of news and information. The goal is something I like to call an ‘economy of trust’ for journalism. 

We are inspired by research that shows the apps people are happiest with are those they spend small amounts of quality time with, like health, fitness, and mindfulness apps.
At NevaLabs, the metric of the system we are building is time well spent: how much value can we deliver in the least amount of time. Our business model means we have no interest in keeping the user addicted to our platform. 

Thanks Mark!

Historias para móviles en la BBC y el Guardian

En el sitio del GEN (Global Editors Network) me encuentro con este artículo de Subhajit Banerjee sobre cómo la BBC y The Guardian cuentan historias en móviles. Le recomiendo ver en su móvil The Outline.

How the BBC and the Guardian tell stories on mobile 

The visuals editors of the BBC and the Guardian open up about how they approach stories, the key principles they follow, the mix of skills in their teams and the rivals they admire

Build for desktop then shrink down to mobile, or start with mobile and then scale up? How do we make long articles and complex charts work for small screens and fat fingers instead of wide canvases and precise mouse clicks? These are some of the questions most media organisations grapple with on a daily basis.

Two key global media giants who have been pioneering forces in delivering high quality, innovative journalism on mobile are the BBC and the Guardian. We talked to Bella Hurrell, deputy editor of BBC News Visual Journalism team and Feilding Cage, Visuals Editor of the Guardian, about how they make stories work on the small screen, their personal journeys, the key skills they focus on and their top tips.

In the beginning
‘At the BBC and we’ve been making charts, interactives and graphics in a responsive way since about 2012 or 2013 when the mobile audience began to grow significantly’, says Hurrell who has a digital journalism background. ‘Now the majority of our online audience comes to us each day on a mobile device, via our news app or responsive web, putting the mobile experience front and centre is second nature.’

Cage started thinking earnestly about mobile in 2012 while covering the election for the Guardian. ‘We produced election night results for both the desktop and mobile sites, but they were essentially two completely separate apps built by different teams. And, frankly, the mobile version was very limited that simply answered who’s winning without much detailed analysis.’ After this, all projects absolutely had to work on mobile. ‘Today, I spend a lot of time thinking about what the user is doing, when they’ll see it, and where they’re at. I tend to think how I’ll respond to something while on the bus listening to music. Will the autoplaying video annoy me? Will it work offline? I definitely spend more time thinking about the user experience and expectations on the user through a project.’

The teams
The BBC team is about 40 member strong, comprising designers (infographics, UX and video specialists), front end developers and journalists all focusing on output for the website. ‘We produce quick turnaround daily news graphics up to more interactive content including ‘personal relevance’ calculators and longer form storytelling’, explains Hurrell. The department is also home to all the BBC’s TV designers and picture editors which has been an added advantage for mobile. ‘We learned pretty early on that designing content for mobile and social media has a lot in common with designing for TV — graphics need to have a single focus, larger text and be visual to grab the attention of the distracted viewer’, offers Hurrell.

The Guardian’s Visuals team has 30 members. The current avatar was created in late 2014 by merging the graphics and interactive teams with close collaboration with the data and photo teams. ‘A key component to our team is the mix of skills. We’re a team of about 20 with skills that include video, motion graphics, photography, graphic design, UX, data and coding, But most importantly, everyone on the team is a journalist’, says Cage. The team’s motto is ‘Explain the news when words aren’t enough’. ‘We produce visuals that are essential to understanding the news and that put the news in context. The Guardian’s newsroom is fairly digitally-savvy and so we spend a lot of time working with reporters on ideas already in motion. We’ve built chart and map tools to allow reporters outside of the team to produce some of the basics of visual journalism on their own’, Cage explains.

Key principles and projects
The BBC team tries not to spend much longer than about eight weeks on any single project and collaborate on many of them with journalists and producers across the BBC. One of Hurrell’s favourites is What has President Trump said about your country? which she feels balances friendly design with interesting editorial content, has an accessible tone and provides great value as it is constantly updated with every new utterance of the US president. Then there are the calculators that follow a successful formula — explain a single idea in one sentence, allow basic inputs from the user to be entered in one mobile view, and then a reward in the form of personally relevant information. Some recent examples include the Tampon tax calculator that lets readers find out how much they have spent in value-added-tax on sanitary products in the UK, and the NHS tracker which shows the state of UK’s National Health Service by postcode.

BBC’s Trump country finder and Tampon tax calculator

Hurrell and her team try to keep it simple while working on these projects by focusing on one idea that the user can scroll through: maps, charts or graphics that are clear, engaging and tell them one thing rather than a complicated set of clickable options. Some of her top tips are:

• Don’t forget the basics
• Make sure your content is well written and properly subbed
• Don’t expect users to pinch and zoom, they won’t
• Remember ALT text and to check for colour blind accessibility
• Make it personal for the user. Assure them that their information is safe and you are not recording or storing it
• Love your user. Don’t make life hard for them by, for instance, by asking for information they don’t have to hand. They won’t go and look it up.

For Cage, the real mobile change day to day has been approaching how the team plans and edits stories. ‘We now consider a lot more the X number of things we expect the reader to get out of this and then clearly structure the piece around it. That allows you to make decisions about design, data viz and technical optimisation that are clearly focused on mobile. Then, if it works on mobile it works on desktop with maybe some small enhancements’, Cage explains.

Recent examples include tracking live London pollution data to see which site breaks legal limits in 2018 first and the card-based Mekong river interactive that also helped devise new ways to tell stories and develop user interactions on mobile.

• His top tips are:
• Focus on the story
• Have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve
• Optimise for mobile and avoid the desktop add-ons
• Make it clear on the entry screen what the page is about and don’t expect the user to scroll a few screens to have a sense of what they’re going to get
• Have a clear process for planning and thinking through projects

Effecting change
Despite hiring some of the best editorial and technical people, the larger and older media organisations often struggle to change the mindset and habits of their staff and decision makers developed over the years. It wasn’t very different for the BBC and the Guardian when it came to mobile.

