Lionel Barber, the editor of The Financial Times, has unveiled the paper’s digital first strategy, which will cut 35 jobs and relegate newspapers to second place, as speculation about a sale of the Financial Times continues to circulate. Barber said the changes were needed to secure the paper’s future as “old titles” like the FT were being “routinely disrupted by new entrants such as Google, LinkedIn and Twitter”. Read More »

Newsweek has revealed the image that will grace its final print cover, before it goes digital only in 2013, as its 80-year history in print comes to an end. It has chosen to go out with a vintage photo of its old New York headquarters. Fittingly the black and white photo is accompanied by a hashtag: “#lastprintissue”. The cover brings the past and the future together on one page. The final issue follows the announcement in October that Newsweek was to close as part of cost cutting and an acknowledgement that the age of the newsweekly is at an end.

Editor in chief Tina Brown, who has edited Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, unveiled Newsweek’s final front cover via Twitter and posted the image along with the comment:”Bitter sweet! Wish us luck!” Read More »

What hope is there for print if even some of its longest serving exponents are quitting to go online. The latest to make the leap, quite literally, is Superman. In the latest issue of the DC Comics’ hero series, which is out tomorrow, Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent has what is described as a “Jerry Maguire” style moment and quits the Daily Planet in a feat of pique.

His next destination is unlikely to be  another print title, according to the comic’s writer Scott Lobdell.

Lobdell says more he says likely to become a blogger and start the next Huffington Post or Drudge Report. Read More »

A big week in the story of ‘Print is Dead’ as Tina Brown axed Newsweek, signalling its online only future, and more speculation about the future of The Guardian in print.

The closure of Newsweek has been on the cards since-owner Barry Diller suggested earlier this year that print could be scaled back in 2013. Newsweek closes in December. Besides Brown has been digitally centric since launching The Daily Beast and combining, under Diller’s IAC/Interactivecorp, with Newsweek two years ago.

Another dispatch from the front-line of ‘Print is Dead’ came about The Guardian and further speculation that it was ‘seriously discussing’ an end to its print edition. This speculation echoed something we ran on The Wall earlier this year: Is the Guardian planning to ditch print for digital future sooner rather than later? It is a rumour that will just not go away.

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A feeling of apocalyptic gloom pervaded the small conference room in Dalston library, as the torrential July rain hammered on the window panes, and a small group of us huddled together to contemplate the end of journalism as we know it…

Well, sort of. This London Journalism Centre event, ‘Is social media destroying journalism?’, did throw up some pretty ghastly figures, and did little to reassure us that journalists, and PRs for that matter, can sleep easy and dream of the perpetual existence of newspapers as we know them.

Let’s face it, it’s hardly something we’re unfamiliar with – everyone knows that social media is here to stay – but many of us have failed to register that the rise of social networks and other online news sources will inevitably lead to a dramatic decline in print publications. Read More »

The future of media advertising may be in digital, but for newspapers, print is still where it’s at.

Labeled a bit ‘on the old-fashioned’ side by some colleagues, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to start defensively, which, in sport, war and life, it seems, is never a good idea. Nonetheless, here goes…

I have no interest in paper, no investment in traditional print journalism (or indeed any other kind) and no interest in yesterday’s model. I don’t care whether content is delivered in paper format or digitally, or for that matter by carrier pigeon. Read More »

A fascinating glimpse here at Fleet Street and how it produced newspapers during the Second World War. This film looks at how The Times was produced doing the blitz.

Britons, we are told right at the start, are inveterate newspaper readers as we dip into a world of plush looking smoky offices where the heart of the newspaper is the “intelligence department”. Read More »

Google’s advertising revenues are now bigger than the entire US newspaper industry combined, according to new figures published by the Newspaper Association of America.

It has just published its newspaper advertising statistics for 2011 that say the industry posted total ad revenues of $23.9bn, according to Poynter. Read More »

What an amazing print journey this has been for the Encyclopaedia Britannica? But after 244 years of being constantly in print it is to cease publishing.

It does admit that for almost 20 years now it has mainly been an online product while still publishing in print. From now on, however, it will be an an online only product. Read More »