Let’s not wash our hands of inky fingers

In a way I’m a little surprised this story has not matured a little quicker, but it is now gathering momentum. Over recent days there has been a concerted blast of pessimism over the future of the newspaper, and some serious and sombre debate about a definite shift in our news consumption preferences - away from the traditional inky rag and towards the increasingly convenient on-line options.

I don’t suppose this is any great surprise - the amount of free news content now out there on the internet is vast. Designing your news sources to deliver exactly what you want, quickly, via RSS feeds or customisable portal pages, is in many ways easier than extracting the sports supplement from the wedge of paper that is The Sunday Times.

With mobile phones becoming increasingly powerful in their ability to deliver news on the move it is getting difficult to stay positive about the future of our humble newspaper.
However, for us traditionalists, who still like to spend at least a little piece of our hectic lives detached from an electronic device, and getting our hands dirty with a bit of old fashioned reading, there is hope.

Rupert Murdoch, who of course has feet in every media camp, is predicting the end of free news content on-line - it isn’t sustainable he says. If this really does turn out to be the case and we are heading for a fairer fight between paper and electronic, it will be interesting to see where we spend our cash.

I would like to think there remains room for both delivery methods, because, apart from anything else, I’m getting a little concerned about the increasing amount of time I am spending staring at a screen, and will continue to gladly stump up my two pounds on a Sunday to be able to scatter my supplements throughout the house and study the footie results flat out on the living room floor!