Guardian’s Mekong river interactive and London pollution tracker

‘Even though the prevailing orthodoxy from the outset (when the BBC’s mobile audience began to grow significantly) was that it was better to come up with a mobile solution first and then design out into desktop, that was a really tricky shift for many journalists and editors who loved the big canvas provided by their desktop screens’, recalls Hurrell. The most telling shift came in 2016 when the BBC’s product team changed the preview function of BBC News CMS — used by thousands of journalists to make online stories — to default to a mobile view.

For Cage, a big focus this year is to shift from being reactive to proactive. ‘By the time a story appears on a newslist, it’s often too late as the publish time is within minutes to a few hours. We’ve built in time to think about the week ahead, and sometimes weeks ahead. It’s not that we need weeks to build a single project, but the extra time whilst juggling multiple projects allows us to report and develop our ideas just like any other piece of journalism’, he explains.

Best of the rest
The BBC and the Guardian may be news organisations that media companies around the world look up to for setting standards, but who do they envy and how do they see mobile storytelling shaping up in the rest of the industry?

‘Most news organisations have made big strides in terms of developing video that works best on mobile and social media. The Quartz app was an interesting move and since then some news organisations have been using conversational user interface-like explainers — refactored Q&A’s — to deliver context and background both on social media and within websites. I also think we will all get better at learning from audience data what really resonates with users and how to better structure stories. We can use them to create compelling content about sometimes harder-to-sell subjects like Yemen, Syria, climate change or Brexit’, offers Hurrell.

Cage is a fan of the Outline, the American digital publication that has been earning kudos for its mobile focused design and content: ‘I really like that they’re trying to push design and create a visually engaging experience.’

* * *

Bella Hurrell is deputy editor of the multi award winning BBC News Visual Journalism team. She works creatively with designers, developers and journalists across BBC News to produce cross-platform stories and interactive digital content. She is currently focusing on innovative storytelling techniques for mobiles.

Bella Hurrell hará una presentación en la cumbre del GEN de este año en Lisboa: When mobile takes all: four ideas you should implement by the end of 2018.

Feilding Cage is the visuals editor at the Guardian, where he has worked since 2011. Before that, he worked as an interactive developer at the Associated Press. He studied Journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds an MA in graphic communication technology & management from New York University.

Para qué sirve el periodismo (2)

Cuando apareció esa tapa de Time (29 de julio) planté sin más palabras el mismo título de este post. Después lo expliqué en este otro:

La portada me parece buena y me gusta que Time rompa el paradigma de la prueba del desayuno. Mientras pase esto en el mundo es mejor que nos revuelva las tripas una portada de Time a ignorar esas brutalidades de las que es capaz del ser humano, todavía en vastas zonas del planeta.

Y terminaba el 1/8 comentando la polémica de lujo que se armó a raíz de esa portada.

Ahora le implantaron una nariz nueva a Aisha, a quien su marido también le cortó las orejas (aquí en El País).

¿Sirve para esto el periodismo? Yo creo que sí. El periodismo -y hasta una tapa de Time- sirve para que Aisha recupere su nariz, pero sobre todo debe servir para que termine la violencia doméstica y la esclavitud. Ojalá la reconstrucción de la nariz de Aisha lo consiga, pero hasta ahora el que va ganando es el cirujano plástico que hizo la reconstrucción gracias a la Fundación Grossman Burn y a la revista Time. Mientras, hay millones de mujeres mutiladas y esclavizadas en vastas zonas del plantea. En el mundo todavía son más las mujeres que viven sometidas a una voluntad ajena. Y como van las cosas...

Polémica de lujo, en Paper Papers, 1/8/10
Vastas zonas del planeta, en Paper Papers, 31/7/10
Para qué sirve el periodismo, en Paper Papers, 30/7/10

Cómo Bezos convierte al WaPo en una empresa tecnológica

Apareció en The Drum el 8 de noviembre.

Aquí va entero:

 

How Jeff Bezos built a tech business within the Washington Post 

In 2016 the Washington Post entered a new era of growth and profitability, an impressive feat against a backdrop of falling print revenues, rising competition and the challenges associated with operating in a digital ecosystem.

By Jessica Goodfellow

Where other publishers have been introducing disinvestment strategies for their print operations, the Washington Post has hired “hundreds” of journalists to maintain the quality of its newspaper.

It has built its own adtech company which includes over a dozen products such as custom ad units and its own “turbo” ad server. The Post also builds software that it sells to other publishers through its software-as-a-service business (SAAS), Arc Publishing, and has employed new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) to expand its newsroom and advertising capabilities.

In short, over the past four years the Post has become both a technology business and a journalism institution, a mix it believes is essential to succeed in media in the future. Its silver bullet? Jeff Bezos.  

Before the ink had even dried on the $250m cheque Bezos handed to former owner Don Graham to purchase the Post in August 2013, traffic at the paper’s site had spiked. The Post had 27 million unique views in the US and under 10 million uniques internationally at the time of purchase. Those views had doubled less than two years after purchase. Notably, points out chief revenue officer Jed Hartman, this spike happened before Donald Trump had even announced his entrance into the world of politics.

“Jeff Bezos has been far more influential to our growth than Donald Trump,” Hartman tells The Drum, when asked if the publisher has experienced a ‘Trump bump’. However, he does add that the president is “fascinating” and has made politics “pop-culture”, with a higher proportion of both US and international audiences consuming political news as a result.

“I do feel that has put more of a light on the Washington Post,” Hartman says. “We get more individuals that sample the Post because of the increased palace intrigue – whether it is through social or search – but then they realise there is another world of the Post and they stay and become more of an engaged user.”

