Newspaper convergence is a subject in which this process itself may have started as early as 1845, and not as popularly believed in 1996 when the 'internet age' (Freedman, 2010, p. 48) began. The threat of the newly designed telegraph of 1845 was assumed to have had the potential to ‘annihilate’ (The Economist, 2009). Newspapers had in actual fact not been superseded, as with the Internet today, instead they had assisted the newspaper's development in getting news stories much quicker, to feed the public sooner than they had before. Consequentially, the benefits and challenges of newspapers in the 'digital age' presently share many characteristics with technological developments long before its present state.
Firstly, one of the main reasons newspapers exist today is “content, content, content” (Cole and Harcup, 2010), newspapers themselves must respond to the needs of active consumers, online or off, which, as The Economist (2009) has stated, “For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels, the better.” Therefore, newspapers are left with no choice if they were to profit from their declining state, they must adapt to new technologies available. This is both evident in newspapers such as The Guardian and The Telegraph when they became Media Groups, rather than simply News Groups. On the other hand, whilst adapting, Beckett and Mansell (2007, pp. 2) argue that newspapers “retain the essential functions of traditional journalism, that is, to report, analyse and comment, filter, edit and disseminate.” Whilst there are alternatives such as online blogs and citizen journalism, old media can apply new technologies and recognise what it can do better than other forms of media (Cole and Harcup, 2010). This perhaps must be considered most in the tough economic climate, as Russunoksa and Kunelius (2009) consider business as journalism's second priority.
The presentation of newspapers in the present day may be argued as not entirely straightforward as it evolves online, after the publishing of the first official UK newspaper, Daily Courant, in 1702 in which its founder commented the basic principles were that readers would have to “make reflections for themselves”(Newspapers, 2009). Since then, readers of the gentry and middle-class, which most of these newspapers appealed to, and even original working class newspapers such as the Daily Mail, whose purpose was to “embody the aspiring lower-middle class's views of themselves” (Conboy and Steel, 2009) have become much more homogenised in content, in order to secure readers online and offline. With many journalists trained to seek information from press releases and even Google, deadlines have become much tighter where the 'serious' and 'red-top' newspapers must converge in stories of gossip and celebrity, Phillips (2010) comments that the cannibalisation of stories online “is difficult […] because stories will simply be stolen by every other outlet.” This may even be compared physically, when in 2003 the quality newspaper, The Independent, went 'compact' to salvage its flagging sales. Despite its success, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (2005), called the 'compact' approach as “views before news”. If this is a difficulty for online newspapers, the printed versions have suffered deeply with a 25% sales decline between 2005-09 and even online advertising only making up for a low 2.6% (The Economist, 2012) for the Mail group of newspapers, the most successful newspaper website worldwide. Media barons such as Rupert Murdoch have spent £650 million in producing newspapers (Cole and Harcup, 2010), however, circulation of newspapers has been in decline since 1951, the advent of television. Recently, in early 2012, The Sun on Sunday, a Sunday edition of News International's flagship tabloid was launched. In a time when newspapers were arguably still a profitable commodity, Murdoch (2005) linked both the structures of the Internet and newspapers as “newspaper editors and journalists – are uniquely positioned to deliver that news. We have the experience, the brands, the resources, and the know-how to get it done […] we have a great new partner to help us reach this new consumer -- the Internet.” Many writers, such as Conboy and Steel (2009) support this rise of the consumer in deciding the fate of the newspaper, suggesting is “different from that dry stale content we see on paper […] it is up to date, personalised and just for me!” This has furthermore become balanced with the system of paywalls on many popular newspapers worldwide, such as The Times and The New York Times, to compensate for poor advertising revenues online, closing sites to a number of subscribers only. This for newspapers, which unlike sites such as the Huffington Post who do not pay their regular writers, allow paying readers 'access all areas' on their site in order that it is “defending the old model”(Shirky, 2011) printed papers existed in. Despite this, newspapers remain in an imperilled state and in an editorial form, in April 2012 The Independent announced it will be raising its weekly price from £1.00 to £1.20, in line with other 'serious' newspapers. Its editor, Chris Balckhust (2012), reasons “advertising revenues across the industry are not what they were.” Technology and new media, as evidenced, now appear to be the only way in which the newspaper industry can save itself.
Technology, computers particularly, have played a role in the evolution of newspapers since 1986, when figures such as Rupert Murdoch and Eddy Shah became responsible for what later became known as the Wapping Revolution. This development was, in summary, the traditional print unions of Fleet Street losing complete influence over newspaper proprietors, as computer technology introduced a much quicker and more efficient working of daily newspapers in a time when the incumbent Conservative government had a great hostility to trade unions. As publishing moved into Wapping, the changes introduced a beneficial effect for newspapers between 1986-90 and over ten new titles were published (Cole and Harcup, 2010), including The Independent. However, this 'boom' became short-lived and newspapers have since had to acclimatise to the rapid changes in technology, newspapers have since turned to methods such as 'consumer orientation' and cannibalisation of each other's stories in which Beckett and Mansell (2007, pp. 6) have implied “the combination of digital compression technologies and market liberalisation means that the news media industry is now very much more consumer-led than it was in the past.” In order to accommodate this many organisations have explored digital tablet devices such as the iPad in order that they may be able to attract readers to sustain the evolving means in reaching out to them. Companies such as News Corporation have introduced the tablet-only newspaper, The Daily, in which besides the new form of news consumption is cheaper to produce because “no paper, no multi-million dollar presses, no trucks” (Murdoch, 2011). It has been reported that sales have only reached a quarter of expectations and despite the apparent low costs of the product critics have said “it needs far better content” (Young, 2011) and as previous evidence suggests, newspapers are worth little without content. Whilst the means of the Internet has now allowed newspapers to diversify their interests in reporting a balance of less serious news, this change has arguably been only caused by an attraction of a “large audience and [to] attract major international advertisers.” (Berte and De Bens, 2009). The BBC News website, a public service, in 2011 had attracted the highest score of visitors with 10 million in their traffic, whilst its nearest commercial competitor, the Mail Online, lags behind with 6.6 million (Staff Writer, 2011). Therefore, as technology still fails to provide a definitive solution, newspapers must fall back on their old journalistic qualities in order to survive.
In conclusion, the issue of convergence of newspapers alongside their more technologically advanced counterparts is still an issue which to the present day is largely fragmentary and not yet sustainable enough, so that one day the dependency on print will become a thing of the past. The subject of the Unique Selling Point (USP) of papers, content, has largely become more optimistic over the past decade in which Sparks (1999, pp. 289) had first commented that “the internet poses a threat to the highly imperfect contemporary public sphere.” This was largely true in the fact that consumers were becoming much more interested in issues that concerned their locality and this became all the more ominous warning provided by The Economist (2009) that as long the consumer could have access to the news when they wanted it, the medium itself is irrelevant. Conversely, many writers at newspapers have become more flexible and writers themselves have enough experience to cope with the multi-media world which Beckett and Mansell (2007, pp. 7) acknowledge “journalists might retain their functions of editing, filtering and producing news but the ‘journalist’ might become the media literate citizen who initiates as well as contributes to the news flow.” Whilst the new media has presented criticisms of 'churnalism' and homogeneity within the newsroom, they have until now survived and adapted from telegraphs to the television, and though readers needs have changed, Cole and Harcup (2010, pp. 5) still identify that a newspaper’s role is to “find out things and tell people about them.” It may just appear slightly different in the future.
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