Maybe it’s not too late for newspapers

Since the launch of the web, content suppliers have failed to protect themselves – but the fight back has now finally kicked-off, reports Chris Blackhurst.

The man opposite me fixed me with a gaze and said: “It’s not too late.” Er, too late for what, exactly? “Too late for all the proprietors to agree that from now on they will charge.”

I looked at him closely. My friend wasn’t grinning, his eyes were not twinkling mischievously. This wasn’t a wind-up. He was a newspaper executive and he was serious.

But in 1989, they did not do it when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. In fact they took a different tack – assuming that putting their content on the web for free would provide a taster for their paid-for flagship print title.

It was a disastrous ploy – one that has haunted the industry ever since. Today, as a result, we’re left with decimated circulations and crashed revenues. That’s if the paper is still printing at all, since many have gone to the wall.

Of course there are notable exceptions. Metro, City A.M. and Evening Standard have shown that it’s possible to thrive by not charging for the print version.

Generally, though, across the board, the charts are all pointing downwards. And still, precious little, collectively, is being done to arrest it.

Every day, newspapers hand out their words and pictures for free via the Internet, and wonder why sales of the print parent carries on falling. Imagine if a restaurant set up a trestle table outside on the street and invited passers-by to help themselves. Soon, the management would be worrying why so few diners were prepared to venture inside and pay for their meal.
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Groups have toyed with staying free to digital, subscription packages, pure pay walls and metered pay walls where you start paying after so many visits to the site. What there has not been is a concerted, agreed charging strategy.

This in the end has always proved the industry’s undoing. Because, until there is uniformity there will, inevitably, be someone somewhere providing content for free. The picture is clouded even more in the UK by the presence of the BBC which, through its BBC News online coverage, provides a full, across the waterfront news service, pretty much the same as that of a quality newspaper, perhaps without as much commentary, gratis.

It’s obvious what needs to happen. Getting there is not so easy. One aspect of newspapers that has been highlighted by the web has been their similarity. Sure, they’re all designed differently, and they contain their house by-lines, but, by and large, they cover the same subjects. They may give their own treatment but the gist is identical.

The news and current affairs magazine that continues to outperform its peers in the UK is Private Eye. Why? It’s often said because it is not available online. But Private Eye is also unique – no other publication provides the same blend of gossipy stories, scandal, hard news, and humour. If Private Eye’s material could be found elsewhere for free, it, too, would fail.

The idea of the publishers all getting together like the meeting of the heads of families from each of the Five Boroughs of New York in The Godfather, but without the criminality, is ludicrous. Their rivalry is intense. They’re wary and suspicious of each other. In this country, they can’t even agree on voluntary membership of a single regulator, let alone thrash out a united approach for tackling the Internet.

But my pundit at the beginning is correct: it’s not too late. Remarkably little has changed since Berners-Lee made his discovery and the content suppliers failed to protect themselves. Sales are down, but they’re down pretty much everywhere. Some products have disappeared completely, but the industry has carried on down its same trajectory without them. It’s possible, if he is right, that decline could be arrested, even now.

Another threat is looming, one that could prove terminal. After putting content online and not charging, the greatest danger now is ad blockers. If the newspaper sites cannot charge for adverts, if they do not collect revenue from advertising sales, the end has to be in sight.

Which is why City A.M.’s move to ban users of ad blockers from its sites is to be welcomed. It will blur out stories for users of Firefox who are detected applying ad-blocking software.

Readers will receive a message saying: “We are having trouble showing you adverts on this page, which may be a result of ad blocker software being installed on your device. As City A.M. relies on advertising to fund its journalism, please disable any ad blockers from running on cityam.com to see the rest of this content.”

I write this in a personal capacity, and I’ve no idea if other proprietors will follow suit, but I want to say “hallelujah!” At last, someone is fighting back and not prepared to allow their income stream to be destroyed.

City A.M. is the first UK newspaper to take this stance. Others, notably Trinity Mirror, are also thought to be exploring the repercussions of stopping readers from blocking adverts.

The stakes are desperately high, and serious. PageFair reckons 200 million Internet users globally use ad blockers, with 12 million in the UK, and publishers could potentially lose £14bn in revenue this year. Those are figures that cannot be ignored. A few years like that and surely, the industry is facing ruination.

Apple’s decision to update its iOS operating system so that iPhone and iPad users could download apps to block ads should have set alarms screaming in every newspaper boardroom. It’s too blasé to say that well, the impact has not been felt yet.

The key word there is “yet”. The industry needs to act, and fast. It may be that City A.M. offers an alternative, that readers pay a fee to browse its sites ad-free – the same tactic as Bild is adopting in Germany. But at least that represents money coming in, and may compensate for readers not bothering with adverts and advertisers withdrawing.

Ad blockers pose a critical test for the industry. It’s the same one newspapers faced and failed in the past. This time, they have to get it right. Then, who knows? As my pal said, maybe it’s not too late.

Chris Blackhurst is a journalist a former editor of The Independent.