Here’s the official word from BBC News web editor Steve Herman:

“As the [UK] Times moves into online subscription and others consider the options … there is likely to be a changing landscape with some sites and stories behind paywalls, some not, and some which are in between – a certain number of visits or part of an article free, all depending on the user’s individual circumstances.

“Some said they’d like us also to flag links which require subscription if you follow them.  That is broadly the direction we are going in. We will, where practical, aim to tell you if the link is going to a subscription site. Our automated Newstracker module, for example, should be able to do this and already signals when registration is required.”

What’s of particular interest is that the Beeb is actually planning to link to paid content with a caveat, rather than simply ignoring stories that aren’t freely available.

In the past, the few paid content providers that have existed out there (in particular, the Wall Street Journal) have often been excluded from news aggregators and search engines such as Google because their content hasn’t been readily accessible.

If this new BBC News policy becomes a new standard for online linking, the whole dynamic of paid content will become much more viable: instead of losing public awareness by switching to paid content, news sites will remain linkable (and thus able to benefit from passing mention in other articles) as well as searchable.

What, we wonder, will Google do?

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America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has just modified its definition of a digital magazine in the U.S. and Canada to accommodate new reading devices such as the Apple iPad.

The new standards state that a replica digital edition must include a print edition’s full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine’s circulation guarantee, or rate base.

Predictably, Wired magazine was the first publication to seek review of its iPad version, which will qualify as a digital replica edition under the bureau’s new guidelines. GQ has offered an ABC approved replica app for the iPhone and iPod Touch since December 2009.

Last week the ABC board gave its initial approval to the creation of new U.S. reports that better reflect a publication’s total audience across a range of products. As a result, publishers may begin reporting such items as:

• E-reader distribution averages
• Mobile app purchases
• Total paid and verified circulation emanating from multiple products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship publications.
• A new “Publishing Plan” executive summary box on the first page, noting frequency, delivery platforms, and distribution methods across a publisher’s various print and electronic editions.
• Continued use of Audience-FAX, the 2007 initiative that allows U.S. publications to report print and online readership figures, as well as Web site and audience data from comScore, Nielsen Online, Omniture, or other sources audited by ABC Interactive.

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Should we, asks WAN:

Applaud our gains in web site traffic? Develop closer partnerships with Google and their competitors? Launch our own search engines and collective news portals? Lobby to change or enforce copyright laws online? Sue – or encourage anti-trust cases? What DO we do about Google?

The Great Debate at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress will examine these and other such questions as news publishers world-wide examine and discuss their options and strategies for getting a bigger slice of the internet advertising revenues which are today being massively reaped by Google.

FOR GOOGLE:

David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Council of Google, will be on stage to give the search giant’s perspectives.

Mr Drummond leads Google’s global teams for legal, government relations, corporate development and new business development, including strategic partnerships. Before joining Google in 2002, he served as its first outside counsel and worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to incorporate the company and secure its initial round of financing.

FOR THE NEWSPAPERS:

Gavin O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media and President of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), will debate on behalf of the newspaper iindustry.

Gavin O’Reilly was probably the first major news industry personality to publicly criticise Google, when he called them `kleptomaniacs’ in a 2006 speech where he said they were “increasingly aiming their strategic efforts at traditional content originators and aggregators like newspaper publishers. The irony is that these search engines exist, largely, because of the traditional news and content aggregators and profit at their expense’’.

ON THE SIDELINE, HECKLING:

Since then, others have joined in the chorus of opposition, most notably Rupert Murdoch, who said last month: “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators Š who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.’’ Mr Murdoch just this week threatened to block Google News from taking any content from News Corp web sites.

AND THEN THERE’S US:

Marketers everywhere would love to see a Win-Win resolution. None of us will benefit if newspapers fall over. But we’ll also be the poorer if the internet devolves into a collection of islands hidden behind paywalls.

There are no easy answers. But we look forward to the Debate and its outcome.

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Perhaps he should have a chat to Steve Jobs about selling newspapers through iTunes.

Clearly Si Newhouse (publisher of Condé Nast magazines) has been having a word or two with the reality-distortion-meister. Lo and behold, hot on the heels of the closure of Condé Nast titles Gourmet and Modern Bride comes the news that GQ is going mobile from its November “Men of the Year” issue.

Condé Nast has announced it has developed a mobile app that offers users an exact replica of its print mags in online form, starting with GQ. The free app is made for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and issues of GQ will be available for $2.99 in the iTunes App Store on the same release date as the print issue. Ads will appear as they do in the print version, but will also offer more interactivity as video, e-commerce and linking capability are all enabled as part of the new app.

Okay, it may be a challenge fitting the Wall Street Journal layout onto the iPhone  screen, but hey — Mr Murdoch was never one to take the easy road.

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According to the Brodeur survey:

• Just under half of the reporters and editors surveyed found blogs helpful for getting information on breaking news
• Nearly a third used blogs for identifying and validating news sources
• A quarter found blogs useful for finding quotes and soundbites
• And, incredibly, a quarter saw blogs as helpful for getting scoops or exclusive stories.

