The Impact of Technological Change on Newspapers

Technological change has seen newspaper readership decline, as audiences move towards reading news and current affairs via the internet. Rising printing and paper costs have pushed traditional news journalism to adapt. A newspaper title offers a news product using the internet platform. These online newspapers mean less revenue because people do not need to pay to read information. To cope with this many titles have introduced a paywall ( a way of changing audiences to read their content).

Restricting access to the internet content via a paid subscription if often called a paywall. Newspapers started introducing paywalls in 2010 to increase their revenue, which had been decreasing due to decline in paid readership and advertising revenues. For some newspapers, you can read the start or a snippet of an article and have to pay to read on. The Guardian uses a paywall.The news platform asks for a £5 monthly fee to contribute however this is not compulsory. They allow you to subscribe to their website in order to 'fund and support The Guardians journalism' and therefore helps increase revenue. The Guardian also asks for generosity of its consumers. Because the paywall is not compulsory they ask their audiences to donate £1 to support The Guardian, this is also compulsory, but again thus gets fund the paper. The Guardian does not make their paywall compulsory because they want to 'keep their journalism as open as they can'. The Daily Mail, likewise, also asks for a voluntary subscription. It includes a 'log in' section which includes sharing your views on the news, checking your status, and comparing your comments to other members.

It is possible to apply Shirky's End of Audience Theory with these online news websites and platforms as the consumers decide what news they want they want to view based on subscriptions. According to Shirky's End of Audience Theory behavior can vary across social media sites. An example of this is if someone is subscribed to a particular newspaper platform but another news story occurs from a different newspaper platform and is broadcasted and shared by peers, consumers are directed to read the story opposed to any other as it is available on another site, providing that the consumer becomes decisive and behavior is less predictable. On the other hand, some might argue that this theory may not apply as frequent consumers may view stories based on preferences and visit sites to view their proffered news, they would therefore have predictable behaviour. If multiple people sharing these similar views may form a mass audience that can be related to and addressed throughout the the paper in the media.