El fin de la era de la prensa (Juan Varela, Periodistas21, 29/8/06)
El fin de una era
Antonio Franco se despidió de sus años como director de El Periódico de Catalunya en mayo pasado con una súplica a los lectores a favor de la prensa. “Luchen por la prensa escrita. Exíjanle cambios para que tenga más calidad, para que sea más valiente en defensa de la verdad y para que resulte más amena. Pero, créanme, con todos sus defectos, la necesitamos como foco cualitativo de información, como divulgadora de criterios y como contrapeso de los poderes”. Continuar leyendo
Who Killed the Newspaper? (The Economist, 24/8/06)
The most useful bit of the media is disappearing. A cause for concern, but not for pani
“A GOOD newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” mused Arthur Miller in 1961. A decade later, two reporters from the Washington Post wrote a series of articles that brought down President Nixon and the status of print journalism soared. At their best, newspapers hold governments and companies to account. They usually set the news agenda for the rest of the media. But in the rich world newspapers are now an endangered species. The business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart (see article <displaystory.cfm?story_id=7827135>)
More media, less news (The Economist, 24/8/06)
Newspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded
THE first thing to greet a visitor to the Oslo headquarters of Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, is its original, hand-operated printing press from 1856, now so clean and polished it looks more like a sculpture than a machine. Christian Schibsted, the firm’s founder, bought it to print someone else’s newspaper, but when the contract moved elsewhere he decided to start his own. Although Schibsted gives pride of place to its antique machinery, the company is in fact running away from its printed past as fast as it can. Having made a loss five years ago, Schibsted’s activities on the internet contributed 35% of last year’s operating profits.News of Schibsted’s success online has spread far in the newspaper industry. Every year, says Sverre Munck, the executive vice-president of its international business, Schibsted has to turn away delegations of foreign newspaper bosses seeking to find out how the Norwegians have done it. “Otherwise we’d get several visits every month,” he says. The company has used its established newspaper brands to build websites that rank first and second in Scandinavia for visitors. It has also created new internet businesses such as Sesam <http://www.sesam.no/>, a search engine that competes with Google, and FINN.no <http://www.finn.no/>, a portal for classified advertising. As a result, 2005 was the company’s best ever for revenues and profits.