Hmm. Did Woodward and Bernstein actually get their Watergate tips through Mark Fell’s Deep Throat blog rather than clandestine meetings in parking garages? Who knew? The definition of investigative journalism just evolved.

Given the relentless deluge of blog postings, it’s no surprise that journalists need to check the blogosphere at least once a week. Indeed, 71 percent of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis.

• Over one in five (20.9%) reporters said they spend over an hour per day reading blogs
• Nearly three in five (57.1%) reporters said they read blogs at least two to three times a week

Almost half (47.7%) say they regularly check five or fewer blogs; but about one-quarter (23.3%) say their regular blog list numbers six or more. And a to-be-pitied 4% check more than 20 blogs regularly.

Journalists are becoming increasingly active participants in the blogosphere. One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs and nearly one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page. About half of reporters (47.5%) say they are “lurkers” – reading blogs but rarely commenting.

Overall, the conclusion was that blogs have substantially changed the news business. A majority of journalists thought blogs are having a significant impact on news reporting in all areas tested (although when it came to news quality only 43% felt the impact was significant).

These findings do run contrary to current beliefs, which suggest that mainstream media (MSM) find and report the news, while the blogosphere simply comments on news broken elsewhere. On the other hand, it’s not really surprising that a swarming mass of citizen journalists can unearth tidbits that time-pressed “real” journalists haven’t yet uncovered. So many leads, so little time.

The implications for marketers, PR folk and other communications professionals, however, are significant: bloggers are another way into the hearts, minds and columns of MSM journalists. If you can convince bloggers of the significance and merit of your cause, you might just rate a mention in their blogs. That in turn might bring you to the attention of those MSM journalists, leading to fame and fortune (or at least a fleeting appearance in the latest bunch of news clippings).

Of course, you still do need to have something worth blogging about. The release of your latest widget might bring tears to your own eyes, but don’t expect those burly bloggers to be so easily impressed.

Darn – just when we thought we’d found that shortcut to overnight success

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The Seattle paper joins Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which published its final edition at the end of February. The PI is the latest — and largest — newspaper to fail amid a recession that has been especially brutal for the industry. Four owners of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past three months. A number of other newspapers are up for sale.

The Challenge Facing Daily Newspapers

The writing has been on the wall for some time. In a 2007 Harris/Innovation Newspaper Readership Survey, 8749 respondents in seven countries were asked “What are your sources for news and information today?”. Major Daily Newspapers were cited by just 12% of US respondents (vs 25% for TV Network News and 18% for Online News & Information Websites). The highest users of Major Daily Newspapers were to be found in Spain and Germany (13% each), while Australia equalled the US on 12%, France came in at 7% and Great Britain and Italy scored lowest at just 6%.

When asked “What do you think your sources for news and information will be five years from now?”. 26% of US respondents suggested Online News & Information Websites as their Number 1 source, whilst just 10% thought that Major Daily Newspapers would be the most likely medium of choice. The Italians and British were gloomiest about the future of newspapers, with just 4% expecting Major Daily Newspapers to be a source for news and information in 2012.

The factors behind the decline of newspapers are easy to identify, difficult to counter:

• eBay, Craigslist and their various clones have sucked up much of the ‘Buy & Sell’ classified dollars that traditionally drove the backend of the newspaper. Monster.com and the various online jobsites have done their part vacuuming up Situations Vacant revenues; and specialist real estate and motor vehicle sites have done the rest of the damage. The automated ability to search through thousands or millions of listings at the click of a button makes online classifieds far more usable than newspapers ever could be.
• If consumers want national or international news, it’s available 24/7 online — no need to wait for the thud of the newspaper at your door at some early morning hour. Only local (and micro-local) news is not always easily available online — but it’s expensive to gather and not everyone wants it. Oh — and metropolitan newspapers are competing in this space against their (often fleet of foot) community newspaper counterparts, who have a small beat and often an evangelistic following.
• The tanking global economy has impacted most on sellers of big-ticket items such as real estate, cars, computers and consumer electronics — all categories that tend to be regular advertisers in newspapers. Oh, and banks, financial corporations and insurance giants were also big spenders in print — but for some reason they haven’t been seen around much lately.

So where to now for your daily newsprint fix?

In 2006 analyst Lauren Fine of Merrill Lynch calculated that it could take as long as 30 years for online revenue to represent at least 50% of a newspaper’s bottom line. Said calculation was reached based on projections that assume double-digit growth for online ad revenues through 2012 eventually slowing to 5% with print advertising estimated to decline 1.5% annually.

Whilst we don’t doubt the maths makes sense, the underlying logic doesn’t. We live in a financial bubble that demands quarterly improvements in bottom line results or remedial action is taken. As we’ve seen with Rupert Murdoch absorbing MySpace or Google vacuuming up YouTube (and most any online enterprise with a semi-viable business model), business mega-moguls didn’t get where they are today by settling for mere linear progressions. Can’t grow organically at a fast enough rate? Acquire!

