Gubu.ie

The national newspapers in general are doing themselves no favours. They squeeze the living daylights out of Sport, sports personalities. Front Page news most days a week on Irish frontpage headlines. Anyone else getting sick and tired of Sport coverage on the front pages of the main newspapers? There's often a separate stapled sports supplement for that kind of thing.

it's just a dying industry trying it's best to survive.

Younger people have absolutely no interest in buying newspapers when they can read the news on their phones, tablets etc - and who can blame them?

The problem is not the death of print media, it's the assumption that quality content should be free - it can't be, journalists need to be paid for their work - I'm not talking about clowns re-hashing non-news to create clickbait, I'm talking about actual well researched pieces, no matter the field of interest.

I do like sport, so I have a sub to The Athletic, which is where the best writers are currently plying their trade.

Never could understand why sport had any place in "The news" - print or broadcast. Apart from very occasional references to unusual or unpredicted events, it's rarely "news" and often of less interest/relevance/importance than a host of other topics that get ignored.

Over the years (although less lately) I've taken out a few subscriptions to give print media a chance, but find that the "broadsheets" have gone down the route of appealing to a wider audience base to such an extent that they've reduced the content that interests me to the point of making a permanent subscription unattractive. It's not just sport, but also (for example) the property supplement which in most cases is nothing more than a dozen pages of ads, sponsored content and puff-pieces about some new development. Virtually nothing about the practicalities and implications of owning and maintaining property, new rules and regulations, innovations worth considering, meaningful compare-and-contrast exercises, etc.

It's been in terminal decline since the Irish Times moved the death column off the back page, let an RC become editor and then a woman....dear God what next? Outraged -Tunbridge Wells.

Del.Monte wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 1:03 pm It's been in terminal decline since the Irish Times moved the death column off the back page, let an RC become editor and then a woman....dear God what next? Outraged -Tunbridge Wells.

That paper seems to me to prefer printing opinion pieces from professional minority group advocates and crackpots over reporting actual news.

dawg wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 2:14 pm That paper seems to me to prefer printing opinion pieces from professional minority group advocates and crackpots over reporting actual news.

yes, it's the Irish Grauniad

CelticRambler wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:01 pm Never could understand why sport had any place in "The news" - print or broadcast. Apart from very occasional references to unusual or unpredicted events, it's rarely "news" and often of less interest/relevance/importance than a host of other topics that get ignored.

This is unbelievably snobbish, but I suppose you realise that.

Sport results are of less interest/relevance to you than other things.

Hodors Appletart wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 2:31 pm This is unbelievably snobbish, but I suppose you realise that.

Sport results are of less interest/relevance to you than other things.

Sports results (and prediction/reaction to games and changes in personnel) are no more "news" than the results of the latest round of feiseanna heats. Why aren't they given equal airtime? Sporting fixtures are just another form of enterainment, exactly the same - for the vast majority of the audience -as going to the cinema, the West End or watching the X-Factor. So give it a place in the entertainment schedules or sections, by all means, but it's not "news and current affairs".

Used to read the Indo daily back before we had unlimited internet access at home, until at some point I realised it was more opinion pieces from columnists than news

Newspapers are now useless for news because of the internet, so no one buys them for news. Their only use is for extended detailed analysis and opinion pieces. The former doesn't sell and are hard to do anyway, so all we are left with is the latter. I subscribed to the Irish Times for years until I relaised the only good thing in it was the Irishmans Diary.

I subscribe to the UK Times which is alright and their Irish edition of the Sunday Times isn't too bad...

Only Irish "news" thing worth subscribing to is the Phoenix imo.

Id pay for actual decent journalism, reaearched, with a clear focus. Alas it just seems to follow the govt line most of the time, and very little turning over rocks or trying to attack the pros and cons of policy.

Just a journalist chastising someone for not agreeing with them it seems.

There used to be an interesting thread on the other place where a few lads in the industry would post the monthly newspaper circulation figures. It was a slow but steady decline for all titles, every single month. The situation is looking bleak, and as papers cut staff in an effort to save costs, we can expect to see more low effort copy/paste press releases. Personally I think the last time I bought a paper was about 10 years ago for a train journey. Before we all had smartphones with internet access to keep us entertained.

There could be a niche for local papers to thrive which tend to have a focus on upbeat, people-orientated stories. Pictures of kids making their confirmation, a new restaurant opens in town, yer wan from down the street got married. Although Facebook and social media is even encroaching on this territory nowadays.

dawg wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 2:14 pm That paper seems to me to prefer printing opinion pieces from professional minority group advocates and crackpots over reporting actual news.

Of course it does. Opinion pieces are cheap. News journalism costs serious money.

The problem for the print media is that they can't compete with broadcast/online media for speed of delivery. The thing about news is that it has to be new - there's a bit of a clue in the name. And you'll get the newest news online or on air; not in print.

So, print news coverage has to add value in some way. One way is to take the New York Times-style approach of exhaustive background research supporting in-context reporting and analysis. But it's very, very expensive to do this well - it takes a lot of good journalists, given a lot of time - and no Irish newspaper has the circulation which would support the cover price/advertising revenue needed to fund this kind of operation. Another way is to add value by providing comment/opinion which, if well-written, can be instructive or entertaining or challenging - or, at any rate, can be something that readers are willing to pay for. It doesn't require a huge newsroom; it's quite cheap to provide, particularly as there are lots of opinionated people willing to provide copy for free, or nearly so. This used to be the role of weekly magazines, but newspapers have moved in (with the result that weekly news magazines are all but dead). Although it comes out daily, nowadays the Irish Times is in a lot of ways more like a traditional magazine than a traditional newspaper.

