I'm sat on the 521 bus, making my way home, and next to me is a pile of abandoned freesheets that could conceivably constitute a fire hazard. And I can't help wondering if they're doing more damage than just stealing sales from paid newspapers.Papers have always been a disposable medium - that's part of the appeal. But the commuter freesheets are taking that concept to an extreme, creating a product that's grabbed thoughtlessly and chucked away just as easily. That's devaluing the work of journalists far more than any free-to-air website...
Yes, I agree because 'free' implies the content inside the pages is valueless too.
Survival for the trade is going to depend on making new things and in developing fresh customer value in both products and skills.
This is precisely what happened to the music business. By the time MP3 rolled along they'd already been giving music away for free as CD (and, before that, though in much smaller doses, flexidisc) covermounts with magazines and newspapers, so once there was an alternative format and distribution system that facilitated no-cost, no-loss copying, there was already a mass market who had been taught to believe that recorded music had a value at or close to zero. For the losers in that saga (musicians of less than superstar status and/or without at least one global hit as a songwriter) read journalists in this. And readers, of course, as the quality of what does get published falls, when even the good writers with things to say and expertise to impart have to squeeze in their bouts of writing between stints at the local burger bar.
Adam, I'm not sure I agree with your final sentence. Freesheets are certainly seen as disposable, but they do have two advantages over 'free-to air websites'.
First, they are physical objects, which I think makes people subconsciously value them more, even if only a little.
Second, they achieve a certain level of quality and consistency (or at least Metro, London Lite, thelondonpaper et al do). I'm not saying that print always trumps web in terms of quality; just that the entry barriers to print are higher, which cuts out some of the dross.
My goodness, flexidiscs.
I'd quite forgotten about them. I used to find them really exciting when I got one on the cover of a magazine, until I actually tried to play the damn things...