Don’t walk away from your legacy

Crucial to the Post’s ability to increase its readership in a newspaper landscape plagued in declines has been its continued investment in its journalists, both in print and digital. In fact, where many publishers have been ushering journalists out the door, the Post has been welcoming hundreds of them in. It means the newspaper covers Washington better than any local paper covers its community, Hartman claims. At the same time, it is outpacing the industry when it comes to print ad sales. For Hartman the reason is obvious, if you disinvest in your journalism, the core product worsens, and the appeal wanes for advertisers.

“One thing that has hurt the print industry is yes there is a viable alternative: digital. But that meant people divested investing in print so it has gotten worse. And they start curating rather than creating. That is not very good for your brand. Ours has not gotten worse; it has gotten better,” Hartman says.

He’s also critical of a growing trend of publishers ‘pivoting’ to new content forms and walking away from their legacy business, believing the pendulum swings all over the place in the industry and swinging too hard in one direction is “not a good idea”. Instead, the Post sees video, audio, VR and the like as an “and” not an “or”, a companion to the written word rather than a replacement.

“The written world is remarkably powerful, it has won many Pulitzers and it is not going away. So it is vital that we do both; that is more of a focus than leaving one towards the other,” Hartman adds.

It might still be investing in its print product, but Hartman admits circulation is on an inevitable decline: “We are very comfortable with the pace we are on; we understand it is the reality.”

Which is why Hartman was hired from magazine giant Time Inc in 2014 to turn the Post’s “modest” digital ad business into one that is now well into the nine-figures. Hartman reveals the Post has “more than doubled” its digital advertising sales, significantly contributing to its growth and profitability, and sees this trend continuing.

Building rather than outsourcing

It’s also why Bezos has been spearheading a technological revolution at the publisher that has seen it become a tech vendor as well as a publisher.

“Our owner Jeff Bezos certainly believes that if something is core to you, you build it,” Hartman says. “Google wouldn't outsource their search business.”

It started out as a simple solution to there being no “great” products for publishers on the market.

“There are a bunch of solutions that are the least common denominator solutions that are good for everybody but great for nobody. They haven’t been invested by the companies that own them as much because publishing is a challenging industry – why deeply invest in a product for them? So we made our own,” Hartman adds.

For Bezos it's also about creating a “frictionless customer experience”, which has been crucial to Amazon’s growth. For example, when ad blockers first started gaining momentum, rather than seeing a doomsday scenario the Post looked internally to see what it was doing to drive the demand, and instead created products that reduce ad load time and make the browsing experience faster.

“All of that comes out of Jeff’s involvement with the Washington Post,” Hartman reveals.  

So far it has built over a dozen products including a custom CMS that incorporates viral predictors and headline testers that it has licensed to Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing), a patented “turbo” ad server, Zeus, that can compete with the speed of blazing browsers like Google’s AMP and PWA, plus first-of-their-kind ad units that focus on user experience and speed.

These products are built by the company’s internal adtech ‘company’, Red (research, experimentation and development in advertising), which was formed by Hartman shortly after he joined to bridge the engineering gap between editorial and advertising. Red is headed up by Jarrod Dicker, VP of innovation and commercial products at the Post. Dicker’s charge upon joining the company in July 2015 was “not to fix broken things, like IT will do at a company, but build the future”. 

“I think we have found our sweet spot in everything we do which is the combination of technology or engineering and great content,” Hartman says. “That is our unique position.” 

“There are many companies that do incredible engineering and technology; our owner’s other company Amazon, Google and Facebook. Then there are some wonderful journalism companies; the New York Times, CNN. We are stronger at journalism than these technology companies, and we are stronger at technology that journalism companies,” he adds. 

For Hartman, this hybrid model is the blueprint for the media business of the future and explains why traditional tech/telecom businesses are snapping up publishers, such as Verizon’s purchase of AOL and Yahoo (now Oath) and AT&T’s bid for Time Warner, and why Facebook and Google have been working with publishers to create products with more favourable terms.

The impartiality question

While Bezos may have set up a sustainable media business in a troubling time for news, his purchase of the paper did not come without its critics. Free speech advocates – and indeed the president who calls the paper the ‘Amazon Washington Post’ – have questioned how involved Bezos is in the Post’s editorial output, and whether this affects its ability to hold Silicon Valley giants such as Amazon to account.

Hartman believes Bezos’ involvement is “completely appropriate”, and is focused on the tech founder’s expertise in product development and customer experience, rather than editorial. The senior management team have a call with Bezos every two weeks, and refer to him internally as ‘chief inspiration officer’.

In fact, Bezos’ reasoning for buying the Post was fuelled by his belief that having a powerful, independent, journalistic operation that holds the powerful accountable is a vital part of democracy worldwide. Does this include holding himself, and Amazon, to account?

“100%” says Hartman, “It doesn't mean we don’t have relationships with Amazon but we are very separate.” The Post uses Amazon products, including Alexa and its affiliate marketing program Amazon Associates. But editor Marty Baron confirmed last month that Bezos “doesn’t get involved” in coverage “at all”, including negative stories about Amazon. 

Douglas McCabe, chief executive and director of publishing and tech at Enders Analysis, believes Bezos has done a good job of evading the potential downsides of a tech entrepreneur buying an impartial news organisation. 

“The downsides could have included: interference; technology innovation at the expense of investment in journalism; an Amazon strategy shoehorned into the publishing business; too much distance, that is, money without intelligence,” McCabe says.

“None of these outcomes have emerged because Bezos has evidently not interfered with the Post’s content at all. He has applied a strategic framework and some tactical elements to generate a means of investing more in journalism in the short and medium term.”

Not the guardian of Amazon, after all.

Roger Fidler revisited

Subo, traducido, este artículo del New York Times sobre Roger Fidler y el futuro de los medios y del periodismo. Aunque aparece hoy en la web del NYTimes saldrá en la edición print del 3 de marzo. Va traducido para evitar al Gestapo, pero no sé si lo voy a lograr.

