The COVID-19 crisis has hastened the structural changes already underway in newsprint media. It’s time to start thinking about what might come next.

A perfect storm of distribution and falling advertising revenue is a blow to the newsprint business after two decades of battling the shift from print to digital. The conclusion to the story of the digitisation of news media may only take a matter of months.

Newspaper circulation during the COVID-19 crisis has been hit by as much as a third by newsagents closing and a reduction in footfall on the high street, across travel hubs and in supermarkets.

Commuter papers such as City AM, The Evening Standard and The Metro have lost their means of distribution. City AM has temporarily stopped publishing and The Evening Standard has switched its central London distributors to door-to-door deliveries albeit with a much-reduced circulation.

Advertisers have pulled campaigns, either because businesses have themselves been impacted by the crisis, or they simply didn’t want their brand appearing alongside COVID-19 news.

The huge surge in traffic to social media and messaging site is an added slap in the face for beleaguered news publishers. In the first month of the crisis Facebook reported an increase of 50% in usage of its services.

The disintermediation of media has also been accelerated by the crisis as consumers quarantining at home share content and connect with friends and family via messaging apps and social media.

Local and national newsprint impacted

The crisis is indiscriminate in its impact on local and national media. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, local media is down by 50% and national media by 30%.

Reach, one of the largest newspaper publishers, announced a pay cut of 20% for directors, senior management and editorial staff, and 10% for all other staff. A fifth of the staff will be furloughed.

Reach publishes The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, and the Daily Star, and regional titles including The Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Birmingham Mail and Bristol Post.

There are similar stories unfolding at local newspaper companies JPI Media and Newsquest.

Traffic to news websites has surged during the crisis as people at home consume news online but advertising revenues, where brands are prepared to invest during the crisis, are a fraction of print.

This is the challenge that the news industry has faced since the advent of the internet. The COVID-19 crisis is hastening the digitisation of news from print to internet services.

Few news organisations have been able to make the shift at the same time as maintaining revenue and profit. There are notable winner-takes-all exceptions such as The Financial Times and The New York Times that have successfully built value around the knowledge and expertise of their journalists.

Long form, reflective and specialist news journalism also appear to be robust. The Economist, Private Eye, The Spectator and The Week are all holding ground.

The numbers no longer add up

The Reuters Institute suggests that newspapers account for about two-thirds of investment in news provision in the UK. Print accounts for 80% of UK newspaper revenues and digital 20%. The split in advertising is roughly equal.

The numbers no longer add up. The inescapable fact is that the news business will be a lot smaller and leaner than it has been in the past. The media think tank Nieman Lab goes further. It described the crisis as a potential extinction event for US print media.

It’s time to start imagining what the future of news media might be once it’s free of the shackles of legacy print business including distribution, printing and retail.

“It’s interesting that outlets that performing well, do something reassuringly old-fashioned. They ask people to pay for content. I don’t think COVID-19 will see end of free but more people might reassess the true value of good information,” said Grant Feller, an international print and digital journalist who now runs GF Media, a consultancy helping brands and leaders articulate their messages to a wide audience.

Tortoise Media, a slow news community founded by James Harding, former head of BBC News, has begun to take baby steps towards an alternative model. The Tortoise invites its readers into its newsroom alongside subject matter experts.

I’ve created a Facebook community of practice called Do Something Great with the aim of exploring the future of the media and PR business. Please come and join me.

Further Reading

1. Keeping our services stable and reliable during the COVID-19 outbreak, Facebook, 24 March 2020

2. How much danger does coronavirus pose to the battered U.S. news industry?, Nieman Lab, 19 March 2020

3. What will the coronavirus pandemic mean for the business of news? Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 25 March 2020