The Irish newspaper that employs the most actual journalists and generates the most original news content is, unsurprisingly, the one with (it is thought) the largest circulation, which is the Indo. You may not like the editorial line of the newspaper and its focus on celebrities is stomach-turning, but if what you want is original news coverage in an Irish paper, I think that's where you go.

Would anyone still buy any magazines? I used to get 2 or 3 a month at one stage but I haven't bought one in years.
The internet is making them obselete. Say you are a music fan, you used to buy a magazine like hotpress where a writer would try to describe what a new band sounds like, now you can just go to their website or youtube and hear them for yourself.

If I ever glance at the magazine rack on the way past it seems to be mostly things like hello and woman's way.

Uncle Frank wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 7:03 am Would anyone still buy any magazines? I used to get 2 or 3 a month at one stage but I haven't bought one in years.
The internet is making them obselete. Say you are a music fan, you used to buy a magazine like hotpress where a writer would try to describe what a new band sounds like, now you can just go to their website or youtube and hear them for yourself.

If I ever glance at the magazine rack on the way past it seems to be mostly things like hello and woman's way.

Back in the day "New Musical Express"; "Melody Maker" (I seem to remember that they were weekly!); four or five bird/conservation magazines on subscription; about half a dozen monthly railway magazines from Easons and, of course, the Phoenix - the last one I still pick up on the odd occasion. I mourn their passing but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Used to regularly buy Q and FourFourTwo but haven't bought a magazine in years.

I still subscribe to the 50-odd page fanzine produced by fans of the LOI team I support, and I've contributed to that.

It's more akin to the local newspapers described above, and is a good alternative view to the sort of fluff pieces you usually find in an official match program.

Peregrinus wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 3:12 amThe problem for the print media is that they can't compete with broadcast/online media for speed of delivery. The thing about news is that it has to be new - there's a bit of a clue in the name. And you'll get the newest news online or on air; not in print.

True enough ... and yet the broadcast "news" media has also resorted to filling their presentations with puffed out discussions of what the Minister will/might announce at some point during the day, or superficial debates about what was announced, endlessly trailing what they themselves are going to talk about later in the programme/day/week, as well as stuffing a load of Twitter-style, disposable enterainment "news" items into their schedule and - oh, the irony - devoting time to "what it says in the papers".

All platforms considered, I think this is more a reflection of how little appetite the general public has for real news - as in reports on unexpected, unforeseen events that have actually happened - or in-depth analysis of a broad range of topics. The lowest common denominator for both print and broadcast media is "churn" ; everything else has been shunted off into niches of one kind or another (for example, there's no shortage of appetite for in-depth analysis/opinion/investigation of political shenanigans in book form).

Broadcast media is faced with a different set of problems - mainly the pressure to be constantly producing; to fill the airwaves 24 hours a day. You end up covering an awful lot of trivial news when you do that because, realistically, there isn’t enough weighty news. Hence all the puff pieces and padding pieces. Plus, you’re very glad of any broadcastable material that is given to you that can fill airtime, which makes it relatively easy for anyone who wants (favourable) news coverage and is prepared to spend a bit of money to get the coverage they want simply by supplying material to the news channels.

Hodors Appletart wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:46 am The problem is not the death of print media, it's the assumption that quality content should be free - it can't be, journalists need to be paid for their work - I'm not talking about clowns re-hashing non-news to create clickbait, I'm talking about actual well researched pieces, no matter the field of interest

I agree with this. You get what you pay for.

However a big problem with the print/TV media here is that they're all connected to each other and the political establishment. As a result it's usually pretty rare that anything explosive is exposed and there are several topics (eg: immigration policy) that are completely off-limits unless you are on the right side of the argument/generating a puff piece about it.

It's made all the worse by the fact that some "journalists" seem to treat it as an audition for a future career as a staffer to some TD.

I get my magazines on kindle unlimited, has a good selection of the ones I want and only 7.99 Sterling a month.

Uncle Frank wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 7:03 am Would anyone still buy any magazines? I used to get 2 or 3 a month at one stage but I haven't bought one in years.
The internet is making them obselete. Say you are a music fan, you used to buy a magazine like hotpress where a writer would try to describe what a new band sounds like, now you can just go to their website or youtube and hear them for yourself.

If I ever glance at the magazine rack on the way past it seems to be mostly things like hello and woman's way.

I used to buy lots of music magazines. NME every week from 1983-2001.
Nowadays just get Classic Pop and occasionally Record Collector or Mojo.

The real decline was in Nuts and those type - smart phones killed them stone dead. I'm sure Empire is only a few bad issues away from obsolescence.

Ironically i think Newspapers could have been the actual preferred form of social media, in the journal mode but for a cost, but they were far far far too late to the party.

I used to buy a paper everyday, sometimes two.
I had a few online subscriptions over the years, newspapers and news magazines mostly.

I don't buy any papers or subscriptions anymore.

Im not paying to be an captive audience member for whatever fashionable agenda is being sold.

Welcome on board!

Welcome Mirabau