Needs maintaining. Image: Richard B. Levine/SIPA USA/PA Images.
Newspapers are in a bad way, and it is not easy to see how to rescue them. But finding a way to ensure a continuing supply of high-quality journalism is clearly essential to the health of democracy: it has been the press, through the past two centuries, which has provided the main challenge to behaviour that threatens the public interest, good government and robust public institutions.
The challenges to newspapers have increased over the past two decades, and the papers have not always responded wisely. Most took the decision early to make most of their content available free online, without any clear idea of the business model that would allow them to benefit. But the gigantic wave of technological change has swamped them. Specialised classified advertising web sites have siphoned off the staple income source of local papers (and part of their reader content too); the replacement of the iPad with the mobile phone greatly increased the alternative ways for readers to use their time; and most damaging of all, the relationship between reader, advertiser and publisher has been disrupted by the rise of Google, Facebook and other digital giants.
