Skip to main content

Are tabloids the way out?

From an article in The McKinsey Quarterly on the dwindling sales of paid newpapers as consumers increasingly are turning to Internet and TV for their news feed:

Newspapers have fought back with free subscription trials and other promotions, with advertising platforms such as new or expanded feature sections, and with better home and newsstand distribution. But struggling publishers often seek the quickest method to cut costs and increase circulation without harming ad revenues. Many, particularly in Europe, see their salvation in changing formats: they believe that switching to a more compact one, such as the tabloid format, may lift circulation by attracting disaffected newspaper readers, particularly teens and women. Higher circulation, in turn, stimulates demand for advertising, so newspapers can raise their ad rates. In some cases, the price of the newspapers can rise as well.
Out here, what has the leading daily 'The Times of India' done. It has compromised on quality, ie, the content it offers. So from sincere and responsible journalism that for so long characterized the newspaper, we can see a marked shift to gossips, glitterati and skin-show. All this just for those circulation figures.

It may not be a tabloid yet, but with this degrading standards in quality of content, with such uninspiring news reporting, with such bias in International affairs, there seems to be no reason compelling enough to subscribe to it. People would rather read The Hindu or The Indian Express.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gmail Chat Disabled

The fact that it happened does not surprise me but that it took so long for our network administrators to figure it out does. And if you are wondering how do you disable Gmail's chat features on your network, you only need locking DNS lookups to chatenabled.mail.google.com , by returning 127.0.0.1 .

Firefox Extension for coComment!

I have put up the Firefox Extension for coComment! I and a few friends have been using it for a day now and it seems to work fine! Download coComment! for Firefox coComment! for Firefox allows you to coComment! from the right-click context menu and is of great help especially when commenting in a pop-up window where you can't access your bookmarks. Also, with this extension you will not have to move from the comment area to your bookmarks to click the 'bookmarklet' and then back, before you click the submit button on the blog. With this extension, you can directly move on to the submit button after writing the comment and merely hit the right click 'activating' coComment before submitting the post. Simple Fitts' law and it makes your browsing experience a great deal better and faster. Let me know what you think of it!

Advertising Billboards as Rain Covers

Advertising billboards are put to use as Pakistani refugees, left homeless after the October 8 earthquake, set up their tents in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. [via SFGate ] Technorati Tags: Pakistan Earthquake