Si la carrera de Roger Fidler tiene algún significado, es este: A veces puedes ver el futuro venir, pero de todas formas ser arrollado por él.

Hace treinta años, Fidler era un ejecutivo de medios que promovía una visión tranquilizadora del futuro de los periódicos. La revolución digital liberaría las noticias de las imprentas, dándole a la gente dispositivos portátiles que los mantuvieran informados todo el día. Algunas historias se verían mejoradas con video, otras con sonido y animación. Los lectores podrían compartir artículos, impulsando la participación en diversas comunidades.

Todo eso ha llegado a suceder, más o menos. Todo el mundo está en línea todo el tiempo, y casi todos parecen interesados, si no obsesionados, por los acontecimientos nacionales y mundiales. Pero los medios tradicionales que el Sr. Fidler estaba promoviendo no reciben muchos beneficios. Después de décadas de declive, su colapso parece estar acelerándose.

Cada día trae malas noticias. A veces se trata de empresas digitales recién formadas, a veces de publicaciones venerables cuya historia se remonta a más de un siglo.

Recientemente se anunciaron recortes en Law360, The Intercept y el sitio de videos orientado a la juventud NowThis, que despidió a la mitad de su personal. El sitio de noticias tecnológicas Engadget, que hace un seguimiento exhaustivo de los despidos tecnológicos, despidió a sus principales editores y otros miembros del personal. Condé Nast y Time están despidiendo empleados. La existencia continua de Vice Media, que en un momento fue valorada en 5,7 mil millones de dólares, y Sports Illustrated, en otra época la publicación deportiva más influyente, es incierta. Los Angeles Times y The Washington Post eliminaron a cientos de periodistas entre ambos. Uno de cada cuatro periódicos que existían en 2005 ya no existe.

El lento declive de los periódicos y revistas sería de interés limitado si no fuera por una cosa: Los medios tradicionales tenían en su núcleo la exaltada y difícil misión de comunicar información sobre el mundo. Desde informes de investigación sobre el gobierno hasta cobertura de políticos locales, las noticias servían para hacer que todas las instituciones e individuos cubiertos fueran un poco más transparentes y, posiblemente, más honestos.

Las columnas de consejos, críticas de cine, recetas, datos de acciones, informes meteorológicos y casi todo lo demás en los periódicos se trasladaron fácilmente en línea, excepto las noticias mismas. La cobertura local y regional tuvo dificultades para establecerse como una proposición rentable.

Ahora hay señales de que el concepto entero de "noticias" está desvaneciéndose. Cuando se les preguntó de dónde obtienen sus noticias locales, casi tantos encuestados en una encuesta de Gallup mencionaron las redes sociales como los que mencionaron periódicos y revistas. Un intento reciente de dar a la gente suscripciones gratuitas a sus periódicos locales en Pensilvania como parte de un estudio académico no atrajo casi ningún interesado.

"Poco después de que surgiera la imprenta en el siglo XV, los scriptoriums para copiar manuscritos en los monasterios comenzaron a cerrar rápidamente", dijo Fidler, que ahora tiene 81 años y vive retirado en Santa Fe, Nuevo México. "No soy muy optimista sobre la supervivencia de la mayoría de los periódicos en los Estados Unidos."

Declive y agitación

El declive de los medios de comunicación ha sido paralelo a la fractura de la sociedad estadounidense, que ahora está tan enojada y dividida como lo estuvo en el apogeo de la Guerra de Vietnam y las protestas por los derechos civiles hace más de medio siglo. A medida que los medios caían, el nivel de ruido aumentaba.

Quizás podría haber sido diferente. Contrario al mito de que todos los magnates de los periódicos de los años 80 y 90 pensaban que los buenos tiempos durarían para siempre, varios vieron problemas acechando en la lejanía.

Fidler pasó 21 años en Knight Ridder, una cadena de periódicos que tenía importantes diarios metropolitanos en ciudades como Miami y San José, California. Un proyecto temprano fue Viewtron, un esfuerzo para poner terminales en los hogares de las personas que entregarían noticias, compras y chat. Entregó muy poco y costó demasiado. En 1986, Viewtron fue cerrado.

Lo que Fidler aprendió del fracaso de Viewtron fue que los lectores de periódicos necesitaban algo que se pareciera a un periódico y que no les apretara el bolsillo. Ayudó a desarrollar tecnología para tabletas ligeras que usarían pantallas de panel plano que eran de bajo costo pero claras y brillantes con una vida útil de batería relativamente larga.

Tales pantallas no existían a principios de la década de 1990, pero se prometieron para finales de la década. El periódico sería transmitido a través de redes telefónicas digitales de alta velocidad o transmisiones directas por satélite. "Creo que esto será la salvación para los periódicos serios tradicionales", dijo Thomas Winship, un editor de toda la vida del Boston Globe, al New York Times en un perfil de Fidler en 1992.

Mientras que al menos algunos editores estaban convencidos, las tabletas nunca llegaron para salvar a los periódicos. Un problema fue que no hubo consenso sobre un estándar de software. Las tabletas no se volvieron realmente viables hasta que Apple introdujo el iPad en 2010. Pero el verdadero problema para el negocio de las noticias fue la aparición de un competidor devastador e inesperado: internet.

"Fui demasiado enfocado en un solo aspecto", concedió Fidler.

Internet primero creó una alternativa a los periódicos y revistas impresos, luego se convirtió en un competidor, y finalmente aniquiló a muchos de ellos. "No consideré todas las posibles interacciones cruzadas de las tecnologías emergentes que llevarían a Craigslist, sitios de noticias alternativos, redes sociales y otros productos que disminuirían en gran medida la circulación de periódicos y los ingresos publicitarios", dijo Fidler.

