Company Net – Experts in Microsoft

Colin and Keith have some interesting things to say about the future of newspapers and in particular the influence of the “free” BBC website in the debate.

Almost all the business portals we create for customers have rss news feeds added, mostly from the BBC.  Companies are following on from the on line revolution that’s going on in our personal lives with regard to where we get our news from.

We have all the technology now to get the information we want, as soon as it happens and filter it down to exactly what we want to see. This also goes for our daily diet of news which is now presenting huge problems for the traditional content providers i.e the national newspapers.

I had a meeting not so long ago with 2 Local Newspaper Executives who were quite clear and agreed between them that the newspaper industry would be finished within a generation. What was most shocking to me was their almost complete acceptance that there was nothing they could do! I guess some would say it will be no bad thing if the papers disappear, but be careful what you wish for.

The BBC has a Charter to ensure it is impartial. It’s website therefore is expected to reflect this impartiality and deliver us the facts as they occur. What would the future look like if this was the main source of news once the national newspapers disappeared. Sure it would be free or paid for by licence fee in the UK, but would that be good enough?

Some one has to pay, right? Murdock’s News International have made the initial running, aggressively and maybe not so wisely. Well if not and the future that is being touted contains only free news, as no-one wants to pay for it other than by watching adverts, then inevitably we will end up loosing something of the rich journalistic flavours and spins that are smeared on top of our printed press news articles. Newspapers are not just about news, they convey opinion and challenge  us to respond.

Perhaps opinions are now more readily and accurately formed in the peer to peer world of social networking with more purity. In business today we see the immense benefit of collaboration amongst workers to ach

ieve so much more, perhaps this collaboration mentality will really drive the opinions of the future and we leave behind the closeted partisan political views of the traditional press. Or do the newspapers somehow find the means to invent a way to charge for their content in an acceptable way and simply move 100% on line to deliver their output and maintain their influence. Direct, targeted, advertising must surely pay a part as the old order of paying for blunt adverts driven by circulation and demographic price models gives way.

Lets find a way to ensure that the future of news is not just about impartial facts and that it contains at least some of the rich heritage of our national press with our love / hate relationship at least partially in tact.