Of course, the humble business of newsgathering has already evolved somewhat over the years. If we discount the creators of cave paintings, hieroglyphics and dead sea scrolls as inappropriate ancestors of journalism, then the earliest proto-journalists in the ancient world were travellers, who observed events in one place and then spread the word at their next port of call. Such methods were at best erratic, at worst embellished and unreliable (a problem that remains with us today).

Under the Imperial Rome of Julius Caesar and his heirs, news of the day (Acta Diurna, Daily Events) from the capital was painstakingly scribed for distribution to the farflung colonies. The reporters, servants of the Empire, were required to provide reportage which complied with their masters’ worldview; the penalty for disobedience was only too literally the editorial spike.

As BC gave way to AD and civilisation relentlessly marched its way towards the perils of our modern world, such handcrafted bulletins were supplemented by other mechanisms such as the wandering minstrel’s ballads (capturing contemporary events in singalong fashion) and the dulcet tones of the town crier. Almost inevitably, the earliest known printed newspaper appeared in Beijing in 748.

The first significant journalism breakthrough came with the arrival of Johannes Gütenberg and his 1447 invention of movable type. From there to the tabloids was just a matter of time.

After Gütenberg, innovation started to break out all over Europe, and attribution gets a little messy – too many “Number 1 with an asterisk” claimants. Zeitung, a German news report, made its debut in 1502. Trewe Encountre became the earliest known English-language news sheet in 1513. Mercurius Gallobelgicus was the world’s first periodical, emerging from Cologne in 1592 and published in Latin twice a year for distribution at book fairs. Germany’s Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, in 1609, became the first regularly published newspaper in Europe.

This collection of worthy European publications must have satisfied the demand of the times for “all the news that’s fit to print”, because it wasn’t until 1665 that the first regularly published English-language newspaper, The Oxford Gazette, started pumping out news twice a week. The Gazette owed its existence to the Black Plague, which saw Charles II and his court relocate from London to Oxford as a precaution. The King and his courtiers wanted newspapers to read, but were afraid that any newspapers coming from London might be infected. Because he could, Charles II promptly ordered the Oxford University printer to bring out a local paper.

The earliest forms of news gathering and dissemination were typically performed at the urging of the establishment (Julius Caesar, Charles II et al.) and the notion of independent, objective reporting was not an option. Investigative journalism is an even more modern construct.

For that we owe a debt of gratitude, not to Woodward and Bernstein, not even to Lois Lane and Clark Kent but to nineteenth century pioneers such as Henry Demarest Lloyd who in the 1880s published a series of articles exposing corruption in business and politics. Nellie Bly, another courageous journalist in those perilous times, was a young woman who put herself at great personal risk going undercover to investigate social issues such as child labour, low wages and unsafe working conditions.

Neither Nellie nor Henry could have effectively practised their trade, of course, without the willingness and support of their editors and publishers. There was no blogging software in nineteenth century New York, no talkback radio, no Xerox®. Without an outlet, there was no story. Now-legendary publishers such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had to stand their ground in the face of considerable opposition from the entrenched interests of the day, permitting their reporters to publish and be damned. Only then could freedom of the press become a reality, not just a quaint constitutional aside.

Over the last century or so the honourable craft known as journalism has flourished, as newspapers and magazines have been joined by their electronic cousins, bringing news to the world on a minute by minute basis and demanding an increasing supply of journalistic talent to feed the insatiable media machine. The old six-monthly cycle of the Mercurius Gallobelgicus just might be a little too occasional for today’s 24-7 world.

But the times they are a’changing. As we lurch into the third millennium, the future of journalism is very much under debate – not because the profession is any less valued than before but rather because the traditional media on whose behalf journalists practise their trade are themselves under threat in this internet-changes-everything world.

Today’s audiences, with fingertip access to the news of the world from a million sources throughout the day, increasingly find evening television news bulletins irrelevant and out of date. Radio struggles to compete with the cult of the white earbuds. Newspapers, forced to migrate their content online, have yet to discover how to monetise their electronic outlets so as to earn the same revenues as their print editions. The writing is on the wall instead of in the paper.

At the same time, behold the rise and rise of citizen journalists. Unpaid, uncredentialled but on the spot, camera phones at the ready. When the bombs went off in London in July 2005, the BBC received 50 pictures from the public within the hour. Around 22,000 texts and e-mail messages poured in with personal testimonies on the first day. By the weekend the BBC had received 1,000 images and dozens of video clips sent by e-mail and direct from mobile phones.

When anyone can be a citizen journalist – thanks to blogs, podcasts, vcasts, YouTube and camera-phones – what future lies in store for journalism in general, and newspapers in particular?

Well, as we noted at the beginning of this piece, evolution is the order of the day. No doubt the grand and illustrious order of monks feared for their future when the damnable printing press made its debut, threatening to render intricate manuscripts redundant. And yet monks are still with us, their efforts turned to other enterprises.

If they can do it, so can our newspaper barons.

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