Tim Berners-Lee creó la World Wide Web en 1989 como una herramienta para colaborar y compartir información. Al ser amorfa e infinitamente flexible, permitió la adaptación lenta y rápida al mismo tiempo, lo que evitó el tipo de orientación para los lectores que Fidler creía necesaria. Los periódicos perdieron sus anuncios clasificados en internet casi de inmediato. Los anuncios de display persistieron, pero Google y Facebook, y más tarde Amazon, se hicieron cargo de ese mercado.

La web, al permitir que cada voz se escuchara prácticamente al mismo volumen, animó a los editores a unirse a la fiesta. Periódicos y revistas simplemente regalaron lo que habían cobrado en forma física. Fueron impulsados por Silicon Valley, que necesitaba contenido de calidad para mantener a las personas en línea y utilizando su tecnología.

"Los editores adoptaron esta creencia equivocada de que el contenido es como una mercancía y debería estar disponible en todas partes de forma gratuita", dijo Fidler. Se necesitaron años para instituir muros de pago, momento en el cual muchas publicaciones estaban fatalmente debilitadas. 

Roger Fidler en su casa de Santa Fe, Nuevo México

Los buenos tiempos no eran tan buenos

A pesar de toda la negatividad en la que los medios están sumidos sobre los medios, la situación es contradictoria.

El reportaje local confiable en muchos lugares es escaso o inexistente. Pero también hay una variedad mucho más amplia de noticias extranjeras, nacionales y culturales disponibles en línea de lo que las generaciones anteriores podían obtener en papel. A pesar de toda la celebración de los viejos tiempos, si estabas en una ciudad con un periódico mediocre —y había muchos—, el acceso al periodismo de calidad era difícil.

"Básicamente, el mundo se nos ha abierto. Hay mucho buen periodismo por ahí", dijo David Mindich, profesor de periodismo en el Klein College of Media and Communication de la Universidad Temple. "Si me hubieras dicho hace 20 años, 'Veo a una generación escuchando programas de audio de larga duración', yo habría dicho: 'La atención se está acortando. No creo que eso vaya a suceder'. Pero sucedió."

La mayoría de los programas de audio de larga duración, incluso en su mejor momento, no son noticias de la manera en que lo es, por ejemplo, un informe de la comisión de zonificación. La erosión de la idea de noticias se puede ver aún más claramente en el campo de las revistas. Donde el objetivo era informar, ahora es entretener.

"Time magazine acaba de seleccionar a Taylor Swift como la persona del año", dijo Samir Husni, un analista de revistas de toda la vida. "Nunca seleccionó a Elvis o a los Beatles. Ella fue la primera artista. Estamos convirtiéndonos más en marketing en el periodismo que en verdad en el periodismo porque dependemos de que el cliente pague el precio en lugar de la publicidad".

Así es como la digitalización ha cambiado el periodismo, dijo: "Ahora, la cosa es hacer feliz a todo el mundo. Pero ese nunca fue el papel del periodismo, hacer feliz a la gente".

Marc Benioff, el empresario de Silicon Valley que compró la problemática Time en 2018 con su esposa, Lynne, vio la selección de la Sra. Swift de manera diferente: "¡La edición más vendida de todos los tiempos!" (al menos en años recientes). Unas semanas después de que apareciera el número de Swift, el sindicato de Time dijo que el 15 por ciento del personal editorial sindicalizado de la revista fue despedido.

Eso fue más un movimiento estratégico que una señal de angustia, dijo Benioff.

"Si quieres que estos negocios de medios funcionen, tienes que cambiar la mezcla de productos, lo que también significa que tienes que cambiar la mezcla de empleados", escribió en un mensaje de texto. El muro de pago, implementado en 2011, fue eliminado el año pasado. Como marca, Time necesita la mayor exposición posible.

Hace dos años, Benioff dijo a Axios que los ingresos de Time aumentarían un 30 por ciento en 2022 a USD 200 millones. Eso podría haber sido aspiracional. "Los ingresos en 2024 deberían alcanzar los 200 millones, un nuevo récord", dice ahora. "Incluso vamos a ganar dinero".

Otras publicaciones están tratando de eliminar el incentivo del lucro del periodismo.

Los emprendimientos periodísticos sin fines de lucro tienden a ser pequeños, de bajo perfil y distribuidos de manera desigual en diferentes regiones. Pero hay muchas señales de crecimiento. Según el Instituto de Noticias sin Fines de Lucro, el número de medios que sirven a comunidades de color —nunca muy bien atendidas por las publicaciones tradicionales— se ha duplicado en los últimos cinco años.

Los lectores suelen responder, también.

"La gente habla sobre el periodismo sin fines de lucro en sus comunidades como si fuera una parte normal del ecosistema de noticias, no como si fuera una fuerza externa", dijo Magda Konieczna, autora de Journalism Without Profit: Making News When the Market Fails. En algunos lugares, el efecto es sorprendente. "Filadelfia es ahora una jungla de noticias en lugar de un desierto de noticias".

Konieczna enseña en la Universidad Concordia en Montreal. Hace unas semanas, un gigante de las noticias canadienses, Bell Media, anunció que estaba recortando cientos de empleos y poniendo fin a muchos de sus programas de noticias televisivas. El primer ministro Justin Trudeau dijo que la decisión estaba "erosionando nuestra democracia misma".

"Mis vecinos leen The New Yorker pero no saben dónde encontrar noticias locales, o por qué querrían hacerlo, en gran parte porque realmente no existen", dijo Konieczna. "Este es el futuro distópico".

El New Yorker, como sucedió, empleó a A. J. Liebling, el crítico de prensa más grande de los años de posguerra. Se llamaba a sí mismo un optimista a pesar de ver una marcha cuesta abajo desde que se convirtió en reportero en 1925.

