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The Economist has a special report about the dire troubles print newspapers are getting into thanks to competition from online sources. Even when papers try to compensate for this by producing the entire content from the print edition on the internet, online readers are still worth less than purchasers of the print edition because (a) they don’t pay a cover price and (b) readers dip in and out, consuming far less of the paper than readers of the print edition, making their advertising less effective and so less valuable.

Most interestingly, the piece goes on to state that an online diet is affecting what people want from the print editions. They want newspapers that are more like the internet experience:

Consultants advising newspaper groups argue that they need to adjust their output. Research into the tastes of mainstream newspaper readers has long shown that people like short stories and news that is relevant to them: local reporting, sports, entertainment, weather and traffic. On the internet, especially, says Mr Chisholm, they are looking to enhance their way of life. Long pieces about foreign affairs are low on readers’ priorities—the more so now that the internet enables people to scan international news headlines in moments. Coverage of national and international news is in any case a commodity often almost indistinguishable from one newspaper to the next. This impression is exacerbated as papers seek to save money by sacking reporters and taking copy from agencies such as Reuters. “Our research shows that people are looking for more utility from newspapers,” says Sammy Papert, chief executive of Belden Associates, a firm that specialises in research for American newspapers. People want their paper to tell them how to get richer, and what they might do in the evening.

Some of the papers that have remained least affected by the internet threat are those that have remained resolutely local, with only a page or two of national and international news. This approach is already evident in some television news bulletins, which have adopted a mix of hard and soft news. The report finishes with bad news for fans of old-fashioned ‘fine journalism’.

Still more changes to the content and form of newspapers are likely as businesspeople gain power at newspaper firms. “You won’t be able to have many sacred cows…Newspaper companies will have to become more commercial,” says Henrik Poppe, a partner in McKinsey.

via Antony Mayfield