It's an interesting time in journalism at the moment with first The Guardian and then The Times saying that they want their journalists to write for the Web first and the newspaper second.
Also The Sun has launched a free classifieds Web site that is linked from its main online site in a bid to get more people to come to the portal.
A few years ago publishers were up in arms about content being given away for free online, now it seems that they are willingly giving it away instead of saving it for the pages of their esteemed publications.
What has changed? Simple – more people are online, more people are accessing news online and more people from oversees are accessing the pages of UK newspapers online.
Both the Guardian and The Times have a strong oversees readership online and that translates into better advertising revenues for them and so a fresh impetus to make their Web site content as good as possible. This comes at a time when newspaper readership is declining and beginning to harm print advertising revenues.
Does this mean that traditional newspapers are dead? Probably not yet, although I know quite a few people who don’t read as much offline as they used to, but there will always be a devoted offline following, the publishers will just have to use their brand more and rely on hard news stories less.
As for The Sun? It doesn’t really have a classifieds business anyway, so it is not harming itself, only sticking one in the eye to its competitors.
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