"La función de la prensa en la sociedad es informar, pero su papel es ganar dinero", escribió. Cuanto más hacía esto último, argumentaba, menos le importaba lo primero.

No hubo una edad de oro, pero Roger Fidler todavía está inconsolable. Hace mucho tiempo que sobrevivió a Knight Ridder, que fue vendido a McClatchy, otra cadena, en 2006. McClatchy se declaró en bancarrota en 2020. Dedica un par de horas cada día a leer las noticias en la edición impresa de un periódico comunitario y las ediciones digitales de periódicos nacionales y regionales. Es mucho, y sin embargo no es suficiente.

"Las redes sociales y sus comentarios nos han abrumado", dijo. "Estamos inundados de información porque todo el mundo es un periodista. Todo el mundo cree tener la verdad. Todos ciertamente tienen una opinión. Es desalentador ver cómo ha ido todo".

Roger Fidler en 1992 

Conocí a Roger Fidler en 1989 o 1990 en Pamplona cuando estuvo de visita en la entonces Facultad de Ciencias de la Información. Luego compartí con él buenos momentos durante los sanfermines de 1991, pero no en Pamplona sino en San Sebastián, donde coordinaba un taller en El Diario Vasco. Viajamos a Burdeos invitados por el periódico Sud Ouest. Ese día pasaba por la ciudad el Tour de France, así que vimos juntos pasar las bicicletas a toda velocidad por una calle de Burdeos. En 1994 o 1995 lo fui a visitar a su laboratorio de Boulder, en Colorado. Por eso titulo este post como revisitado.

Como los discos de vinilo

Les paso, sin permiso, este delicioso artículo de Tim de Lisle que aparece en The New Statesman (Londres) de hoy.

It started when I was seven. I had just fallen in love with football and, like all the best love affairs, this one faced obstacles.

My parents were not football fans. At home, near Paddington station in London, we had just gathered around the black-and-white telly to see a man on the moon, but I was far more excited by a man in the mud. George Best’s magic knocked me sideways and made me a Manchester United supporter.

In 1969 football took place at 3pm on Saturdays, plus a few midweek evenings, with only one English club game televised live in the whole season (the Cup final). I wasn’t allowed to stay up for the evening games; even Match of the Day, on a Saturday night, was way past my bedtime. I wrote an angry letter to the BBC, asking them to repeat it in the morning; they replied with a polite but firm no. That left The Big Match on ITV, which lit up grey Sunday afternoons. In the wide acres of the rest of the week, there was only one place to go: the papers.

Here my parents redeemed themselves. They had the Times and the Daily Mail delivered – both, in those distant days, broadsheets. They would read them over breakfast, but before that I had them to myself. I would wake at six, dash downstairs in the dark, sit on the doormat and soak up the sport.

The football was easy to find in the Mail, splashed on the back. It was harder to track down in the Times, then edited by William Rees-Mogg, father of the less tolerable Jacob. There were only two sports pages, squeezed inside and often shunted around, but they were worth it when you got there. Every report ended with the team sheets, where the Times made me smile with its stuffiness. England had two superstars then, both called Bobby: they were invariably listed as R Moore and R Charlton.

The midweek match reports had a special magnetism. I was allowed to listen to the first half on the radio, tucked up in bed, but never knew the final score until I reached the doormat the next morning. I was dead impressed that the papers could get the story of the whole game written and printed and delivered by the time I woke up.

And so a habit formed that has lasted half a century. Packed off to boarding school at eight, I was thrilled to find that you were allowed to order a paper of your own. I went for the Daily Express before migrating to the Mail. The paper was black and white, but during my boarding-school days it was a splash of colour – like getting a letter from home, an event.

My dream was to play for England, but at ten it became clear that this was a long shot. I needed a dream B. Aha, I thought, I can be a football writer and still go to the big games.

As time went on, my football enthusiasm waxed and waned, sometimes eclipsed by cricket or music or life. The greatest love of all turned out to be journalism. Internships had yet to be invented, so I started freelancing for magazines at 16. I kept on writing at university, mainly for Smash Hits, and joined the National Union of Journalists, then an essential step on the road to Fleet Street.

When I was 23, the Daily Telegraph, which had become a gerontocracy under Bill Deedes, was being rejuvenated by Max Hastings. He would hire anyone as long as they were under 25 and offered me a job as the cub reporter on “Peterborough”, the Telegraph’s genteel gossip column. I have been writing for the papers ever since.

When I moved to the newsroom, the Peterborough crew gave me a framed cartoon that depicted our boss. “Now that Tim’s gone,” he was saying, “we can cancel the papers.” Even among other newsprint junkies, I was a noted addict. My writing has always sprung from my reading, all that pulp turning to compost. My brother Charlie and our sister Rosie became journalists, too, and the flat we shared was a forest of print. Those inky pages were where you learnt the language and picked up the tricks of the trade. Poring over them was both a pleasure in itself and a ritual to get the day rolling. “The morning paper,” said the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “is the realist’s morning prayer.” Give us this day our daily read.

That prayer was being said by half the population:in 1987 Britain’s 11 national dailies sold 15 million copies every day. As each copy averaged just over two readers, more people were reading a paper than had ever watched the most popular soap (EastEnders, which reached 30 million in 1986). In 2023 there are ten national dailies and their total sales are estimated at 4 million, or 5 million if you count the Metro, which is free. This is an estimate because several papers, including the Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian and the Sun, no longer publish their sales. Most of the others are in freefall: in the ABC figures for January, more than half the nationals were down 18 per cent year on year. Even the mighty Daily Mail had slid below 800,000. (Full disclosure: these days I write for the Mail on Sunday about music and for the Guardian about sport. One role is print-first, the other web-first. I also have a Substack called United Writing.)

