Are newspapers too obsessed with themselves to survive?
Today the lead story in the Mail, the Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian and the Independent, five pillars of our newspaper establishment, in unison lead on the same story. You may think therefore the stroy must have been of some huge significant importance for these competing forces to all agree on one thing.
Could it be Iraq, or Afghanistan? How about the state of schools or the Health Service? Maybe it is the aftermath of flooding or further such wanrings about, and the potential consquences to the planet of such a change to the climate. Perhaps, if they wanted some more light hearted, they could feature David Beckhams arrival in the United states.
But no, all of these papers lead with the story of the demise of former Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black. I'll link one of the links to the stroy here in case any of you really want to read it. Now if this was amongst the smaller stories you could understand it, but is this really front page news? Is this really what the people of Britain are most interested in? Somehow I doubt it.
Newspapers have long had a love of themselves and their own self importance, none more so than in 1992 when The Sun claimed it was the newspaper, not the thirteen million people who voted for John Major, that won the Conservative's the election. Few will forget the 'Its the Sun what won it' claim. The Sun also had a long standing war with The Mirror, especially in the days of the editorial battles between David Yelland of The Sun and Piers Morgan (now a superstar of 'Britains Got Talent' fame) at the Mirror, to the point where tha battles amongst each other almost overshadowed the news in the paper itself.
So today we have Conrad Black, facing a jail sentence according to most reports, as front page news. Such newspapers should be careful, in the age of the internet, you can argue the newspaper industry needs to adapt as it offers only a once a day experience where you can get updates on a 24/7 basis through TV and the internet. For newspapers to be relevent in this environment it must ensure the front page stories are of interest to those who go into the newsagent and by the paper. Spending it's front pages talking about one of it's own, someone few of the people reading it have ever heard of, will only send circulation figures falling and reinforce an emerging view that the newspaper is out of date.
