How about advertising? Free to air TV survives on this model, why not newspapers? I predict business models based on pay walls will struggle. Of course, Murdoch is extremely well placed to be the canary in the cage on this but I know my attitude already - the AFR tried this but got incredibly greedy, then presto, Business Spectator arrived, no pay wall, some ads, no-brainer.

Brian you are looking straight through the problem, but not seeing it, a typical fault in academia.

It is the journalism at fault, not the media.

Today when I buy a paper I find it full of "stories" not news or information. So I stopped buying papers.

If I want a "story" I'll go to the fiction department, & pick up Harry Potter. When I pick up a paper the last thing I want is some jumped up twit giving me his opinion, & that's about all you get today. It got to be an obstacle course to find your way through the guff to the facts. I can no longer be bothered playing that game.

I believe I'm one of many, all voting with their feet & no longer buying papers. Get your journalists to go back to reporting, rather than embellishing the news, & things might change.

I don't expect it to happen any time soon, the ego of the average, rather dumb journalist won't allow this, nor will the modern cut & paste of some press release so prevalent today. That being the case, expect more out of work journos, & rightly so.

Hasbeen.. I have to agree with you.

Newspapers have evolved from distributing News and Information into " Entertainment" Frankly their entertainment value is too low to interest me nor, I suspect ,the bulk of the population.

I stopped buying the Courier Mail quite some time ago for this reason as well as 2 other reasons.

Firstly because , unless you are Y Gen or a young X Gen.. there is nothing of interest in it at all.. other than acres of (cheap) Sport.

Secondly,. The Paper is packed with opinion pieces by Journos.. the vast majority of whose opinions I couldn't give a Fig .

I'm not a Tree Hugger.. But.. When I realized that the C/M was just a waste of a Tree.. I switched off.

Hi Brian, I think I agree, then I read again and I’m not so sure. So I’ll respond on the basis that I think I agree with what I think it is you are possibly saying.

All companies have a business model, media companies are no different. Products, Markets, Channels, Services, Suppliers, Regulators, Customers and Competitors.

If any entity loses customers or market share, those who operate the business model are at fault, either wrong model or failed execution.

So here we go.

Good morning CEO,
So what does your company do? We are in Journalism, Media and Communication.
Wrong, you are a business selling products and services.

What is your product/service mix? We sell news print.
Is that the product/service or the medium?
Well, I suppose that’s the medium.
OK so what is the product/service?
We sell news, opinion and advertising.

Who is your “customer”, what is the “target market” and within what segment of that market does your customer exist? Well, they buy newspapers, in Scotland.

Is this going well?
Well, actually we have gone from 700,000 customers a day to 286,000.
Why is that?
Internet, and free on-line services, customers shifting and economics.
You mean new “competitors” and “changing wants”?
Yes.
So how long have you had this business model?
“Centuries”

What do you think your customers actually want?
“Journalism that confronts power, exposes corruption, that entertains and enlightens and educates as it services democracy”
Do you think you deliver against your customer expectations?
Well, yes, mostly, not sure.
Do your customers think you meet their expectations?
Well, the ones we have left do I suppose.

What does it take to deliver the right product, to the right market, at the right time?
Money and an effective business model.
Do you have these?
No.

The instant I see any business blame either its customers or its competitors it is fast becoming an ex-business.

So yes, most businesses in this industry will fail because they don’t understand what business they are in, they are internally focused not the customer focused.

And, yes, Murdoch does understand.

Interesting article, thanks.

Neatly summarized, Hasbeen.

>>Brian you are looking straight through the problem, but not seeing it, a typical fault in academia<<

Newspapers have dug their own grave, and are too far up their own egos to claw their way out. Journalists (they used to be called reporters, if I recall correctly) have been asked to debase their craft to such a level that it has all but disappeared.

The concept of a "newspaper of record" disappeared when proprietors turned to news-as-entertainment, in order to keep up with the race to the bottom that was led by television.

It has been a classic case of the proverbial boiling frog. As global communication has improved a little every year since the invention of the telegraph (small "t"), and in massive leaps since the advent of the internet, the role of the newspaper has morphed. To the extent that the "new" part of "news" is essentially redundant; we hear about earthquakes in Christchurch long before we read about them.

Their role should, given the skills of their journalists, be biased towards analysis, and the "bigger picture". Sadly, they have lost this habit, and along with it, a great deal of their legitimacy.

Paywalls are a feature of the internet world. As a concept, they cannot be judged good or bad, beneficial or evil. The quality of what lies behind them will determine their success or failure at an individual level. It is even possible that one or two of the turnstiles may eventually lead to examples of quality journalism, rather than the antics of the chihuahua in Paris Hilton's handbag.

I'll miss the crossword, though.

Brian McNair wrote: "There has always been a lot of crap journalism around."

Like the kind of 'journalism' that peddled the WMD lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or which is now being used to justify the brutal colonial wars being waged against Libya and Syria?

The 2003 WMD claims have been shown by the recent film "Fair Game" to be a lie and known at the time by the US Government to be a lie. Anyome who doubts that the US Govenment knowingly lied about WMDs should see on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k3GuVTfWLw the testimony to US Congress by Valerie Plame, the courageous former CIA agent upon whose story, together with her husband journalist Joe Wilson's story, the film was based. (Some of that broadcast was used as the closing scene of "Fair Game". Actress Naomi Watts' resemblance to Plame was so close and the clip was added so skilfully that I did not even realise that it was not Naomi Watts the first time I saw it.)

It is hard to believe that journalists, including News Corporation journalists, could not also have been aware at the time that the existence of Iraqi WMDs was a myth. As a result of that lie several hundreds of Iraqis are now dead and most of the citizens of that once-prospweous country are now impoverished.

It's little wonder that the Murdoch media, which has fed similar lies almost countless times to its readership at least since 1974, when it savagely turned upon the Whitlam Labor Government, now faces problems in enticing readers to pay up-front for the "quality journalism" they have on offer.

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Still, Brian McNair is correct to ask how real quality journalisms should be paid for.

If we had not become imprisoned by the "free market" ideology imposed upon Australia and much of the rest of the world by the same Murdoch newsmedia, business models that would allow quality journalism to thrive would be much easier to come up with.

(to be Continued)