Journalism itself, for all the bad press it gets, is alive and clicking. The news may well be bigger than ever, now that Apple has become an aggregator and reaches even more people than the BBC news website. The papers, though, are slipping through our fingers. The Mirror, which sold 5 million copies a day in the mid-Sixties, is down to 277,550, having lost 17 buyers out of every 18 it had then. To subscribe to a paper is to be part of an endangered species.

I still take two papers a day, three on Sundays. Every morning, a dog walker without the dog, I head for the last newsagent left in my corner of North London and chat to him about the football. I pick up the Guardian (for the writing) and the Times (for the sport, transformed since Rees-Mogg’s time). I devour them over breakfast and enjoy them as much as ever. Even without my subscriber’s discount, they are good value compared with a coffee, a pint, or even a paperback.

Last autumn I started teaching journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. On Thursday mornings I take a feature-writing class with five third-year undergraduates on the History and Journalism course. They are bright and committed and never ever come in with a paper under their arm, not even the Metro. Once I gently suggested that it might be a good idea to buy a weekend paper and settle down with it. One student, talented enough to have appeared in the nationals already, looked incredulous. “Where,” he asked, “do you even buy them?”

The students are working on a 4,000-word feature that forms part of their finals. They are encouraged to find independent experts to interview. For this piece, I talk to three: a media correspondent, an academic and an analyst.

Will Turvill is associate editor of the Press Gazette, once a weekly trade mag, now a lively website owned by the same group as the New Statesman. He’s boyish, friendly, but blunt. So, Will, is print doomed? “For newspapers, yes I think it is,” he says. “I’m in an office covering the media and we don’t even take much notice of the print circulation figures. They’re in terminal decline now, or at least rapid decline. The newspapers have better stories to tell about how they’re doing online or with their apps.”

I wonder if he still takes a print paper himself. “At the weekend, the Times and Sunday Times –but not as often as ten years ago.” Surely the dailies still land with a thud in the Press Gazette office? “No. During the week I use services like PressReader to flick through newspapers digitally, then I go to the newspaper websites to read stories in depth. I read the FT and the Times apps, they’re really good. The Times is particularly good because it’s like a newspaper.” A twinge of irony there.

“I’m 32 and I don’t think any friends of my age buy newspapers during the week,” Turvill says. “Some do on the weekend. Reading a paper on the screen is not as fun. And there’s a bit of prestige in having a print edition. It’s notable that the Independent [which went out of print in 2016] produces a front page for social media. Newspaper front pages are quite nice to look at, aren’t they? They’re a historical document. I did wonder, when the Queen passed away, whether that might come to be seen as the last time that printed papers had an impact.”

For the view from academe, I consult Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a 42-year-old Dane who runs the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford. He looms on my laptop with neatly brushed hair and clear-headed views. So, Rasmus, are newspapers doomed? “I think first of all you have to separate it out into two things – the newspaper as news organisation and the newspaper as printed edition,” he says. “It’s an infelicity of the English language that the word ‘newspaper’ covers both, where in other languages there are usually two different terms.

“Print has been dead for a long time for many people,” he continues. “Print is still somewhat important for a minority of the population over 65, and it does mean something to those old enough to have grown up with it, the over-45s. But even among the older group it’s a minority. It’s a niche medium that serves a small and shrinking audience well.” Ouch.

“Younger people are engaging with digital news, but the way they use it is quite different. Sitting down with a single source of news for 30 minutes is exceedingly rare. Most people use a variety of sources – their phone, the radio, email newsletters. Society has changed and there are fewer men who have no other responsibilities at home.” Another ouch.

Does Nielsen get a paper himself? “I haven’t bought a print edition since before the pandemic.”

The third wise man is Douglas McCabe, CEO and director of publishing at Enders Analysis, a media research consultancy. He’s an eloquent Scot of 55 who has spent 15 years examining the press. “When I started,” he says, “there were lots of people like me. Banks had newspaper analysts – that would be absurd now.”

So, Douglas, are newspapers doomed? “Yes and no,” he says. “Of course print newspapers as an industrial-scale phenomenon are nearly over. The length of that final runway is the only real debate, and publishers should do what they can to extend it.

“On the other hand, the idea and existence of the newspaper will not entirely disappear, perhaps ever. The vinyl album is maybe the obvious metaphor. At some point in the future, we will see that print newspapers, and also magazines, are expensive, inconvenient, impractical, beautifully designed, cherished products that do a specific job better than any other manifestation of their content.

“That job relates to layout, browsing, serendipity: 45 minutes at the kitchen table or on the sofa, coffee in hand. Such a product is an elegant expression of an editor’s (and perhaps a proprietor’s) vision and curation – an experience that is very hard for a utility designed for smartphone scrolling to recreate.

McCabe argues that, in 2030 and 2040, many successful news brands will prize some version of this product, not just because it is a hangover from the print era, but because it’s a solution with a loyal, multi-generational audience. But readers getting their hands on it might be the trickiest part. “The tripwire will not be demand, it will be the cost of supply. As sales fall, the unit cost of distribution will start to explode, and publishing companies have zero retail skills. They’ve no agility, because they’ve never had to think about it for 200 years. All that stuff was outsourced to WH Smith.”

When I mention the generation gap and the Gen Y aversion to paying for news, McCabe begs to differ. “When young people don’t buy online news it’s because of their life stage, not because they won’t pay for stuff online – my generation didn’t buy newspapers when we were young. This current generation understands the need to pay for quality online content more than my generation, not less.”

Does McCabe buy a paper? “I quite religiously get the FT Weekend. I just don’t have time to look at physical newspapers during the week. In the office, you’d see the odd one, to remind ourselves about things like layout and volume of advertising. And in our research we look at what is lost in the online world – the serendipity.”

It’s not dark yet, as Bob Dylan said, but it’s getting there. Longing for a light at the end of the tunnel, I ask the experts if any papers are bucking the trend. Two mention the same names: the Aberdeen Press & Journal and the Dundee Courier, both owned by DC Thomson, the family firm best known for publishing the Beano. In the UK sales chart for regional dailies, the P&J is No 1, the Courier No 3. It is clearly time to get on a train.

At the station in Dundee I pay £1.55 for a copy of the Courier. It’s direct but classy, sensible rather than sensational, and decidedly local. To get to its office you just walk into town, rather than heading for an industrial estate on the outskirts. The city centre is a set of civic edifices: the museum, the high school, the university and the Courier, a handsome red-brick building that glows in the faint winter sun.

The editor, David Clegg, comes down to reception to find me, wearing ripped jeans and a maroon shirt. He’s 40 and comes from Belfast, where he got the bug as a paperboy, delivering the Belfast Telegraph. He joined the Courier as a young reporter, then moved to the Daily Record in Glasgow, becoming Political Journalist of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018; in 2018, he was also named Journalist of the Year for his scoop about the former First Minister, Alex Salmond, facing allegations of sexual assault. In 2019 Clegg returned to the Courier as editor.

When I ask why the printed paper is still big in Dundee, it turns out the story is not quite as it seems. “I have to say that the brief for the job was explicitly to lead a digital transformation,” Clegg tells me. “In the last few years we’ve completely reorganised the newsroom, invested a lot in digital skills, digital training, and products on the website. Almost everyone who creates content produces it with digital in mind, and then there’s a team who turns that into a newspaper, whereas before it was the other way round. The Courier is a very profitable print product, but the future of news is digital. The way I think about it is that the print paper is a runway, to get a self-sustaining digital product off the ground. We have a bit of a longer runway than some.”

Many local papers have websites that are free to read and clotted with adverts. The Courier and the P&J have swum against the tide, ditching the ads and charging a tidy £5.99 a week. “We’ve hit 25,000 digital subscribers for the two papers together,” Clegg says, “and some of them pay extra for the e-paper.”

He talks me through today’s Courier, which has separate editions for Fife and Perth, even though they’re only 20 miles away. The splash is an interview with a 12-year-old girl from Fife who is speaking out about being bullied, prompted by a Courier campaign. That’s brave, I say. “Very.”

The obituaries are further forward than in most papers, national politics further back. “I’m interested in what people will pay for, which in general is higher-quality stuff, like court reports. We’re back in every court in our patch.”

Clegg uses the web, with its limitless space, to provide extra services like posting school menus. “What you do find, however, is that no matter what team it is – the health team, the schools team, obituaries in particular – the people they’ve been dealing with will always ask, ‘When’s it going to be in the paper?’ That still has a level of cachet.”

Next morning I’m in Aberdeen, buying the Press and Journal for £1.65 and reading it over breakfast at Pret. Like the Courier, it radiates decency. The splash is from the courts: “Cruel thief robbed OAP as she waited for ambulance”. It’s an archetypal story, except that the thief was a woman.

The P&J’s office sits in the city centre, a sleek modern building surrounded by stately greyness. The editor, Frank O’Donnell, shows me the view from the roof terrace. “That,” he says with a laugh, pointing at the council next door, “is the second-biggest granite building in the world.” The P&J has a few superlatives of its own. As well as being the best-selling regional daily in Britain, it’s also the oldest. Founded in 1748, it had just celebrated its 275th birthday – and its first win as newspaper of the year at the Scottish Press Awards.

O’Donnell, a youthful 52, grew up in Edinburgh and he too was a paperboy, delivering the Scotsman and the Evening News. His parents didn’t take a newspaper, but “a friend’s parents did the crossword and opened the paper out and got me interested”. A football writer at first, then a general reporter, he went all the way from delivering the Scotsman to editing it. In 2019 he was poached by the P&J, which is a smaller name but a bigger paper, selling 26,746 copies a day to The Scotsman’s 8,762.

“The Scotsman has a much larger audience, digitally,” O’Donnell says. “Thirty per cent of its page views come from overseas – it’s got that name. The P&J is much more of a regional paper, and they wanted to invest in developing a proper digital subscription. We’ve taken all the adverts off the site and really tried to change the content. I’d spent my whole career on the back foot, and here I saw an opportunity to leave the title in a stronger position than it was when I entered it.”

O’Donnell is more traditionally dressed than Clegg, but behind the collar and tie is an amiable revolutionary. He doesn’t have an office himself, which means he is always among his staff. His conference room has no chairs and no doors, just three open doorways. “Stand-up, so you’ve got more energy and anyone can join. Three entrances, so if something happens and you want to know more you can give someone a shout.” Later he adds: “Leading is about empowering.”

The newsroom is full of plants and scoreboards, listing not just the most-read stories but those most likely to send the reader to the subs page. The aim is 75,000 digital subs in three years between the two papers, and they’re on target. “I’m very invested in making these titles work,” O’Donnell says, “but I’m also very invested in making journalism work. I don’t want us to win and everyone else to lose. If we can provide a path for other titles to follow, that’s very powerful.”

The editors I’ve known have included the good, the bad, the ugly and the barely there. I leave Scotland feeling that Clegg and O’Donnell are two of the best, both genial and effective, and each employing over 100 journalists while so many local papers are dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Reports of the newspaper’s death can be exaggerated. Its fans cling to the hope that it might, as McCabe suggests, be like the vinyl album – now back from oblivion and outselling the CD. Or, better still, like the cinema, which plummeted from 1.65 billion tickets sold in the UK in 1946 to just 54 million in 1984, then bounced back to a steady 150-170 million (before the pandemic).

Print still spells prestige, as Turvill says. You never hear anybody saying they want to see their name online. The front page may have fewer readers than the home page, but it has more impact. When the papers land on Twitter, around 10pm, they make waves. And print remains memorable, finishable, keepable: it’s not easy to frame a home page.